Originally Posted By: bobcflatpicker
what is broadly labeled as "bluegrass" today


I am quite curious if you listen to ANYTHING else, Bob. Every thread, every post, you bring up bluegrass. And with you being from West Virginia, I understand that you probably had exposure to bluegrass more than any genre in your life. But does that translate to Mexico, where they grow up on Mariachi and Tejano, or Cuba where they grow up on Mambo and Rumba, or the Dominican where they revere Bachata, or the Caribbean in general where they grow up on Bolero and Merengue?

This is kind of exactly what this thread is addressing. What is good TO YOU music. I appreciate the talent of bluegrass players (Andy Leftwich is off the chain!) but I am not huge on the genre as a whole. Why? In Cleveland where I grew up, we had no place to hear "hillbilly music". Cleveland was largely rock and soul in my formative years, and big band before that. There was a time that you couldn't have dragged me to a country music concert with handcuffs and a blindfold. Now I love country. I grew. I changed. Now I should qualify that to add that I still don't like that old cryin' in your beer country, but modern country, "pop" country, is a bunch of well crafted songs played by top caliber musicians.

So, as has been the primary takeaway from most people here, your "good" is not the same as everybody's "good", so to many, yes, it is dying away. I mean, there's not a lot of Latvian folk music coming out these days, and to a huge Latvian folk music fan, they would say yes, good music is dying away. The 20 somethings who like rap, and all those artists with some reference to cool or ice in their name, will eventually die and their genre will peter out when they do. Not a whole lot of surf music produced anymore, is there? I am sure Dick Dale fans are whining about that.

All relative.