BUFFALO
KARA MARTINEZ BACHMANN
When we think of the music of space, our minds instantly go to electronic music. It’s usually composed of soothing but altogether inhuman tones from New Age music or Space Music of the 1970s. We don’t usually connect the imagery of the cosmos to something as earth-rooted, organic, and emotive as bluegrass. Minneapolis-based bluegrass outfit Buffalo Galaxy has redefined the space theme and used its spirit of expansiveness to describe the group’s work, which is highly human and 28
firmly rooted in things of this immediate world. For Buffalo Galaxy, the celestial references in their name and imagery aren’t about the universe’s endless, unknowable nature but about the infinite, unknowable possibilities of music. Zach Tauer, the banjo player for Buffalo Galaxy, explained that the unique moniker arose when an image from “historic Americana music” – the buffalo – was combined with an acknowledgment
of how much the band loves reaching far out and experimenting within the genre. “The word ‘Galaxy’ describes the expansiveness, or potential, for the music,” Tauer said. The unfettered possibilities of music first hit him hard when he picked up his first banjo about ten years ago. “There was one Christmas when I asked for a banjo or mandolin,” he reminisced. His parents gave him a “cheap” instrument bought
