The Dobro Player Of The Year for 2008 is:

Review past recipients of this award.

We have made a few references here on The Bluegrass Blog to the various reactions that have been generated by the “patriotic theme” of last month’s International Bluegrass Music Awards in Nashville. The IBMA Executive Committe made some changes to the content of the show a few days prior to its staging to both alleviate the possibility of offending their non-US members, and to keep the show’s presentation within the guidelines that have existed in the past.

The Board’s requests were ultimately not honored, and then-President David Crow resigned to demonstrate his acceptance of responsibility.

You can find our earlier posts if you would to review what transpired, and what has been said about it.

The IBMA Board of Directors has just issued a statement to the membership which includes their assessment of what happened, and what they mean to do to ensure that the producers of the annual Awards Show have the sort of guidelines and oversight to avoid such occurences going forward.

Speaking just now with IBMA’s Executive Director Dan Hays, he nicely summed up the Board’s position as saying that it “was ‘what do we do about the future?’ and not ‘what do we do about the past?’ ”

As such, the Board statement focuses not on placing blame, but on conciliation and a focus on those things about which everyone in IBMA agrees is important – the continuing furtherance of the music, in the US and throughout the world.

IBMA members will each receive a copy of the statement from the Board by email, and it can also be viewed online.

IBMA has been on our minds, and on this blog a lot recently. Most of that due to the recent World of Bluegrass event held in Nashville, TN recently. Some of the discussion of IBMA though has sprung from the controversy surrounding this year’s award show. Hit the tag for IBMA 2006 Awards above to see those posts. In light of all that attention I thought it might be a good idea to do a little run down of the Board of Directors, who they are, and who they represent.

Remember these people represent us, the membership of IBMA, and should be representing our desires and concerns on the issues the board faces. If you are concerned about the direction IBMA takes in the future, I would strongly urge you to consider joining the IBMA. If you are already a member, I would urge you to find the board member(s) that represent your portion of the industry, contact them and let them know your thoughts. I’m sure they all welcome and appreciate active participation from the membership.

The IBMA board consists of 16 members elected by the professional members of the organization. The board members are elected to 3 year terms on a staggered rotation so that only a limited number are up for election at once. Recently, 5 new board members where elected. The IBMA website describes the board and it’s duties as follows. (more…)

The recent IBMA Awards Show in Nashville resulted in some controversy surrounding the performance of some patriotic material performed by the US Navy Band, Country Current. You’ll find all the details in our previous posts here and here. There is also a very popular post in The B on the topic.

While the controversy had its beginning on sites and email lists dedicated to bluegrass music, the story has now moved into the larger blogosphere. Following coverage in The Tennessean over the weekend, it has now been picked up by sites that don’t normally dedicate much, if any, time to covering bluegrass. Predictibly these bloggers have all taken a stand on the issues involved.

The US Navy Bluegrass band asked not to play service anthems? What was IBMA thinking?

The Sheep’s Crib

…if all 300 international members are offended because the IBMA’s annual event has an American patriotic theme, TOO BAD!

Vanishing American

IBMA, keep PC and leftist politics out of bluegrass

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