flatpicking

skiffle band in action

Skiffle

Every now and again a website or magazine asks me to write an article.  Last month, Dutch Website Onder Invloed celebrated it’s 5th birthday with a PDF magazine and asked me to write about a musical influence;  I chose skiffle music.  You can download the PDF of the magazine from the Onder Invloed website:

Here’s a slightly longer version of the article than appeared in the magazine:

Bluegrass Guitar

         

See and downlaod tablature of the music as a PDF

Bluegrass music, and more specifically bluegrass guitar can be thought of as an offspring of country music. Like all country it has it’s roots in European folk music brought by settlers into the U.S. in the 19th century and combined there with an African influence including the use of the banjo.  The main instruments in early country music were fiddle, taken from the Scots and Irish traditions, the Spanish guitar and the banjo from Africa, with the music characterised by driving rhythms and songs singing of everyday experiences such as ranching, mining, logging as well as bank robberies, train crashes and desperados on the run.