Bidgood, Lee Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 563 Abroad’ in music, giving particular, though not totally uncritical, attention to that remarkable cosmopolitan, Arthur Lourié (see SEER, 93, 3, 2015, pp. 550– 52). Also in this section is a thorough examination by Elena Dubinets of the sense of identity felt by Russian émigré composers today, when migration has become the norm rather than the exception. Partsix,‘1991andAfter’(pp.359–421),comprisesthreearticlesbeginningwith Laura Fay’s account of chaos in music as the Soviet Union collapsed, focusing particularly on Zhdanov’s successor Tikhon Khrennikov who lasted from the original chaos in 1948 as official leader until 1991; to many he was an odious figure, but in his memoirs Evgeny Kissin recalls him as a benevolent Maecenas. William Quillen discusses the way in which the highly experimental 1920s in music were treated by musicians and musicologists after glasnost´, when previously suppressed composers and works were allowed to emerge again. Finally, Lidia Adler in a wide-ranging article discusses the struggle to create new paradigms of contemporary music in twenty-first-century Russia. The editors deserve praise for producing a book of both professional and amateur interest, which is rich in details of fact and ideas, and should be welcomed by musicians, musicologists and enterprising music lovers alike. London Arnold McMillin Bidgood, Lee. Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe. Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago and Springfield, IL, 2017. xx + 168 pp. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Recommended media. Index. $24.95: £20.99 (paperback). Czech Bluegrass is an important, original and highly personal contribution to the defining characteristics and development of one of the more unlikely (but nonetheless significant) forms of musical expression in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Bidgood’s approach, which is broadly ethnomusicological, renders his work accessible to a range of readers with a general interest in Czech culture and folk-spectrum music, as well as to musicians and musicologists with a more specialist knowledge of and/or liking for bluegrass. I am very much in the former category, and can claim no expertise in the making or interpretation of music, but I still found much of the content engaging and perspicuous. Thestudy,whichincludesaForeword(pp.vii–ix)byTonyTrischka,comprises an Introduction, five chapters, and (appropriately enough here) a so-called ‘Tag’. The Introduction (pp. xi–xviii) outlines the author’s own involvement in bluegrass music, and how he came to undertake ethnographic fieldwork in the SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 564 Czech Republic. Chapter one (pp. 1–20), ‘Places, meaning, community, and inbetweenness ’, locates Czech bluegrass in its geocultural and semantic context, and introduces the shifting and sometimes illusory concept of vono (which might be loosely translated as ‘the real thing’, but which Bidgood defines as ‘what people want to experience’, p. 17). The second chapter (pp. 21–51), ‘Czech bluegrass histories and backgrounds’, considers what makes bluegrass Czech, and includes some thoughtful observations on the traditions and sense of identity of bluegrass musicians pre- and post-1989. Chapter three (pp. 52–68), ‘Making bluegrass at home, abroad, and in between’, is a more descriptive account of performances featuring the author in Europe, as well as of the manufacture of banjos. The next chapter (pp. 69–98), ‘Learning and playing Americanness on the fiddle’, considers some of the more technical aspects of music playing, and the difficulty for Czechs of reproducing ‘Americanness’, or rather the subtleties of articulating and negotiating the differences between Czechness and Americanness. The penultimate chapter (pp. 99–118), ‘Singing truth, fidelity, and play in Czech bluegrass gospel’, addresses, inter alia, the tensions surrounding the performance of sacred material by non-believers, and the question of acculturating gospel music to the Czech context. The final chapter (pp. 119–24), ‘A tag: America/Amerika’, reflects on the constructedness of the Czech bluegrassers’ romanticized notions of America. For practising musicians with a specialism in bluegrass, chapters three, four and five may well be of greatest interest. Bidgood’s narrative, informed by detailed personal knowledge of the art form, extensive on-stage collaboration, and numerous encounters and interviews with musicians and luthiers, sheds light on the subject-matter in a way that only an accomplished bluegrasser can do. The...