The Music of FreeBluegrass.org
Traditional Public Domain Songs
These songs and tunes were compiled by Lynn Osmann for Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea Old Time Jam.
They are provided here for your reference. The music and tabulature for these are available in many
places and it doesn't seem necessary to post that info again here.
Traditional songs From the "Blue Grass Songbook"
Here's my contribution to a royalty free Jam, well actually it's
Pete Wernick's. From the "Blue Grass Songbook". He say's, and I quote;
"In this book, the word 'Traditional' is applied only to songs which I don't think a strong authorship claim can be made."He is very careful to give credit on those songs that are "creditable". He also lists who made them popular and any other notes about the song he could find. So, here's a list of 64 songs from his book, labeled as traditional and therefore, in my opinion, *free* game.
Songs Contributed to the site
These songs are original tunes, in bluegrass style, that have been contributed by members of freebluegrass.org. The songs are copyrighted by the owners, but are free to be sung and shared as long as the original authors name and copyright appear on any reproduction of the work.
The Free! Bluegrass Mission Statement
We're starting small, and expect growth only if we earn it. We are, as of March 21, 2006, two individuals with an agreement that we will intitate an internet publication, to be known as freebluegrass.org, which will serve as a vehicle, clearinghouse, repository of donations, and publisher for any and all persons willing to join us in the accumulation of a catalog of bluegrass music which can be played anywhere by anyone, royalty-free. We are going to do as much as we can to put real, learnable, singable, enjoyable, bluegrass songs out on the front doorstep with a sign on them that says "FREE," the same way that people without cars sometimes do with castoff easy chairs and sofas.
We will also make as much effort as possible not to offer ragged, tattered, ugly, unmusical stuff. Our belief and our faith is that a small but significant percentage of the very able will one day offer contibutions, hence that some non-negligible percentage of our collected donations will in fact be very entertaining songs; that's practically inevitable if the collection goes on long enough and attracts enough participants. And we're going to do it for people who are in need, because we know they exist and we haven't forgotten them. Please be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day.
The reasons we have for doing this are similar to Robin Hood's reasons for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor; we sympathize with the plight of the poor, and we feel we have the necessary means to help them have music they are entitled to perform without paying royalties. It's about that simple.
We understand that American Copyright law (and that of other nations as well,) while it was intended to promote creativity, has been turned by its wealthiest beneficiaries into a monopolistic juggernaut which hoards the spoils from music sales, inflates the spoils by means of its monopolistic position, and has in fact come to act in a manner contrary to the original "creativity-stimulating" intent of the copyright law which protects it today.
By lobbying the Congress to extend the duration of copyright to well over a century, the large cartels of copyright owners have effectively claimed all but a trickle of the money to be made in the worldwide music market, in much the same way that the United States Corps of Engineers has captured nearly 99% of the hydroelectric power available from the Columbia river, much to the dismay of Native Americans.
This extension of the duration of copyright has made it unnecessary for "successful" songwriters to keep writing as if the wolf were at the door, and it does not seem to us that copyright law is maximizing their financial incentive to keep working. While this assertion minimizes the fact that the paid songwriters may indeed have worked very hard and very creatively to arrive at the favored status they now enjoy, it at least honors the work of all the unpaid songwriters in the "unsuccessful" majority who simply do not get paid.
So much for the licensing associations' assertion that songwriters "should" be paid for their work. Real-world pay goes only to a chosen few, and that's seen by us as a disgusting hypocrisy on the part of the "Performing Rights Licensing Organizations," as they prefer to call themselves.
Unpaid songwriters very probably outnumber paid ones by at least nine to one, and copyrights lasting a century reduce their opportunity. That much is self-evident. Why should "credit where it's due" be applicable only to a small percentage of the most ferociously competetive? Do the unknown writers not also toil? Where is their reward?
The disproportionate channelization of the proceeds from music into the insatiable hands of a favored few has made Free Bluegrass seem like a worthy endeavor. With poverty being the dreadful problem that it is, there are many who simply cannot pay for the music offered by the industry, who must make music for themselves if they are to have any, and who cannot afford to be sued for copyright infingement.
Our modest proposal is to solicit, collect, keep, and publish donated works originated by persons with real capability to write songs, and to publish these donations with an open, universal public license to perform them, royalty-free.
The inspiration for doing this comes from the Free Software Foundation, whom we gratefully acknowledge as a model.
All donations gratefully accepted; we will be concentrating on bluegrass, not other genres of music. That is because bluegrass is what we know and love. If we succeed, and that's a big "IF," lovers of other genres of music can form their own organizations and follow our model. This is an experiment.
This mission statement dated March 22, 2006 Written by Ed Hargadine eddard@eddard.com