Customer Reviews

Bluegrass Breakdown: THE MAKING OF THE OLD SOUTHERN SOUND (Music in American Life)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I get the impression from several of the reviews I've read here that the posters frown on the academic study of bluegrass. This book certainly isn't for everyone. No book HAS to please an audience, nor does every book HAVE to be interesting from cover to cover. Cantwell does have a tendency to ramble at some points, but the information contained in this book is still worth the read.

Bluegrass Breakdown is a book for those interested in bluegrass from an ethnomusicological standpoint. Cantwell advances interesting theories regarding the African contribution to bluegrass to how bluegrass is identifiable through its use of the characteristic "high lonesome wail". Cantwell's goal here is clearly to explore cultural attributes and effects of bluegrass, and this is something I believe he does well. If you're looking for a book that's an easy to read, tail-wagging history of bluegrass, go for Cantwell's colleague Neil Rosenberg. Cantwell isn't your man.

Cantwell's writing is purely academic, again a style of writing that isn't for everyone. I don't believe Cantwell goes out of his way to discuss his bluegrass performance merits or intellect here. I found Cantwell's inquiries mostly unbiased and thorough, including those dealing with Bill Monroe. I don't believe Cantwell went out of his way to point out Monroe's 'hypocrisies' on any level, rather he constructed his writing to portray Monroe as a paradox, a 'mystery' man who's very hard to explain in the space of a few pages.

For all his interesting theories, Cantwell loses a star for stereotyping. His description of "Appalachian folk" at the Grand Ole Opry as "plain", "overweight" and "lacking in proper dental hygiene" (the book was published in '86) is annoying. This may be a part of Cantwell's research experience, however it's a cheap shot at a blanket statement about an entire culture of people. I thought good researchers were trained to avoid this kind of writing. Other than that, this book is something definitely worth the read ... particularly if you're up for the challenge.

If you hate the dense, sometimes rambling, style of critical theorists, pass up on this. But, if you do enjoy bluegrass, as well as crit lit, this book is an enjoyable analysis of the style. Cantwell can write long, winding paragraphs, but he knows his subject. His analysis parses the style deep into its African roots, while at the same time giving the reader some thorough critical background into old-timey Southern rural music and African-American styles. The negatives from other reviewers are right on, but I happen to like Cantwell's style and have found this book to be an invaluable reference to bluegrass, and a source of inspiration on how to view, not to mention listen to what has been described as "folk music on overdrive."

For all its dense prose, Bluegrass Breakdown is _not_ typical academic-ese. Bob Cantwell cares about writing and he cares about bluegrass. He is, in fact, a bluegrass banjoist as well as a college professor. Some readers may find his style too involved for their tastes; others will, as they follow his arguments, come to see in bluegrass much more than they might ever have imagined. I think this is one of the best books written in the past 20 years on the culture of American popular music.

If you study American traditional musics of any kind, if you play bluegrass, if you want to know what country music is, or if you are concerned with what African American or Southern music is, this is the book you have to own. I am still in the middle of reading this book, but every chapter on its own makes me wish I had read, reread, and studied this book the day it came out, not a decade or two later. This is an essential book for serious knowledge of music in America, not just Bluegrass.

Frankly, I have been negatively impressed by many of the books on Bluegrass which seem to focus on stories of artists, rather than analysis of the music. Cantwell provides one of the best studies of any form of folk or popular music written so far either on a popular or scholarly basis. What he explains here about the nature of African based and African American music and its difference from European and European American music here alone is worth the price. Like much serious work, the book has passages that are hard to understand if you are not familiar with music.

Yet, if you read his analysis of how bluegrass has evolved as an African-based music, you can understand the dynamics of producing a hot, working bluegrass band and arranging the music. You can understand why Monroe and Scruggs created magic that millions of people have followed since they got together in the mid 1940s.

There is one exception I would take with Cantwell. He based his knowledge of banjo history on what was known when he wrote the book. He had the assistance of my friend and colleague Bob Winans who then believed most of the transmission of banjo playing to Southern and mountain white folk came through the white minstrel shows. Subsequent research, especially the work of Cece Conway, has shown that transmission to Southern white players came from Black banjo players themselves, much more than the minstrels, something that everyone today including Bob Winans agrees with.

