Thursday, November 25, 2010

HOQUIAM'S BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL - Music that matters

By Terra Ray


Some say that then kind of music a man listens to define his heart and soul, and that's true in Hoquiam City, Washington where residents celebrate and bring to life the Annual Grays Harbor Bluegrass Festival. Bluegrass is raw music guided by whatever good and values a man stands for its celebrating life and the divine, the hard labor and sweet respite that every moment brings to a working man a concept well understood in this area by its people. So, once a year bluegrass bands from local amateurs to celebrities and professionals join banjo to banjo to entertain young and old alike inside the grand Olympic Stadium.

The Grays Harbor Annual Bluegrass festival is attended by people from all walks of life, they come to Hoquiam city to partake of good music, good food, and good friends. Bluegrass music has always been welcome in Hoquiam, Washington and the Grays Harbor area, its long history of working class and their daily struggles to keep alive through hard work and doggedness, logging the surrounding forest long before the genre existed in its present form maybe explains the people's natural connection to this type of music.

During the festival, the organizers promise visitors and locals alike will enjoy and be able to sense the enchanting Bluegrass music that is being celebrated. In bluegrass, listeners are enthralled by the skill and creative manner on how the lead performers take turns playing a melody with their instruments while winging a tune while the rest of the band play in the background.

Original Bluegrass is by and large formed around a small set of acoustic stringed instruments like the mandolin, acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo, resonator guitar and upright bass sometimes with a singer and some just pure soul reaching instrumentals, fueling spectators to move and sway to beautiful music. It is going to be an eventful week in Hoquiam when the bluegrass bands come a playing!

In the Hoquiam Bluegrass festival you will learn that this genre is notably quite different from traditional or mainstream country music, bluegrass musicians rely heavily on acoustic stringed instruments. In Bluegrass the gist of the performance is the instrumental solos that are played ad lib style and is creatively very challenging to the performer and very much enjoyed by people who get to feel the rawness of emotion brought out by the music, flowing out of the instruments may it be a fiddle or acoustic guitar.

Visitors to the Grays Harbor Bluegrass festival are encouraged by the city and its residents to go around and mingle in good fun and enjoyment, with most visitors being very familiar with the city and already having acquaintances or established friends from previous visits to Hoquiam and the Grays Harbor area.

Some bluegrass bands add other instruments to their arrangement, instruments such as pianos, harmonicas and electric guitars and violins make for an interesting combination of sounds, but of avid fans they refer to this as "Newgrass" a sort of progression from the more traditional and purist form of the genre. Another distinct characteristic that bluegrass music has is the "high lonesome sound" a vocal harmony in four parts with a jarring blending of high pitch and baritone at the bottom and end mixed together to deliver a melody that is awaited by avid fans and scholars alike.

Love delicious home cooked meals and gracious company with your bluegrass? Go get yourself to Hoquiam and be part of the Bluegrass music festival where the music played in the historic Olympic Stadium definitely celebrates the sweet life of the working man.




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