The International Bluegrass Music Association's World of Bluegrass is an international convention for bluegrass musicians and others in the business, and IBMA Bluegrass Live! - previously called "Wide Open Bluegrass" - is the slate of about 200 public performances that goes along with it. The week-long event also includes Bluegrass Ramble showcase performances and the IBMA Awards show.
The result is that World of Bluegrass and its associated music festivals really do draw pretty much anyone and everyone connected to bluegrass, from star musicians and bands, to upstarts and unknowns hoping to make business connections and jam with other players, and tens of thousands of fans. For five days, there's bluegrass playing everywhere in about a 12-block area of Downtown Raleigh, from stages to street corners, to entire floors of the host Sheraton hotel.
Sir Walter Raleigh, the city's namesake, joins the celebration surrounding the IBMA's World of Bluegrass festival.
Red Hat Amphitheater is a typical outdoor arena that seats 5,000 in reserved seats and on a small lawn.
Like many such venues, Red Hat has a lot of rules, though they are not enforced evenly. They also have few food and nonalcoholic drink choices, and don't allow folks to bring in their own.
Sierra Hull on the Red Hat Amphitheater video screen during her 2017 performance.
In 2021, the IBMA World of Bluegrass music festival moved its main stage from City Plaza to the parking lot in front of the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. The video below is a quick look at the Come Hear NC Stage area. On the right at the end of the video, note vendor tents in the adjacent section of the parking lot.
Back at the festival on Fayetteville Street, the crowd can be shoulder-to-shoulder with people perusing vendors' booths and/or walking between stages.
Three side-street stages, the Martin Street Stage, the Hargett Street Stage and the Davie Street Stage, host bands all day Friday and Saturday, and get very crowded.
The Hargett Street Stage is outside a popular restaurant and allows beer within a fenced area, which increases the size of the crowd there.
The Martin Street Stage ...
Other stages spring up during the weekend, such as in a tent where a street festival vendor presented bands all day in 2014, and on the steps outside the post office.
The upstairs ballroom at the Convention Center is home to Bluegrass Ramble performances during the week as well as throughout Friday and Saturday.
There were several picking circles in the Convention Center lobby in 2019.
The workshop stage inside the Convention Center presents demonstrations like the claw-hammer banjo workshop below.
Additional Bluegrass Ramble venues include the Vintage Church at the Longview Center, which is about six blocks from the Convention Center ...
... and the Lincoln Theater, a music hall two blocks from the Convention Center.
Back at the Convention Center, folks had fun donning costumes and grabbing instruments to pose with Sir Walter for free photos.
The lower level of the Convention Center became the main stage area. While it accommodated the performances and the audience, it was easy to catch sound reverberating off the back wall of the room, and hard to ignore it once recognized.
Multiple ballrooms hosted stages and often became very crowded, particularly on Saturday.
Some shows were impossible to get into if you showed up too late.
However, we were able to get good seats at several shows, including front-row sets for the Hillbenders' rendition of The Who's "Tommy," which was presented opposite of Alison Krauss' show downstairs. (Audience members in the video were sitting on the floor.)
Vendors were forced indoors because of the rain, too. Note the "BBQ" sign just below the ceiling pointing to food vendors around the corner.
Still, the show went on with few hitches and bluegrass fans made the best of it, including impromptu performances along convention center corridors.
Reviews after the 2013 IBMA festival were ecstatic, and many credited the City of Raleigh for its efforts to make members of the IBMA and the organization itself feel welcome.
In 2014, the city said more than 180,000 attended IBMA events and the city's street festival over five days, and 88,000 were from out of town. Direct visitor spending was estimated at $10.8 million. Attendance fell to more than 98,000 with 2015's rain, with more than 41,000 coming from outside Wake County, and generated $5.6 million in visitor spending, according to estimates from the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau via The News & Observer.
For 2019, the IBMA changed the festival to free admission for Red Hat Amphitheatre and later said that was a successful move, helping to bring 218,301 people downtown for their seventh year in Raleigh. The IBMA also said the 2019 festival generated $18.65 million in direct economic impact within Wake County, the highest single-year total since 2013.
Below, Bela Fleck gathers a supergroup consisting of, from left, Justin Moses, Sierra Hull, Fleck, Mark Schatz, Bryan Sutton and Michael Cleveland, for 2021's Bluegrass Live!
Return to September Music Festivals // or to October Music Festivals
Go to the Carolina Music Festivals home page.