Ken Burns released a fine documentary on the history of Country Music. Normally when I hear Ken Burns is behind a documentary I assume I'm going to get a combination of weepy stories and racial browbeating. Fortunately, he held his worst instincts in check. There was minimal, righteousness on race and the stories, while often sad, were not turned into tragedy porn. I got more than a little engrossed in it.
Like many middle-class northerners I sneered at Country Music as a young adult. I had no childhood history of listening to it. Thinking of what music was in my life during my childhood I would have to say The Monkees, assorted 60s bubblegum pop singles, and renditions of the Great American Songbook that peppered the variety shows on TV during the middlebrow era: The Dean Martin Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, etc. Oddly, this was also the time of TV shows for Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, and Hee Haw, which didn't seem to really affect my sensibilities. Of course, as I grew into young adulthood I sneered at a lot of music. In 1982 if it wasn't punk or ska you were guilty of a hanging offense.
It's still hard for me to say I like Country music because I never just have it on in the background. Although there is much music of that sort that I like, it is all specific songs as opposed to the familiarity with the type. There is no Country XM radio preset in my car, nor is there a Country artist I would just fire up a random playlist for and listen to, whereas there are several for rock, and even some for jazz. However, to be fair, I don't really follow any genre of music anymore, at least not in the sense of knowing the trends and releases and personalities. Perhaps I should make an effort to change that.
Sidebar: The exception there is Jimmy Buffet, who is country-ish, whom I do have a playlist for and a well-worn one at that. His style is called Gulf & Western, and he, along with the Eagles, are probably the two major outside influences that have shaped popular Country music in the last decade or so. Both are pretty much ignored in the documentary.
The Burns documentary does a great job of humanizing many of the names I have heard before and is very evocative of the difficult and often destitute existence from which many of these folks emerged. It's Country music so there is a healthy measure of sorrow, both in the songs and the singers. Honestly, once you hear the stories of hardships, often self-inflicted, you wonder whether you stumbled into some severely dysfunctional subculture. The thing about dysfunction in Country music is that it is grounded dysfunction. At its core, the Country music culture never loses sight of solid values, even when their stars abandon them. No one in Country music, however degenerate, would ever abandon the institutions of family or sneer at true love or engage in the level of misogyny or self-worship you find in R&B or Rap. While pop music has morphed into narcissism incarnate, Country -- even in the era of mega-stars such as Dolly Parton or Garth Brooks -- never gets too big for its britches. They may be dysfunctional, but they don't pretend it's a smart lifestyle choice.
We also see how diverse Country music has always been, despite its cornpone image. Bob Wills is as different from Hank Williams as Steely Dan is from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Outside influences have run from Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, and similar influence flows back to Ray Charles, The Byrds, Jack White, and so on. In the past, oh, ten or twenty years or so the concept of Country music has morphed into a broader idea called Americana, which is a big tent including everything from Bluegrass to Zydeco to good ol' yodeling cowboy music to what is pretty close to straight up rock and roll. One could argue it's the most vibrant and diverse form of music we have.
So yes, give Ken Burns' Country Music a look. Even if you are dead set that you don't like Country music, I bet you'll recognize a lot of the songs, and maybe the human context will make you see things differently.
