We have posted a few times previously about bluegrass bands composed of Jewish musicians, or Jewish bluegrass artists who seek to explore their faith through music. What they produce can be a fascinating counterpoint to the rich tradition of Gospel music within our music, as well as a new avenue for converts to bluegrass.

It seems that most Jewish grassers perform, write or facilitate within our community primarily as bluegrass folks – except for the discussions that pop up when IBMA week conflicts with the High Holy Days, as they often do. Those that do make their music specifically Jewish in character have been prone to half-jokingly refer to what they do as jewgrass – a term I first heard 30 years ago within a group of Jewish bluegrass musicians from New York.

While we were absorbed with preparations for IBMA in late September, Smithsonian.com ran a very interesting article by Jen Miller on just this subject. She interviewed a number of people who celebrate this melding of identities.

Bluegrass lyrics celebrate country living, but many of the people singing them are city folk. Jerry Wicentowski grew up in Brooklyn in the 1960s and fell in love with bluegrass during the folk revival. For religious Jews like Wicentowski, there was a rebellious element to being a fan of the music. Bluegrass became his escape. During the week, he studied at an insular yeshiva; on the weekends he played guitar in Washington Square Park.

After earning a Master’s degree in Hebrew and Semitic Studies and then drifting away from Judaism, a series of life events led Wicentowski to return to religion. Eventually, he found himself a man with two strong identities: a Jew and a bluegrass musician. He began to fuse the two. Wicentowski worked on an album with mandolin virtuoso Andy Statman called “Shabbos in Nashville,” which featured Jewish songs in the style of 1950s bluegrass. Later, he founded his own band, Lucky Break. The Minnesota-based quartet bills itself as “uniquely American, uniquely Jewish,” by mixing “the stark beauty of Appalachian music with Shabbat Z’mirot,” or Sabbath songs.

If this topic interests you, the entire article can be read online.

As we are now within the officially-recognized holiday season, one expects to find notices about Christmas concerts featuring bluegrass and acoustic music. It was something of a surprise, though a most pleasant one, to see news of a show scheduled next Tuesday (12/4) on the Millenium Stage of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

The Center will present a concert for the first night of Hanakuh featuring The Sinai Mountain Boys, from Silver Spring, MD. The band is composed of four Orthodox Jewish pickers who mix bluegrass with Hassidic and Jewish music for a melange they lovingly call Jewgrass.

Members include Gary Goodman on banjo, Michael Singer on bass, Robbie Zev Ludwick on mandolin, and Yoni Tyberg on guitar. You can hear audio samples of their music, and a couple of live performance videos on the band’s web site.

The Hanakuh show on 12/4 is co-presented by The Kennedy Center and the DC Jewish Community Center, and begins at 6:00 p.m. There is no charge for the concert, and it will also be streamed live over the Internet from the Millennium Stage web site. Should you miss the show, look for the video in the archives within a day or so of the concert.

Here’s something I had been expecting to see for some time – hoping, even. Bluegrass has long been intertwined with its Gospel music tradition, though that aspect is far less universal than it once was. As the appeal of the music has grown beyond its roots in the rural southeastern United States, the topical themes of newly-written material has grown as well.

It seemed certain that adherents of religious faiths other than the Christian Church would be drawn to mimic the sort of Gospel traditional that exists in bluegrass music, and apply it to the beliefs they hold as true. Given the numbert of Jewish people who have been drawn to perform in bluegrass and acoustic music, I had expected to see this coming from that camp.

And so it has.

Mare Winningham may be known to readers as an actress, having appeared in dozens of movies and television programs over the past 30 years, but not many may realize that she has also been pursuing a career as a singer and songwriter, with three albums to her credit. Though raised in the Catholic Church, Mare converted to Judaism in 2003, and that change is the focus of her newest CD, Refuge Rock Sublime.

Released this spring on the Craig & Co label, Winningham’s CD mixes folk, bluegrass and Gospel music influences with Jewish musical idioms and themes, It is not a bluegrass record in any understandable sense of the term, but Jewish fans of acoustic and folk styles might want to give it a listen – as might folks interested in such cross-cultural musical ventures.

Audio samples can be found online at Fonogenic.com and in the iTunes Music Store.

The Jewish press has noticed this project as well, with articles/reviews appearing in The Jewish Week, on the Hillel web site, and on YoYenta.com.

Perhaps we will eventually see a more thoroughly bluegrass recording that mixes Jewish faith principles with the sonic themes of bluegrass Gospel – or even Christian themes other than the predominant rural southern staples. My own private joke has been that someday my own Catholic faith might inform a bluegrass song about The Miracle at Fatima or The Feast of the Assumption.

Now that would clear a festival site in a hurry.

There is an entire sub-genre of bluegrass, referred to as Jewgrass, performed by Jewish musicians around the country. A recent Harvard grad even wrote an award winning scholarly piece about the history of such music and I’ll be publishing an interesting story about that soon.

But as we are in the holiday season it seemed appropriate to highlight some music I just discovered in this genre. I recently came across a band from Silver Spring, Maryland calling themselves the Sinai Mountain Boys. This band is comprised of four Orthodox Jewish musicians who blend the sounds of bluegrass with Chassidic and other Jewish melodies.

I discovered this band on a blog belonging to a brother of one of the band members. The author had highlighted a song his brother performed for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Very cool.

Click over to hear the Sinai Mountain Boys perform a “Jewgrass” version of Oh Hanukkah.