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What is Bluegrass? By Mark Simos Bluegrass is one of the great American musical traditions that have been around for a long time. Although people seem to know bluegrass music when they hear it, not everyone who loves bluegrass music agrees about what it is. In spite of this disagreement, there are some things that almost all bluegrass music has in common. Bluegrass is almost always played on acoustic stringed instruments. The main instruments used in bluegrass include: the fiddle, mandolin, 5-string banjo, guitar, dobro, and the upright bass. Most of these instruments are used in other kinds of music as well, but in bluegrass music they are played and combined in a special way to create a distinctive sound. The music is very fast and the musicians play with great skill. The men often sing very high, and band members sing very tight harmonies on the songs. Bluegrass music sounds old to our ears, reminding us of music played on back porches, and draws on older traditional music for some of its songs and tunes. But the music we know as bluegrass began around the time of the Second World War (late 1930s and 1940s), when electricity was first coming to many rural areas of the United States. In fact, even though bluegrass musicians play acoustic instruments, microphones, radio broadcasts, and recordings were part of the music from the very beginning. This is just one of the ways that bluegrass music turns out to be very old and very new at the same time.