Contest Is Theirs for the Picking

At the 42nd annual Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest deep in the Santa Monica Mountains on Sunday, some of the most joyful and heartfelt bluegrass music did not come from the competition stages.

Rather, it was heard at the impromptu jam sessions of graying, bearded musicians in front of dusty wooden buildings. The clusters of banjo pickers, folk guitarists, mandolin players and one-string washtub bass pluckers came together--each staking out a spot on the dirt at Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills--to improvise with like-minded players.

“That’s probably the best music around,” Dorian Keyser, the 76-year-old retired organizer of the festival, said of the spontaneous melody-making.

Thousands of musicians and fans flocked to the verdant hills. Many were longtime fans getting up there in years, but a growing number were younger converts.

“I just can’t get enough of it now,” said Rashna Elavia, a 34-year-old Hollywood set designer. A native of Britain, she said bluegrass recently surfaced in the London club scene, with deejays mixing the twangy sounds with thumping techno beats.

Marin Richards, a 20-year-old Santa Monica College student with purple hair, said she used to hate bluegrass but changed her mind after seeing “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The movie’s soundtrack sold more than 4 million copies and a few months ago won a Grammy for album of the year.

Bluegrass is “very high-spirited. It makes me happy,” Richards said, kicking back on a grassy field with two friends as the Irish folk band Claddagh played on stage.

The festival began in 1961 in a Topanga backyard, where 25 banjo pickers and five fiddlers played up a storm before a crowd of 500. Over the years, the event grew to include folk singers, square dancers, cowboy poets and more musicians from far and wide.

Though touted as a contest, the festival is really not about competition. About 100 contestants vied for 50 to 60 prizes this year. The top beginner, intermediate and advanced musicians got awards. So did the youngest and the oldest.

Some of the musicians didn’t even want to compete.

Leslie Spitz, a 49-year-old Van Nuys music teacher, strolled up to two banjo-strumming guys and began harmonizing with her mandolin. More than an hour later she still didn’t know their names.

“You can walk up to a [group], people leave and new people come, and it becomes a whole different jam,” she said. “It’s very spontaneous.”