Word: instrumentality
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...reason is a longstanding infatuation that has recently overtaken my waking hours. Just as Orpheus' lyre drew the beasts and the rocks to him, so have the plangent cries of the pedal steel guitar attracted a hundred-odd aficionados of the instrument to this the 27th annual convention of the Pedal Steel Guitar Association. There will be performances by steelers from all over the country and Canada, a seminar (my main reason for coming) and a jam session featuring three of the leading exponents of the instrument. There will also be hardware, strings, instructional materials, hard-to-find...
...appears to consist mostly of middle-aged working-class white men in warmup jackets and Nikes. A few conventiongoers are accompanied by wives or girlfriends, but there are no virtually no females participating in the event, and I hear of only one woman in attendance who actually plays the instrument. But it's pleasantly jarring to overhear a couple of old guys at the bar discussing the advantages of analog versus digital reverb, and I even hear a pedal steel joke: Why should you always carry your tone bar with you? Because if you were killed in an accident...
...full string section or as bright and bouncy as a banjo, that can be applied to the most complex jazz progressions as well as the rawest foot-stomping moonshine music. It's deeply sophisticated and wholly honky-tonk at the same time, and it's the ultimate American instrument...
...descendant of the lap steel, which came into vogue around 1915 with the Hawaiian music craze and gradually worked its way into the American mainstream via the music of Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Alvino Rey and Santo & Johnny ("Sleepwalk"). American manufacturers like Rickenbacker and Gibson began making instruments to suit this new style of music, essentially flat slabs of wood, metal or Bakelite outfitted with a pickup and six or eight strings set about an inch above a painted-on fretboard. A guitar in name only, the steel guitar is played seated, on one's lap or on detachable legs...
...gave each young musician a brief lesson, stressing each instrument's unique aspects and concluded with a discussion of communication and democracy in jazz...