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Bluegrass Associations Promoting the Genre at the Local Level

© Steven Lind

Whle most music fans of any genre are familiar with artists of national fame, many listeners are not familiar with local artists. The problem is one of finding them and the opportunities to hear their music. This is the raison d'etre (reason for being) of the various local and regional music associations. This month we'll take a look at several of these sites, but give you a place to find other similar sites that may be in your area.

Fields of Grass

You can find a list of local and regional bluegrass associations at most web search engines. I've always been a user of Yahoo! and believe that their list of bluegrass associations is representative. Here you'll find not only links to the IBMA, which we reviewed several months ago, but associations across the USA and in several other countries. Let's take a look at several; you can use the list to explore others. Hopefully you'll find one in your area.

The SouthWest Bluegrass Association

The Southwestern Bluegrass Association (SWBA) is a large organization of bluegrass musicians in the Southwest United States. SWBA promotes bluegrass music with a bi-monthly newsletter, information about bluegrass festivals, campouts, weekly bluegrass house jams and school education programs.

Information about that newsletter, The Bluegrass Sound, as well as about membership is provided on the site. Those bands that are members are listed, providing a contact number and a link to their association web page, if available. Hopefully, either of these methods of communicating with the bands will give you concert information because both the "Sponsored Concerts" and the "Events" pages have no dates on them. Many of these Member Bands have contributed towards a CD that is available by snail-mail with a check or money order.

The "Pickers Corner" features a number of articles on playing various bluegrass instruments. You'll be surprised by who wrote several of these articles; they're not names associated with bluegrass music. The "Links" section makes the site worth visiting. Among the gems here are a list of online radio programs, links to various bluegrass bands' and artists' sites (not just menber bands), various web sites of annual festivals and bluegrass events, online magazines, and songbooks.

One minor disappointment was with the links page where it indicated that each link would be opened in a new window. Unfortinately this was not true, forcing you to use the browser's back button. Otherwise navigation was consistent and convenient.