Forty-odd years ago, when I began developing an interest in folk singing, we held weekly "hootenannies" in people's homes. There were some songs we all sang together and some that each of performed as a solo while the others listened. These were very informal, always great fun and never competitive. As I think back now, it strikes me that one of the reasons was that we didn't think of ourselves as musicians. That was the very last thing we wanted to be. We were just trying to relate a song we'd discovered and learned or just wanting to get lost in wonderful cacophony of a roomful of voices raised in spontaneous song. I loved those get-togethers and I miss them yet today. Much of the singing was unaccompanied and an occasional hammer-on was an advanced guitar technique. Although our group included some exellent singers, no one thought of it as a performance and no one felt they needed to be "best."

The thing that made those hootenannies work was the bond that grew between the people who came. That bond was at least as important as the music. The same group of folks could stay up all night discussing philosophy or reading poetry together. (Does this sound a lot like Mudcat?) The operative principle was that making informal music together didn't have to turn us into "musicians."

Had I been suddenly taken out of that situation and dropped into a modern bluegrass festival, I'm sure I'd have felt excluded and bitter. What happened instead was that I grew, slowly, to appreciate (and sometimes play) many forms of music from Child ballads to old-timey and blugrass to blues and jazz. As I delved more deeply into the commercial forms I discovered that musicianship became a more prominent aspect of the total picture. Professional class musicians, it seemed, had two fundamental modes in which they operated: public performance and competitive jam. This was true in Dixieland, Beebop, blues, bluegrass, rock 'n' roll, country music, and, I suspect, would be true of polka bands and African ground drum jams (well, okay I made up that last one). My point is that competition seems to be the natural human condition and has never been excluded from the musical arena.

In lieu of actual experience, think of the film record. In "Amadeus" we saw a fictional competition between the young Mozart and the established Salieri. Other historically based examples in film include the story of Scott Joplin with Billy Dee, Clint Eastwood's masterpiece "Bird," or "Kansas City" and of course the great duel scene from "Crossroads." Wherever you turn, accomplished musicians seem to get off on outdoing each other in the name of having a good time. Writers and historians are trying to paint a picture for us here.

I remember the blues sessions Bob Koester used to run in Chicago c. 1963. A long list of the best known bluesmen would show up to play and you never saw a more competitive bunch, each one constantly trying to outdo the others.

We also had a "Friends of Sing Out!" group in Chicago for a while. This was a group of people who shared a love of folk singing were willing to organize an occasional benefit concert for that struggling publication. That group was much more like the hootenannies of old in that the members formed a close bond and (almost) never competed. Still, members of that group enjoyed other musical situations, such as bluegrass festivals, at which a certain amount of competition was the norm.

At bluegrass festival jams, everyone is always welcome to listen to the music. Most players at festivals are more than willing to sit down with strangers, when there is no jam in progress, and patiently teach them as much as they can absorb. And, if the newcomer can contribute, at something approaching a professional level, to a jam in progress, he or she will always be welcome. At least that's what I've always found.

      - Mark