Bluegrass was born out of Appalachia, fathered by a series of strange encounters with jigs, reels, ballroom airs, drinking songs and ancient Childe Ballads; Bluegrass's ma was born out of all the threads that had Englad so mixed up between the 14th and 16th centuries, but her paw was an Irish dogie wrangler, or a black rail liner descended from neo-Christian slaves, or perhaps an itinerant Glasgow fisherman, washed over to North Amerikay by a gale, or carried on the back of a whale, depending on which paper you read.

To know bluegrass is to know several continents worth of heart, soul, and hard working people through their songs.

To cut your bluegrass off from its antecedents is to grow up not knowing who your mother was.

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