I binged the Doc last weekend, and was surprised by how much I liked it, given that I knew little about the genre, and liked little of what I knew. I am wondering if my positive reaction was a function of my ignorance; I know more about Jazz, and a lot more about baseball, and had more issues with those docs (I am re-watching Jazz now to remember more clearly what those were). I am wondering what real country music fans thought of the show? I found it to be interesting pop history, but it did not really make me want to listen to more Country Music, aside from those on the margins that I already listen to.
It helped me that so much of the show was built around the Carter-Cash Family, and Hank Williams, since Williams and Cash are two of the few country acts I know and like. I was also pleased to see the emphasis in the later episodes on acts that I think of as only quasi Country, and are among my favorites (e.g. Willy Nelson and Emmylou Harris). The show shed some light on the seeming authenticity fetish in country music (here my main information comes from Blake Shelton on The Voice). I have been wondering for some years why he makes such a big deal about being “real country blah blah blah” but now I gather this is more a counter to the pop crossover pressure than an attack on non-country artists. But it raised another question - Shelton seems to often use Patsy Cline and Loretta Lyn as hallmarks of the classic country music sound when evaluating female country singers on the show, yet the Burn’s doc seems to tell us that Cline and Lyn are products of the “Nashville Sound”, which I understood to be a more orchestrated pop crossover sound than original, twangy Country. Shouldn’t that make Cline (whose voice I actually love) and Lyn *less* authentic? My main disappointment with the show was how Burns seemed to soft peddle the racial, and often, racist, associations in Country Music. The main thesis of the show is that Country Music is about nostalgia; left unsaid is that much of that nostalgia in the 1920s and 30s was for the antebellum South, and since the 1960s for a pre Civil Rights era when the South could be what it wanted to be without interference from the federal government. I’m not saying Country Music is racist, or that most fans of Country Music are racist, but I do think part of its roots are in this racist soil, and Burns only lightly and infrequently touches on it. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJ7VTKbNB1pJv9BxCqUxdtcWOxXFvToMQBfs%3D42C77hTg%40mail.gmail.com.
