From: bogul@nospambog.net   
      
   Clipped this off of Yahoo. Apparently our lovely university system has   
   run short on multi-cultural topics. After studying every possible musical   
   angle they have finally discovered that us "poor white folk" (lol) had us   
   some music too. Oh course ... it is only western Kentucky university ...   
   so it may be a while before Julliard gives Bluegrass a look.   
      
   I'm sure at some point someone will raise a big stink since we're   
   spending public money to study music written about God.   
      
      
   By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 9, 3:52 PM ET   
      
   Bluegrass music has taken a long road to the ivory tower from its   
   hardscrabble roots in the rural South.   
      
   But 50 years after mandolin player Bill Monroe, often credited as the   
   father of bluegrass, broke from country traditions at the Grand Ole Opry   
   and melded breakneck instrumentals with unique melodies, academics are   
   coming around.   
      
   A symposium that began Thursday at Western Kentucky University in Bowling   
   Green, Ky., brings together scholars from 17 states and three countries   
   to discuss bluegrass and why its fast pickin' banjos have been so slow to   
   take root in academia.   
      
   A dozen or more universities have folk studies programs that include   
   classes on bluegrass, but outside of a folk revival in the 1960s that led   
   some to seriously look at the subject, most academics haven't embraced   
   the genre as they have jazz and blues.   
      
   "Poor rural whites are in a sense the last examined minority," said Erika   
   Brady, a professor of folk studies at Western Kentucky who helped   
   organize the symposium. "It's a group that it's taken the academic world   
   a long time to get around to."   
      
   It is impossible to ignore social groups and race when asking about the   
   development of bluegrass studies, Brady said, and too often there are   
   misconceptions that bluegrass' early practitioners were backward country   
   folk incapable of finesse.   
      
   Bluegrass rose from the musical traditions of the downtrodden Southern   
   workers, farmers and families who took to song in hard times. Monroe, a   
   native of Rosine, Ky., about 40 miles northwest of Bowling Green, blended   
   the blues, ragtime and folk songs he heard while growing up to fuel his   
   driving performances on the mandolin at the Opry in Nashville.   
   Monroe was already a staple star, and few identified the break from   
   country as bluegrass.   
      
   But historians point to Monroe's band the Blue Grass Boys as the   
   definitive moment when colliding influences gave way to something just as   
   new as jazz was at the turn of the century in New Orleans.   
   Thoughtful study was bound to come, said banjo player Bela Fleck, whose   
   style crosses the distinctly American traditions of bluegrass, folk and   
   rock and has garnered thousands of modern music fans.   
      
   "It's like music theory, which was created to study what already was.   
   Bluegrass exists, and since it's been around long enough, there are   
   people who want to talk about it," Fleck said.   
      
   Just as there are a thousand definitions for jazz, all of which are   
   correct in some regard, bluegrass has perplexed fans and musicians who   
   know it when they hear it but can't give hard rules for how to play it.   
   The symposium also will address the decades-long pursuit of chasing down   
   that definition of bluegrass, which drew from many influences like blues   
   and jazz and remains just as hard to pin into a canned phrase.   
      
   Still, it's a bittersweet moment for the faithful to move bluegrass from   
   jam sessions to the lecture hall, said Paul Wells, director of the Center   
   for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University and a speaker at   
   the symposium.   
      
   While music that isn't embraced by the universities can be trivialized   
   it's not culture with a capital C anything that's worthwhile eventually   
   will be examined. Whether it's art or music, people want to understand   
   what they like, Wells said.   
      
   "Some people think that it's overintellectualizing a grass-roots music.   
   But why not give it full attention?" he said. "It can be some of the most   
   hair-raising, emotional music you ever want to hear."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)