Country Music (Burns, 2019)
Mixing two of my favourite things, country music and documentaries, in 2019 Ken Burns produced another utterly involving social history of America through the lens of its culture.
As you would imagine, each of the eight episodes is brilliantly researched and structured and the insights from music makers and critics are fascinating. There’s plenty of music, too, that will make you want to go back to the records.
The first thing to blow my mind is how utterly inauthentic American country music was, even while it was being invented. The first songs peddled by rascals like A.P Carter (patriarch of the Carter Family) incorporated familiar sounds, tunes and instruments from European folk music but the first country songs didn’t manage to sound like any single one of those inspirations. They were a classic American melting pot of music – a new sound – but then sold back to the American people as if they’d been playing it on their porches and in their kitchens and their barns all their lives.
And the American people bought it. They bought the music, obviously, but they also bought the fake nostalgia of the whole thing, too. The history of country music shows America self-mythologising in real-time.
The first country music stars – before the days of recording and radio – were like vaudevillian “Uncle Dave” Macon, more attuned to showbusiness than musical authenticity and by the time it looked like there might be a few quid to be made in the song business, there was A.P. driving all over the South with his friend Lesley Riddle, basically stealing songs from poor black folk and poor white folk alike in the hopes he could sell them on to record companies wanting to meet public demand.
There’s quite a lot more in my review at RNZ Widescreen. A deep dive into a deep dive, if you like.
Where to watch
Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay
Canada: Digital rental from Apple
USA and UK: Digital rental from Apple or Amazon
Further reading
For RNZ Widescreen, I expanded my Friday night riff on relaxing YouTube videos and added Apple TV screensavers and the great Sky/Freeview NZ art channel, arTVox.
