Yesterday’s bluegrass event at Pt. Lookout Marina made me think of my camping days and attending several bluegrass festivals in Virginia and West Virginia. Always had a good time at these festivals but mostly because the grass I was into then wasn’t blue. Truth be told, back in the day I could even listen to gospel music when I was high and I can’t even stand gospel music.
However, at these bluegrass festivals it would always occur that a band or a performer would do a song that I particularly liked only to have some folks in the crowd boo and yell out things like “Play bluegrass!” “That ain’t bluegrass!” etc. I guess these folks were what they call “purists” but I thought that they were kind of rude. That and I found myself preferring the non-bluegrass songs to the supposedly “real” ones. This article does a good job summing up how the bluegrass/purist argument originated and has stayed on thru the years. (click here.)