Campus Spotlight

Bluegrass is an amalgamation of many things,” said Mark Evans at the beginning of “Bluegrass Gumbo,” the first of this year’s Midday Performance Series. “So we’re going to play you a mish-mash of all the music we like to play – therefore a gumbo,” he said.

Evans, the director of the Arts and Humanities program, and his band, Obi’s Boys, kicked off the year in grand style, playing bluegrass classics for the packed Heineman Ecumenical and Cultural Center.

Evans explained the history of bluegrass, talking about the many different cultures that were instrumental in the conception of the genre, as well as the slave influence that runs heavily through the music and the sad undertones of the songs. “Even when they are very sad, they don’t want to deal with it in a sad way,” he said, noting that the sad parts of songs are actually the liveliest.

Obi’s Boys were joined by Terry Thomas of the IT department on banjo, Kathryn Kaufman, Biology Department lab technician, on harmonica, Brian Clancey on guitar, and James Buchanan on fiddle. “For guys like us, music is what we do,” said Evans. “How do you make a million dollars playing bluegrass? You start out with two million.”

Evans also announced that Obi’s Boys were featured on a recent CD, English International, featuring concertina music from around the world, dating to some of the earliest concertina recordings. Concertina is the instrument Evans was playing for most of the performance. Evans said that the makers of the CD had talked to him about three years ago about a possible song for the CD. “So, we submitted a couple tunes, and by jingo, they’re in there!” he said.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Arts & Humanities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.