Not quite as distant as it sounds, Mars Hill is a small community about fifteen miles north of Asheville. Last weekend, Kinga and I went up for a country fair. Bluegrass music, quilting stalls, homemade cheese — the whole deal.
We bought some great goat cheese, and of course, there was a bit of live music everywhere.
That’s one of the greatest things about bluegrass: it’s community music. The more, the merrier. In that sense, it’s very similar to Polish Goralski (Highlander) music. Songs that everyone knows, half the people wandering around have instruments themselves — it always becomes a big sing-along.
More than that, though, bluegrass and Goralski both run the cliche gamut as far as talent goes. In a group of players, there’ll be one or two who just astound, and one or two who clearly have just begun playing.
Another critical similarity: both sound much better live, and too much recorded music of either can be tiresome.