ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996 TAG: 9605280095
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: OWENSBORO, KY.
SOURCE: KEITH LAWRENCE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Having a hard time getting your family together for some quality time?
Try bluegrass music.
That's the conclusion of a thesis written last year by Misawo Nagao of Kyoto, Japan, for her bachelor's degree at Osaka University of Foreign Studies.
Nagao says a major problem with modern Japanese society is ``Chichioya Fuzai [absent fathers].'' The two main causes, she writes, are men who work overtime on a regular basis and men who take jobs in other cities and only see their families on weekends.
But ``bluegrass families,'' Nagao concludes, are ``far from having an `absent father' problem.'' Among those families, she writes, ``the father's existence seems strongly felt.''
Bluegrass families spend more time together, Nagao says, playing music at home and camping at festivals.
People who still think of bluegrass as belonging to the rural American South might find the idea of bluegrass being prescribed for healthy Japanese families a bit strange.
But Japanese bluegrass dates back to around 1950 - only five years after Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys created the sound in an American recording studio.
Japanese musicians, listening to the music on American military radio after World War II, began playing the music themselves. And by 1972, bluegrass festivals had a firm foothold in Japan.
Nagao found the men in her sample group had played bluegrass for an average of 17 years and listened for 20. Fifty-three percent belonged to both a band and a bluegrass association. And in one-third of the homes, the entire family was involved in bluegrass.
Nagao even found that 44 percent of elementary students thought bluegrass was ``cool.'' But that dropped to 11 percent among high school students.
Bluegrass festivals are particularly important, she said, because they allow families to ``leave a more stressful part of their society and be with family and friends through music. This might greatly aid the recovery of their human energy while expressing themselves.''
Dan Hays, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association in Owensboro, Ky., says Nagao's research applies to American families as well.
``Festivals lend themselves to spending good, quality time with families and friends,'' he said. ``If you go to a concert, you sit there in the dark and listen. But at festivals, you have time to talk and be together.''
Simmons Market Research's 1995 ``Survey of the American Household'' found that 64 percent of bluegrass fans have no children in the home. But 15 percent had one, 14.5 had two and 6 percent had three or more.
And more than half a million bluegrass fans have some type of camping equipment, the survey found.
The IBMA made its own stab at a psycho-social profile of bluegrass fans a couple of years ago, concluding that a ``sense of community'' was one of bluegrass' main attractions.
IBMA records list at least 215 bluegrass organizations in the United States and 31 in foreign countries. They range in size from about 50 to the California Bluegrass Association's 2,274 members.
``It's not so much that people want to return to the past as it is wanting to bring those traditional values into a modern framework,'' Hays says.
Traditional bluegrass songs, written in the post-war years when Americans were leaving the farms in record numbers for factory jobs, express a longing for home and family.
But modern bluegrass musicians are as likely to be singing Eagles, Beatles and Pink Floyd lyrics as Monroe's.
``The repertoire has broadened,'' Hays agrees. ``But it's still more family-oriented than country music.''
Since children are admitted free at most of the nation's 500 bluegrass festivals, there are no statistics on how many are in the audience.
But many festivals now have a separate youth stage. And Hays says the number of children has ``grown significantly'' in recent years.
Even the IBMA trade show in Owensboro each September - after school has started - attracts more than 100 children and teens.
Part of that comes from an increasing number of younger musicians - Alison Krauss, Chris Thile, Josh Williams and Michael Cleveland among them.
But part of it is what Nagao writes about - families spending time together.
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