Devachan Music - Mark Simos

Bluegrass Music and High Technology

Presented at: 1994 IBMA Conference

In October 1994, my friend Sarah Bates organized a panel at International Bluegrass Musicians' Association (IBMA) Conference in Owensboro, Kentucky on the impact of technology on bluegrass music. Also on the panel were some people that had been very active on some of the early bluegrasss online communities. Sarah had asked me to give the keynote address, and specifically said she wanted me to talk about some "philosophical stuff" we'd been batting around in various conversations.

Being asked to talk at IBMA, two-actually three-of my worlds collided: that of a technologist, and of a musician (specifically an old-time fiddler and songwriter). I wanted to share some ideas about technology, and about the bluegrass tradition, that came out of those different perspectives. I had a lot of thoughts I was trying to work out at that time, and it was my first chance to speak directly about these ideas to either technologists or musicians; an opportunity for which I was grateful, excited, and-pretty nervous.

I introduced the talk by saying: "I'll leave the other very knowledgeable folks on this panel to talk about high tech and its application to bluegrass. I'm going to talk about, not what technology can do for bluegrass, but rather what bluegrass can do for technology. Perhaps it's just the songwriter in me that always tries to turn around turns of phrase!" I'm afraid my keynote address ran on interminably, no doubt offending my co-presenters and confusing the hell out of the audience. I just had too many inter-connected points I was trying to make. Belated apologies to all!

Anyway, now, years later, I've gone back over the talk and combed it out into a more Web-friendly presentation of the ideas in less tangled (or maybe just less linear) form. In preening retrospect, I can say that in this 1994 talk I accurately predicted a number of developments that by now are old news in terms of the Web, online music distribution, online communities, etc. As it's of little interest to anyone to see the ideas as described in 1994, I've updated some of these references to be relevant to today's situation. Take my word for it that I was a goddam visionary six years ago. On to new inchoate visions!

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