Billy Strings won his fifth Entertainer of the Year award in six years at the 37th annual International Bluegrass Music Association awards in Chattanooga this week. According to Rolling Stone, the guitar virtuoso accepted the award at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Auditorium on Thursday, crediting his wife and son for enabling him to "chase my dreams" and bring bluegrass to the masses.
Strings positioned himself not as a revolutionary but as a steward of tradition, thanking "all my heroes who have gone on before." The IBMA Awards have historically been a battleground between neo-traditional purists and progressive experimentalists. That divide is essentially gone. What remains, according to Rolling Stone's reporting, is a "large tent under which all avenues of the ancient tones gather." Bluegrass has stopped gatekeeping itself.
East Nash Grass, a casual pickup band born from weekly hangouts at a Nashville dive bar, won Instrumental Group of the Year and Album of the Year for their LP All God's Children. Sierra Hull and Kristin Scott Benson each won their eighth career awards in Mandolin and Banjo categories respectively. Women are finally receiving recognition after decades in the shadows.
Singer-songwriter Lindsay Lou, whose recent album Bluegrass Women documents this evolution, said: "We've been here all along, and now there's visibility and representation." The genre's old gatekeepers have lost their grip. What's filling the vacuum is merit-based pluralism.
Strings has become bluegrass's ambassador to the streaming generation and mainstream radio. His dominance matters because the genre underneath him is thriving. Joe Mullins, the banjoist and broadcaster, said: "The momentum of Billy Strings, and Alison Krauss back on tour, that tide is rising all ships."
Bluegrass is having a moment. Strings is the most visible proof.
