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In trying to take a complete look at one of the most popular forms of music in the country, the focus is less on the genre than on its most enduring figures.
With a few exceptions, Ken Burns' documentary titles are their own statements. The works of the prolific documentary filmmaker have long had unequivocal names, as if there was no doubt about the subject it contains. "Country Music" – like "Baseball", "Jazz", "The Civil War" and "Jackie Robinson" before it – comes as a condensed covering a hundred years of a particular type of music that was woven into the fabric of American life. . Although the series itself argues convincingly for the importance of this music to a large number of people across the country, it also raises many questions about who decides what should be included in this way. 'appreciation.
Told in eight episodes of 16 hours, "Country Music" is an essentially chronological review of milestones and milestones in the evolution of the genre. The series is not too far from the style of the Florentine house. Peter Coyote's reliable baritone is still as much a fuel for Gravitas, while the pictures of older genre owners seem tailor-made for the sepia-tinted story that often fills these runtimes. Burns operates from a high floor in the way this story unfolds from one era to the next, often rewarding the patience that it requires regularly.
"Country Music" takes advantage of his greatest insights from behind-the-scenes players who have been able to shape this area of the musical world in a less obvious way. Radio DJs, producers and session players offer their own window on their personal story and the legends they have accumulated over generations. In some cases, these alternative perspectives help to unravel some of the mythology that surrounds various periods of transformation and figures of this ongoing legacy. (A session musician who played on recordings that helped define Mid-Century "Nashville Sound" explains how the impressive volume of their production meant that even with the tubes, there were many forgettable failures.)
An intriguing approach to Burns' proven approach to presenting the past is that various musicians play some of the songs they discuss. From steel guitar to violin to mandolin, these demonstrations illustrate particular styles and lyrical exploits essential to understand why this parade of objects from the culture deserves to be examined from 2019. Those who do take no instrument and begin to play can always express their admiration for the production of their musical ancestors and their contemporaries with a kind of respectful respect.
These assessments are often as convincing as they are subjective. What is less obvious is the "Country Music" approach to the individuals themselves. As the series progresses, most of the narrative in Country Music is rooted in personalities of different sizes who have come to lead the industry. Most of these people are probably names engraved on commemorative plaques around Nashville (where the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry, has existed for decades in various forms), or from these hometowns of songwriters.
Although these people are not really divinized (through conversations with their respective children, it is clear that Hank Williams and Johnny Cash were far less than exemplary father figures), there is a disproportionate focus on unique players within from the wider "Country Music". By the same token, the term "country music" is enough of an amorphous label that it makes more sense to focus on the personal stories of people generally accepted into the canon of the genre.
Focusing on the fundamental personalities of the Tennessee, Central Texas and Bakersfield, California, country movements, there is a kind of minor unconscious tugging between the various testimonies, each trying their best to understand what the music country means for them in its purest form. . Sometimes this manifests itself in the defense of the oral tradition of the genre, of the song as the culmination of musical gifts exchanged between hills and cities. On other occasions, this brings the musicians to brag about the virtues of the campaign artists as the ideal form of entertainment for the fans wherever they are in the musical landscape.
This feeling of having to insist on the qualities of country music that only she can claim is less convincing than the historical vision of how this production has permeated different parts of society. Pointing out that Bob Dylan had a great knowledge of Cash's work, he thinks that the general thesis of the country is a kind of music rooted in many others. But there is a vein in "Country Music" that emphasizes the importance of the country – explaining how much each of the Beatles listened to the country records grow – which gives him a useless flea on his shoulder. Archival images and past recordings contain enough elements to elicit the kind of fear that could lead to this kind of conclusion on its own.
Burns, along with writer Dayton Duncan and producer Julie Dunfey, open "Country Music" with an episode that addresses the complex story of the origins of country music, a tradition that sometimes dealt with racial stereotypes and excluded participants from the same way. Subsequent case studies by DeFord Bailey and Charley Pride show how industry guardians have long determined not only who to include, but also how color artists have to be worthy of the national label. It is also recognized here that the recorded country music industry was born from the making of a certain type of authenticity and its transformation.
If "Country Music" had followed up on this idea and examined how the last two decades had either restructured or reinforced the way in which current singers and audiences followed a grandiose tradition, the series would come closer to the way it looks. strives to be. His final chapter ends with the rise of Garth Brooks' megastard and the death of titans from countries such as Cash and George Jones, the latest clue that "country music" is mostly anchored in men. It is impossible to tell the story of a country without recognizing these individual contributions. For the duration, Burns effectively manages this wagon through the different chronologies of country music. It is only in retrospect that "country music" raises questions that go beyond the answers that its historical past can offer.
Category B
"Country Music" will be presented Sunday, September 15 at 20h. on PBS.
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