Bluegrass music has taken root all over the world but thrives in unique ways in the Czech Republic. Ethnomusicologist and bluegrass musician Lee Bidgood writes about what it is like to live and work playing bluegrass in the heart of Europe. The chapters trace Bidgood's engagement with Czech bluegrassers, their processes of learning, barriers to understanding, and the joys and successes that they find in making bluegrass their own. After providing a general cultural and historical background, a set of case studies convey ethnographic detail from Bidgood's participatory observational research: with a Czech band as they work abroad in Europe; with banjo makers seeking an international market; with fiddlers wrestling with technical, social, and aesthetic hurdles; with a non-Christian seeking to truthfully sing gospel songs. Bidgood's analysis of songs, sounds, places, and speech provide insights into how Czech bluegrassers negotiate the Americanness and Czechness of their musical projects. This study poses bluegrass not as a restrictive set of repertoire or techniques, but as a form of sociality, a discourse with local and global resonances—and in its Czech form it is clearly a practice of in-betweenness that defies categorization, challenging narratives that limit music to a certain time, place, or people. Includes orientation notes on language, and a glossary of Czech terms.
Occupational exposure to nanoparticles originating from welding – case studies from the Czech Republic
