Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen David
Must say I love the mandolin sound...it has had a great place in popular music on tracks like Maggie May and I have heard some 18th century classical stuff that sound so vibrant. I need to do some research to understand what the discussion here relates to! But the instrument itself is fantastic and I think has been underused in relation to the acoustic guitar...it's a kind of stringed piccolo in relation to the standard guitar range I feel.
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The North American perspective on mandolin is hugely influenced by the musical legacy of Bill Monroe, who invented bluegrass music as we know it by melding elements of old time country music, Appalachian folk music and blues, and perfecting a turbo-drive combination of those elements that has come to be called bluegrass. The name of that musical style derived from his band's name: Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys, sometimes billed as Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys.
This isn't to say that some similar type of music wouldn't have come together without his influence, but he was a mandolin player, and his style and even his choice of instrument model (the Gibson F-5) have dominated mandolin playing in the US ever since.
Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass boys
While I strayed away from bluegrass orthodoxy in my own mandolin playing many years ago now, it still had a profound impact on me musically, especially when I first started playing mandolin. So for a lot of us, Bill Monroe's influence is pretty inescapable.
whm