By David Holmberg
Daily Bruin Staff
Mainstream popular music today is primarily filled with young
musicians playing slick and watered-down rock ‘n’ roll.
But occasionally, something old becomes new again and a fad
begins.
With the success of last year’s Coen brother’s film,
“O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” American roots music
experienced a surprisingly big revival. David Grisman and his
daughter Gillian gave their opinions regarding this latest
trend.
“I’ve been part of a revival for 35 years. I’m
kind of like the tree in the forest. I don’t know, is there a
revival?” Grisman said jokingly.
“Traditional music and roots music is all fine, but are
people really going back and finding Doc Boggs records or are they
listening to the Carter family and Uncle Dave Macon? I don’t
think so. The music industry is always pushing whatever they can
pass off as the latest trend and insomuch as traditional music is
seen as a trend, I think that’s missing the point,”
Grisman added.
Gillian countered, “I think that one of the great things
about trends and popular music is that it’s an
intro…”
“Except there’s no follow through,” continued
Grisman. “People think it came out of the blue and
that’s it. Well it didn’t come out of the blue,
it’s been around a long, long time. I think there’s a
stigma on everything that’s old, from people to music. The
truth is that most of the great music in the world is made by
people who are no longer alive and they’re neglected because
it’s not something big corporations can push next week. I
think it’s great if there’s a follow through, and if
you get inspired enough maybe you will go and search out something
else.
“There are still great archival recordings of that music
when it got invented,” he continued. “It is a good
thing to throw light on something, but I’m afraid it’s
all for the wrong reasons. And that motivation enters into the
presentation.”
“That’s why a film like “˜Grateful Dawg’
is such an important film,” added Gillian. “One of the
things that I wanted to see was an authentic story and to trace
back to the origins not just of these guys but of the music they
played.
“I hope this can be a catalyst for people to learn
something about American roots music, whether it be jazz, or folk,
or bluegrass, or blues or rockabilly,” she continued.
“It all came from somewhere. They were into the origins of a
lot of different forms of music. And “˜Grateful Dawg’
tries to explore some of those things and do it in a way that is
acceptable to people.”