What is bluegrass anyway? Category formation, debate and the framing of musical genre

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the contested issue of defining the genre of bluegrass music. Interpreting this debate as a subjective negotiation and renegotiation of a category, it focuses on the discursive and musical means through which ontologies of bluegrass are framed. In doing so, the article adds to a growing body of literature that considers genre in popular music as a flexible construct involving both musical performance and cultural formations. The article begins by exploring the idea of bluegrass as constructed by Bill Monroe and a number of early bluegrass scholars, after which it invokes recent work on human cognition and categorisation to analyse the genre debate among bluegrass enthusiasts. The article ultimately proposes that such discourse, notwithstanding its apparent futility, can be regarded as a vital means for a genre's self-perpetuation.