As a bluegrass musician of nearly 40 years, I can tell you that there’s been plenty of dancing to bluegrass, from square dancing and clogging to the 90s dance club-oriented Groovegrass Boyz stuff. Here’s the father of bluegrass and Emmylou Harris flatfooting to his tune, “Scotland” - Monroe’s first adult professional music work was as a dancer. https://youtu.be/4GViVxB3b7o?si=cTMO3BlaWgndetOZ
Some expanded remarks regarding my crack about the relative un-danceability of bluegrass, inspired by Jon Weisberger's objection in the comments. He's right, of course: there's dancing to bluegrass, even at the form's most stereotypical, though given the breakneck speeds and somewhat stiff approach to rhythm characteristic of those stereotypes, we're probably talking about some fairly maniacal clogging--not my thing, but I'm not calling it not dancing; let a hundred flowers bloom.
At the pace normally useful to square dance and flatfooting, sure--a bluegrass band can play that way, as can any band. This is where we get into definitional issues around the term "bluegrass."
But I'm talking specifically about uses of the banjo. Bluegrass banjo, as with other bluegrass playing, is fundamentally about chops and performance, about exploratory soloing, about listening; clawhammer banjo is fundamentally about dance, with an utter de-emphasis on soloing. After that, of course, you can do anything with anything. When the old clawhammer players I came up listening to started recording, they played tunes much faster than they did for dances, to show off and make the track more performative and less functional. To learn technique, I therefore had to learn to slow down (though playing those tunes fast can be fun too, and my time will never be anything to write home about anyway). They still never took solos.
What's interesting about the flatfooting video Weisberger sent--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GViVxB3b7o--where Emmylou Harris and Bill Monroe dance to his composition "Scotland" (I know this track from Harris's excellent live album "At the Ryman"): there's nothing especially bluegrassy, as opposed to old-time stringbandy, about the Nash Ramblers' arrangement here. Yes, a Scruggs-style banjo is in the mix, but there's no instrumental soloing at all (Monroe's recording--https://open.spotify.com/track/3L964R09wBefjELIv1khnk--does feature solo parts); also, there's nothing especially original about the tune. With its bagpipe motif and skirling Highland-fling fiddle, it's much more generically Celtic-revivalist and four-square 4/4 than the more American and less symmetrical 2/4 dance tunes I prefer, but still, despite the instrumentation, at the Ryman as handled by Harris and the Nash Ramblers, it's basically an old-time, swinging country dance number, just fine for flatfooting, as we can see in the video.
For context, it might tell you something about my taste in music that I prefer the Nash Ramblers' live version of that tune to Monroe's original recording. I also prefer Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys' sides from the pre-WWII period before Earl Scruggs joined the band to the widely beloved recordings beginning in '46 (there was an accordion in that earlier iteration, playing hell with the purist ethos that came in with bluegrass). And I prefer the Monroe Brothers--Bill's 1930's mandolin-guitar vocal-duet act with his brother Charlie--to the Blue Grass Boys overall, though the brothers' recordings are anything but danceable.
Thanks for the links to those great performances.
As a bluegrass musician of nearly 40 years, I can tell you that there’s been plenty of dancing to bluegrass, from square dancing and clogging to the 90s dance club-oriented Groovegrass Boyz stuff. Here’s the father of bluegrass and Emmylou Harris flatfooting to his tune, “Scotland” - Monroe’s first adult professional music work was as a dancer. https://youtu.be/4GViVxB3b7o?si=cTMO3BlaWgndetOZ
Some expanded remarks regarding my crack about the relative un-danceability of bluegrass, inspired by Jon Weisberger's objection in the comments. He's right, of course: there's dancing to bluegrass, even at the form's most stereotypical, though given the breakneck speeds and somewhat stiff approach to rhythm characteristic of those stereotypes, we're probably talking about some fairly maniacal clogging--not my thing, but I'm not calling it not dancing; let a hundred flowers bloom.
At the pace normally useful to square dance and flatfooting, sure--a bluegrass band can play that way, as can any band. This is where we get into definitional issues around the term "bluegrass."
But I'm talking specifically about uses of the banjo. Bluegrass banjo, as with other bluegrass playing, is fundamentally about chops and performance, about exploratory soloing, about listening; clawhammer banjo is fundamentally about dance, with an utter de-emphasis on soloing. After that, of course, you can do anything with anything. When the old clawhammer players I came up listening to started recording, they played tunes much faster than they did for dances, to show off and make the track more performative and less functional. To learn technique, I therefore had to learn to slow down (though playing those tunes fast can be fun too, and my time will never be anything to write home about anyway). They still never took solos.
What's interesting about the flatfooting video Weisberger sent--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GViVxB3b7o--where Emmylou Harris and Bill Monroe dance to his composition "Scotland" (I know this track from Harris's excellent live album "At the Ryman"): there's nothing especially bluegrassy, as opposed to old-time stringbandy, about the Nash Ramblers' arrangement here. Yes, a Scruggs-style banjo is in the mix, but there's no instrumental soloing at all (Monroe's recording--https://open.spotify.com/track/3L964R09wBefjELIv1khnk--does feature solo parts); also, there's nothing especially original about the tune. With its bagpipe motif and skirling Highland-fling fiddle, it's much more generically Celtic-revivalist and four-square 4/4 than the more American and less symmetrical 2/4 dance tunes I prefer, but still, despite the instrumentation, at the Ryman as handled by Harris and the Nash Ramblers, it's basically an old-time, swinging country dance number, just fine for flatfooting, as we can see in the video.
For context, it might tell you something about my taste in music that I prefer the Nash Ramblers' live version of that tune to Monroe's original recording. I also prefer Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys' sides from the pre-WWII period before Earl Scruggs joined the band to the widely beloved recordings beginning in '46 (there was an accordion in that earlier iteration, playing hell with the purist ethos that came in with bluegrass). And I prefer the Monroe Brothers--Bill's 1930's mandolin-guitar vocal-duet act with his brother Charlie--to the Blue Grass Boys overall, though the brothers' recordings are anything but danceable.