Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public Memory

7. Rosine, Kentucky: Birthplace of Bill Monroe and American Bluegrass Music

P 153 p 7P Although some birthplaces, as Erekson points out, may be more miraculous than others, miracles were precisely what the residents of Rosine, Kentucky, had in mind when they restored the birthplace of bluegrass virtuoso Bill Monroe during the 1990s. Rosine’s coal and lumber jobs succumbed to deindustrialization during the late twentieth century, leaving residents desperate for purchase in a new economy. They found it in Rosine’s only remaining renewable resource: memory. Cultural anthropologist Cynthia Miller details here how Rosine effectively reinvented itself as a shrine to Monroe’s memory. At his birthplace and throughout town, residents literally make their living by recalling Monroe for visitors. Miller portrays a deeply spiritual community whose tribute to Monroe is wholly celebratory and imbued with religiosity. Rather than dwell on the intertwined histories of race, class, and popular culture that frame Monroe’s legacy, Rosine simply encourages its musical pilgrims to honor the place where bluegrass was born. So far, it seems, the investment in heritage tourism has paid off. Rosine’s claim to Monroe’s memory, however, is not singular. In fact, Monroe built his own bluegrass museum in Tennessee. How Rosine distinguishes itself among the various claimants to Monroe’s legacy suggests that the mnemonic strategies of an earlier generation linger in our nation’s ongoing preoccupation with origins. Rosine, Kentucky Birthplace of Bill Monroe and American Bluegrass Music CYNTHIA MILLER The commemoration of Bill Monroe’s birthplace in Rosine, Kentucky (population 41), began with a single nail that, once driven, reshaped 154 p CYNTHIA MILLER the life of an entire town. The May 26, 2001, nail-driving ceremony marked the beginning of a restoration project, but it also drew together the people, places, and memories of the town in a singular focus on one of the leading figures in traditional American music.1 The commemoration attests to the centrality of Monroe and his music in Rosine. It also stakes a claim for Rosine’s contribution to his life by suggesting that the sights, sounds, and smells of the place created the substance of the man. The character and essence of Monroe’s birthplace become his character and essence. And that essence became the music known as Bluegrass, the official State Music of Kentucky. That music, along with the life and legend of the man with whom it originated, can be traced, touched, and heard throughout the town of Rosine, from the farm and historic house on Jerusalem Ridge that was the Monroe family’s homestead, to the cemetery that serves as Bill Monroe’s final resting place, and points in between. Monroe’s life is inscribed onto the small town’s landscape through memorials, markers , images, and architecture that have been reproduced and repurposed in a range of material culture that has, in turn, been marketed across the globe: maps, books, magazines, graphic art, record and compact disk covers and liner notes, and of course, sheet music and instruments . Over time, Monroe’s fame has drawn attention to other exceptional , but often overlooked, local musicians: his brother Charlie; uncle Pendleton (“Uncle Pen”) Vandiver; thumb-picking guitarist Arnold Schultz; and fiddler Tex Atecheson, among others, creating a culture of recognition for those who have contributed to the region’s vernacular musical heritage. As we consider Monroe’s life and legacy, that picture of the relationship between the man, the place, and the music becomes not only more robust, but more complex. On one hand, the powerful influences of his birthplace are undeniable; on the other, those ties to place became more symbolically powerful as they became less binding in reality. Monroe was not the first gifted musician, or the last, to call Rosine home, and he suggested years later that the seeds sown in him, as in so many others , by life in the small town, would not have flourished without room to grow: “I guess if I hadn’t left Rosine and gone up North, I’d probably be just like the other folks who live here now, farming and raising a family.”2 Rosine, Kentucky P 155 The Father of Bluegrass Music Bill Monroe was born on September 13, 1911, atop Jerusalem Ridge, just south of Owensboro, Kentucky in a small town called Rosine. He was the youngest of eight children born to James Buchanan “Buck” Monroe (1857–1928) and Malissa Vandiver Monroe (1870–1921). Buck Monroe owned a 655-acre...