Wade Entezar At The Gray’s Harbor Bluegrass Festival Music For That Special Place
Hoquiam’s residents with their passion for things that get people to be in touch with their history and reminiscences easily fell in love with Bluegrass music. So, once a year they celebrate everything about this type of song with local and visiting performers both amateur, professional as well as celebrity musicians get together in the historic Hoquiam Olympic Stadium to play, listen and feel everything in a Bluegrass tone. As the pioneer of Bluegrass music Bill Monroe once described the genre: “Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin’. It is Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It is blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound. It is plain music that tells a good story. It is played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you. Bluegrass is music that matters.”
The bluegrass music festival does not only celebrate the music genre that is bluegrass it is also a time for the city of Hoquiam to share with other people their passion for delicious cuisine, good manners and of course good music. Hoquiam and the Grays Harbor area is historically a working man’s land with the chief industry and source of income for the people being logging and this is as you would guess a hard and challenging life and when bluegrass came into its form the men and women of Grays Harbor, Hoquiam city and Aberdeen felt an instant relationship with the music.
During the festival, the organizers promise visitors and locals alike will enjoy and be able to sense the enchanting Bluegrass music that is being celebrated. In bluegrass, listeners are enthralled by the skill and creative manner on how the lead performers take turns playing a melody with their instruments while winging a tune while the rest of the band play in the background.
Most traditional bluegrass bands use a mixture of stringed acoustic instruments that deliver continuous melodies that touch the heart and soul of those who listen in a lively sort of manner, instruments like the banjo, acoustic guitar, violin and mandolin are all played together or in sequence or support to the main musicians’ efforts.
In the Hoquiam Bluegrass festival you will learn that this genre is notably quite different from traditional or mainstream country music, bluegrass musicians rely heavily on acoustic stringed instruments. In Bluegrass the gist of the performance is the instrumental solos that are played ad lib style and is creatively very challenging to the performer and very much enjoyed by people who get to feel the rawness of emotion brought out by the music, flowing out of the instruments may it be a fiddle or acoustic guitar.
Visitors to the Grays Harbor Bluegrass festival are encouraged by the city and its residents to go around and mingle in good fun and enjoyment, with most visitors being very familiar with the city and already having acquaintances or established friends from previous visits to Hoquiam and the Grays Harbor area.
Aside from the well loved and much focused on traditional bluegrass music genre, other bands tend to be progressive in their use of other musical instruments to enrich their own style of bluegrass with some bordering their music play with instruments more commonly identified with mainstream country music, these type or form of progressive bluegrass is often referred to by avid bluegrass scholars and traditional fans as “Newgrass”.
Love delicious home cooked meals and gracious company with your bluegrass? Go get yourself to Hoquiam and be part of the Bluegrass music festival where the music played in the historic Olympic Stadium definitely celebrates the sweet life of the working man.
Check out Wade Entezar and the Gray’s Harbor Bluegrass Fwstival Music for the working class
Tags: family, fun, Music, travel