Hoquiam’s residents with their passion for things that get people to be in touch with their history and reminiscences easily fell in love with Bluegrass music. So, once a year they celebrate everything about this type of song with local and visiting performers both amateur, professional as well as celebrity musicians get together in the historic Hoquiam Olympic Stadium to play, listen and feel everything in a Bluegrass tone. As the pioneer of Bluegrass music Bill Monroe once described the genre: “Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin’. It is Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It is blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound. It is plain music that tells a good story. It is played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you. Bluegrass is music that matters.”
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.
The source of soul for bluegrass music is of course the musician and the musician relies on his chosen instruments, traditional instruments for a bluegrass band would be acoustic stringed instruments like the acoustic guitar, banjo, upright bass, fiddle and mandolin. All of these stringed instruments deliver a fast reverberating melody that definitely affects the crowd.
Instrumental solos are a crowd pleaser and you will get a lot of these amazing displays of pure raw talent during the Bluegrass festival. Band members try their best to outdo other bands or even their own band mates not so much so to show who is the best soloist but rather to entertain the crowd and give them a good time.
Bluegrass music is very much alive in Grays Harbor and Hoquiam city, the festival brings together fans, bluegrass scholars and of course bluegrass musicians who enjoy each other’s company and talent. In Hoquiam’s Bluegrass festival it is not unlikely that some of the bands will play gospel songs and for the uninitiated this is considered as part of the bluegrass repertoire.
Aside from the well loved and much focused on traditional bluegrass music genre, other bands tend to be progressive in their use of other musical instruments to enrich their own style of bluegrass with some bordering their music play with instruments more commonly identified with mainstream country music, these type or form of progressive bluegrass is often referred to by avid bluegrass scholars and traditional fans as “Newgrass”.
Being part of the Annual Grays Harbor Bluegrass festival is an experience not worth missing. People from all around go to Hoquiam city and experience live music, good food and good hospitality from the people of Hoquiam who love and know their bluegrass music.
Check out Wade Entezar does the Hoquiam Bluegrass Festival, music for that special place
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