This accentuates the general thesis that Cantwell puts forward, how ingredients of African American music styles are essential to contributing to Bluegrass. Certainly in the banjo music, Scruggs who largely learned from and grew up listening to banjoists who played the classic banjo style, added in the thumbing of the original African American drop thumb clawhammer to classic picking and created the roles that Cantwell shows are essential to Bluegrass syncopation. Given that the Carolina Piedmont where Earl grew up was one of the last strongholds of Black folk banjo playing, this kind of transmission is clear.

That is not to say as some well intentioned but miss informed folks might say that Scruggs stole a Black style. What is more important as Cantwell explains, is the overall atmosphere that Bluegrass arose in where Black influenced music in the forms of Ragtime, Jazz, and Blues was in the air of music makers across the country, particulrly in the areas in the South where Bluegrass was born.

In this regard, Cantwell well-researched and clear examples of the mixtures of music that define not only Bluegrass but the entire process of American music's confrontations between European and African music.

As a writer and a teacher of writing, I am really impressed with Cantwell's prose. The opening chapter which is a portrait of MR. MONROE
and band mates like Kenny Baker at a DC concert 30 years ago is one of the best portraits of Big Mon I have read.

Again those used to personal biographies and fan fair stuff as music history rather than serious studies may find this more serious reading than they are used to. But to understand important and complicated things, you need real answers. This Cantwell provides in abundance.

Though Bluegrass Breakdown is, as a previous reviewer contends, overly academic (sometimes to the point of boredom), it does provide a scholarly and highly respected exploration into the genre. More a textbook than something you'd read for fun, Bluegrass Breakdown is a must for anyone who wants to get to the roots of this uniquely American form

Someday maybe someone will write The Greatest Bluegrass Book Ever. Until then, this is the one. OK, it's not perfect...there are twenty-odd sentences (scattered about like annoying but harmless litter) that date the book. Otherwise, the love for and insight into the music is timeless. I was surprised to find myself in a state of breathlessness after reading some of the passages. It's that good.

Cantwell's volume represents everything I hate in a book about music. Pompous and pretentious pseudo-revelatory academic blather about folk music. Compare and contrast Cantwell's account with the genuinely readable and insightful history by Neil Rosenberg. As I recall there's a blurb on the cover comparing this work with Greil Marcus' brilliant Mystery Train....well, hardly, not even in the same league. Here's a rule of thumb for books on various genre's of music, as you read the volume do you seek out the recordings or performances discussed by the author? Nothing in Bluegrass Breakdown moved me to explore artists or styles. This is a book by one of those academics who is more intereted in showing the reader just how much he's learned about this quaint folk music. In a word...annoying.

There are some things you've got to know to love, and other things you've got to love to know. Bluegrass music is one of the latter. And I get the feeling that, while the author clearly knows quite a lot ABOUT bluegrass music, he doesn't KNOW bluegrass music. (By the way, I say this knowing full well that Cantwell is a bluegrass player himself. I hate to say it, but this is clearly the impression I get.) He treats it, very skillfully, as a sociologist treats some group of people he's studying and perhaps has lived with, but internally feels disdain for.

I got this feeling the most clearly in Cantwell's discussion of two important areas: Bill Monroe and gospel music. About Monroe, Cantwell seems to delight in pointing out his shortcomings and hypocracies. Everybody admits that he had both. But what doesn't come out in this book is Monroe's love for the music, for the people, and for the lifestyle that the music comes out of. Sure, what neither Monroe nor Earl Scruggs did was truly original; but the fact that they popularized it and shared it with millions of others (yes, making money along the way) doesn't make them evil people.

Even worse is Cantwell's treatment of gospel music. I came away from the book with the distinct feeling that most bluegrass musicians use gospel music as a tool to dupe the suckers, and play it not so they can "use their Bible as a road map" but as a cash cow. While I admit that there are no doubt some bluegrass musicians who so use it (but who am I to judge their hearts?), it has been my experience that at least some bluegrass musicians I play with feel gospel songs deeply. We sing and play gospel music to express how we really feel about God, and we want to share that with others. In other words, when I play gospel music my goal is truly to share not only the gospel but also the Gospel. Perhaps that wasn't Cantwell's experience, but it is mine.

