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 Grays Harbor Annual Bluegrass festival is attended by people from all walks of life, they come to Hoquiam city to partake of good music, good food, and good friends. Bluegrass music has always been welcome in Hoquiam, Washington and the Grays Harbor area, its long history of working class and their daily struggles to keep alive through hard work and doggedness, logging the surrounding forest long before the genre existed in its present form maybe explains the people’s natural connection to this type of 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.

Original Bluegrass is by and large formed around a small set of acoustic stringed instruments like the mandolin, acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo, resonator guitar and upright bass sometimes with a singer and some just pure soul reaching instrumentals, fueling spectators to move and sway to beautiful music. It is going to be an eventful week in Hoquiam when the bluegrass bands come a playing!

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 experiencing bluegrass with new style or others would say “Newgrass” instrumentation like the piano for instance. Bluegrass is recognizable by its vocal harmony, which features two, three, or four parts, often times heard with a cacophonous high pitch referred to in bluegrass as the “high lonesome sound”, creating an interesting if not attention catching bellow of forceful vocals.

Being part of the Annual Grays Harbor Bluegrass festival is an experience not worth missing. People from all around go to Hoquiam city and experience live music, good food and good hospitality from the people of Hoquiam who love and know their bluegrass music.

Check out Wade Entezar and the Gray’s Harbor Bluegrass Fwstival music for that special place

categories: music,travel,fun,family