+49 6132 / 4 30 88 30
    USD | EUR | GBP
  Switch to German 



0 tracks, not registered with a PRO
20 tracks, registered with a PRO

Waveform will be available soon!







0 tracks, not registered with a PRO
20 tracks, registered with a PRO

The term bluegrass initially refers to the blue-green leaves of meadow grass. The music style was later named after it by the media.

Bluegrass is a US-American folk music style and belongs to the broad genre of country music. Today the instrumentation typically consists of banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, resonator guitar and double bass. The mandolin and guitar have the function to produce the percussive chop beats on the offbeat, replacing the drums. The vocals are usually conducted in close third and fifth harmonies. Vocals and solo instruments usually alternate. Often the fiddle or the banjo takes over the task of chop beating when the mandolin plays a solo.


Bluegrass originated in the 1930s in Kentucky and Tennessee. The mandolin player Bill Monroe formed a form of country music with swing and blues elements from hillbilly and fiddle pieces, Anglo-American ballads, African-American dance music and traditional gospel harmony singing.

In the mid-1940s, banjo player Earl Scruggs joined the band. He nearly perfected the three-finger style with high speed and precision and thus considerably strengthened the sound of the meanwhile founded band "Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys". The band was named after the "Bluegrass State" Kentucky.

The band became known through live performances on the weekly radio show "Grand Ole Opry" broadcast from Nashville. Earl Scruggs founded the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1948. A special feature was the use of the Dobro as lead instrument, which led to great popularity among the audience.

Contemporary Bluegrass

At the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, bluegrass bands increasingly appeared at universities and folk festivals. Through these contacts of the more commercial and southern Hillbillys with a cultural music scene that had until then been carried by Alan Lomax, Charles Seeger or his sons Mike and Pete Seeger, the Bluegrass not only gained a nationwide market base, but also an influx of innovative younger musicians such as Byron Berline, Bill Keith, Peter Rowan, Clarence White, Tony Rice and David Grisman.

Since the late 1960s, other musicians such as Grateful Dead have also taken up bluegrass. New styles like Newgrass and Jazzgrass emerged. Country rock bands like the Eagles also used bluegrass stylistic devices in their songs. At the beginning of the 1980s, Bluegrass was once again more popular in commercial country music in a more poppy version and partly also with drum accompaniment, when so-called neo-traditionalism gained influence.

At the beginning of the 1990s Bluegrass became popular again. The International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame has existed since 1991. It is run by the International Bluegrass Music Association and annually awards the recording to artists who have shaped their style. In recent years new Bluegrass bands such as the "Infamous Stringdusters" have emerged. Internet radio stations such as Bluegrasscountry.org are now used to listen to music from all over the world.



Click here to opt-out of Google Analytics