(Modern bluegrass songs, telling of love and despair and celebrating mountain beauty), reflect the genre’s rural origins.

A) Modern bluegrass songs, telling of love and despair and celebrating mountain beauty,

B) Modern bluegrass songs through their telling of love and despair and celebrating mountain beauty,

I chose choice B but the correct answer is choice A.

B has a couple problems with it. The first and more serious is that the -ing words (telling and celebrating) should really be “tales” and “celebration of.” The second is that there really should be a comma after “songs” to use that construction.

A doesn’t have those problems because the -ing words are neatly set off in a clear modifying phrase.

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