In summary, this book is very learned, and the author clearly knows a lot and expresses it skillfully, but it leaves you feeling completely flat and uninterested about the music. If you're looking for a critical book that helps you know many facts about bluegrass music, this is it.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a book that helps you to both know bluegrass music and to love it better, I would suggest instead reading "Bluegrass: A History" by Neil V. Rosenberg. Rosenberg is a guy who not only knows his subject well (the book being apparently just as well researched and painstakingly footnoted as Cantwell's) but Rosenberg clearly has the kind of love for the music and the people that it seems Cantwell lacks. Rosenberg's book is the kind you treasure and re-read.

In his Preface, Robert Cantwell tells us that this book is addressed to "a former academic colleague, a tepid, retiring gentleman who...through a third party...suggested that if I wished to advance in the academic world I should probably not write about bluegrass at all."

Unfortunately, in his quest to prove that bluegrass is a fit subject for serious investigation, what we end up with is a rather dense treatise that is just flat out lame in places.

For example, in describing the scene backstage at a country music show in Maryland in 1977, the author sees fit to comment on country great Jack Greene's "beer belly" and Jeanie Seeley's "peach-like rump and insistent breasts," but conveniently fails to mention the hideous, unkempt sideburns Bill Monroe sported during the same period. (In fairness, if Professor Cantwell's musical education had included the live LP, "Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours-Hittin' the Road," which contains Jack Greene's outstanding vocal on "Afraid to Care," chances are he would have arrived at more balanced view of Bill Monroe versus all other Opry stars.)

Other puzzling observations abound, especially in his "technical" discussions of this or that musical type. For example, on page 108 he tells us that "bluegrass is more strictly bound by song structure than jazz," which is not true. Jazz is every bit as song-bound as bluegrass: it's just more advance harmonically. And if the listener knows the song in advance (e.g., Thelonious Monks' "Ruby My Dear"), he or she will have no trouble following the changes, regardless of how much improvising is going on. Later, we are told that "improvisation can be carefully planned out in practice and carried out in performance," which strikes me as a contradiction in terms (if it's planned out in advance, how can it be called improvisation?).

There are minor irritations, too, such as the misspelling of jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli's first and last name, which makes the reader wonder just how familiar the author is with his subject.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good general overview of bluegrass, I recommend "Bluegrass: A History" by Neil Rosenberg. Rosenberg's book is highly comprehensive without being "technical." In my opinion, a good "technical" book about bluegrass is yet to be written.

If you're already a fan of the music, and you know the story (more or less), you might love this book. On the other hand, you might find it rambling, repetitive, and pretentious (more or less).

Irritatingly, Cantwell tries to legitimize bluegrass music by overstating the bluegrass connection to African music and jazz. His justification for this connection is based on three elements--improvisation, standard tunes, and occasional flatting of third and seventh tones of the diatonic scale. His stretch that betrays a superficial knowledge of African music, jazz, and Tin Pan Alley, and a selective understanding of bluegrass.

First, there is no single genre of "African music." Lumping together the musics of an entire continent, over several centuries of time, is an injustice to the music and the people. Second, blues is not jazz itself, but more of folk idiom appropriated by jazz, a small (and rather primitive) facet of an increasingly broad range of styles. Third, while a large part of the jazz repertoire is based on standards, jazz strives for a level of reinvention and originality that goes beyond adding new licks.

Bluegrass is a folk music, an unsophisticated style or collection of styles that can be easily enjoyed and played by people with little or no formal musical training, whose foundation style was set by Bill Monroe. Like other folk idioms, bluegrass grows and stays viable when it assimilates from other styles. Since the 1960s, bluegrass has drawn, superfically, from zydeco, rock and roll, "Celtic," "Native American," minstrelsy, Texas swing, and blues. For example, the popular 70s repertoire included a Cajun-syle rocker called "Alligator Man," New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the country-rock tunes of ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith. The 90s brought "Wild Horses" from Jagger and Richards, and Peter Rowan's Native American ullulations. Crossover is decried by the purists, but it attracts new listeners; also, there are only so many ways to play "Sally Gooden" while staying completely inside "the tradition." More important, crossover is as old as Bill Monroe himself.

To a degree, since all folk musics assimilate indiscriminately from one another, they are all superficial. As a folk music, bluegrass is more remarkable since it grew from the invention of one man, Bill Monroe. But it has grown into a diverse party that crosses musical, linguistic and national boundaries. This book would have been more interesting if it got off the high horse of legitimacy and celebrated bluegrass music's inner [...].