Lieven,
I watched a series on TV with a guy called Phil Cunningham, a scottish musician, he mainly plays the accordian but can play much more. ( he plays along with Aly Bain, the famous scots fiddler)
So anyway, he had a program that ran for 6 or 7 weeks, he was touring Scotland looking at all different types of music from Folk to Rock, from pop to churchy stuff too, everything that has reflected and inspired the people of Scotland, or at least quite a few of them.
In his last episode he ventured out of Scotland to America and Canada.
He was talking a lot about bluegrass and country folk, folk, country etc.
Bluegrass was born when the Banjo was introduced to the fiddle,guitar, accordian. The scots and irish took over the accordians and fiddles, not too sure where they guitar came from to join bluegrass and I am sure I am right in saying Phil said the Banjo was introduced to america from Egypt or somewhere like that.
The banjo was never played along with the fiddle/mandolin etc until it started in America.
As far as I could make out from what a lot of the famous ( I am pressuming they were) bluegrass players were saying, bluegrass was a combined mixture of instruments and cultures to get the results of bluegrass. They just sat and jammed away with acoustic intruments.
It also said on the program that bluegrass is coming back in a big way after some film soundtrack has been outselling other albums. The film wit hGeorge Cluney in it. I have not seen it yet so I have no idea what the soundtrack is like but i think it must be good.
Ken