10/27/2026
On December 8, 1945, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys stepped onto the Grand Ole Opry stage alongside Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs for the very first time. Each man would become a historic icon on their instruments: the mandolin, guitar, and banjo respectively.
Many consider that Opry show, just months after the end of World War II, the day the genre of bluegrass was born. Now, seventy-five years later, fans and bluegrass organizations are gearing up to celebrate its diamond anniversary.
Monroe was a pioneer in many ways, pulling musical influences and instruments together in new ways. But there are problems with centering him as the sole father of bluegrass; while he was a microcosm of the American melting potāperhaps even a symptom of itāin truth, bluegrassās history is much longer, strewn with an array of Black, q***r, and marginalized artists time left behind and failed to credit.
When hearing the word ābluegrass,ā most people envision a certain kind of American lifeāprobably a banjo or fiddle player somewhere in the South, sitting on a porch with a b**r or sweet tea, surrounded by at least one piece of large farm equipment. But it wasnāt always like that. The first bluegrass pickers were open about the Black musicians who influenced them; Rhiannon Giddens, a combination historian-and-musician who has given keynotes and addresses about bluegrass history for both the International Bluegrass Music Association and the Americana Music Association, is on a mission to more accurately depict musical history. She told VICE that writing these early influencers out of the story became commonplace, but wasnāt always the case in the genreās early days.
As bluegrass got its legs in the recording industry, things began to change. Giddens, who is a Grammy-winning founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, said industry executives left Black artists out of bluegrass recordings, relegating them to ārace musicā days. Record labels would go into communities and recruit artists to play āhillbilly musicā and other genres to sell records, and Black artists would be recruited to play jazz or blues. This shaped the narrative around Black musicians, and as the recording industry grew, it only got worse. Giddens said many wealthy white business owners benefited directly from storytelling about a predominantly white culture, so over time, Black musicianship was intentionally wiped from the history of bluegrass.
