As part of the world traditions-exploring series of albums on
Naxos
,
bluegrass
stands as representative of
American traditional
music. A crew of pickers following in
Bill Monroe
's tradition are called forth to present a number of
traditional bluegrass
numbers, and do so with some pretty good skill. The banjo and mandolin players are probably the highlights of the ensemble, taking
Earl Scruggs
' three-finger plucking quite seriously and producing the ordered, yet frantic sound that represents
so well. The fiddlers show off some good work on the way as well. While the songs are all old
standards
, it's the spontaneity of
improvisation
that brings them to life, along with some decent vocals from the various singers with the ensemble. There's a definite twang inherent in all the sounds, probably enough to scare off the majority of the
country
-hating crowd. Despite this, the music is really performed quite well. It might not be
the Foggy Mountain Boys
, but it's not bad by any stretch of the word, either. ~ Adam Greenberg