This week I’ve been at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Business Conference and Wide Open Bluegrass Festival. If you have not yet read my blogs from the last few days, here’s the link to Day One and here’s the one to Day Two.
Okay, now that you’re all caught up I’ll continue on with Day three of the IBMA conference. I’ll just stick with the conference for now. I want to write a separate blog to address the awards show.
Day three started off with more seminars. I attended one pertaining to touring and gigging internationally. Since we only live five hours from Canada it’s entirely possible that we might end up doing a Canadian tour at some point. Of course I also like to fantasize about traveling through Europe or Asia and playing – seeing the world through music – but that will entail a lot of courage and coordination. Who knows, maybe someday it will happen, but for now I think we need to focus on playing more gigs outside our state before we think about going too far afield.
After the seminars I met back up with my parents and we went to the Special Awards Luncheon where they were handing out distinguished achievement awards. This was one of my favorite parts of the week. Not only was the food really good, but I had the opportunity to learn about more recent Bluegrass history. I learned about Alison Brown who co-founded Compass Records and was the first woman to win Banjo Player of the Year (only two women have ever won this, but I’ll get into this more in my awards show blog). There was Murphy Henry who wrote a book about the influential women of Bluegrass, which I promptly bought and can’t wait to read. And then there was Steve Martin.
Yes, that Steve Martin. He was given a Distinguished Achievement Award. When I saw his name on the program I thought that there was no way he would actually come to this little awards luncheon in Raleigh, NC, but he was there. He gave a wonderful speech. They were filming it for the news so you can probably look up the video. Bearing witness to that moment was really touching. I felt such a sense of inclusivity that I haven’t necessarily experienced at the Bluegrass festivals. People have always been nice and friendly, but until now I’ve always felt like I’ve been hovering on the edge of the community. Now I feel like I’m apart of it.
I came away from that awards luncheon feeling incredibly inspired. I look forward to discovering what my role in this World of Bluegrass can be beyond simply playing music. I want to advocate for Bluegrass to the greater world, but also to advocate for the greater world of music to the sometimes quite isolated and insular World of Bluegrass.
Thank you for reading.
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