Tom Hilton
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is the largest free musical event in San Francisco which has been held annually during the first October weekend in Golden Gate Park since 2001. Nowadays, it gathers the audience of nearly 800,000 visitors and features around 100 musicians on seven stages. In addition to bluegrass music, which is considered to be American folk music, the concert offers different music genres. However, at the very beginning when Warren Hellman founded the festival, only bluegrass bands performed on the stage. Things changed in 2004 when other bands were included to the program of the festival and its name changed from “Strictly Bluegrass” into “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass”.
