I haven’t watched the series yet though I plan to. This conversation did however remind me of a segment of “On the Media” (WNYC show/podcast) about country music and conservatism — a pairing I/we generally accept as “‘‘twas ever thus” but apparently is not as old as I thought. It’s an Interesting listen.
Link to the segment: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-country-music-went-conservative Chris On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 20:39 PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for these reflections. I am sorry to hear about your dad, and glad > some of this music was comforting for you. > > By now I am familiar with the idea that what people love about Country > Music is the stories (both Burns and Blake Shelton repeat this endlessly). > I respect that millions of people find that to be true, but for the most > part I do not. Except for artists like Cash, and the part of Country that > crosses over into Folk or “Americana” (and for me Johnny Cash is more of a > folk singer than a country singer anyway) the stories in country music are > ( with all due respect) kind of trite and simplistic. Still, a jazz artist > I very much respect (Wynton Marsalis) is quoted frequently in the Doc > praising the storytelling, and his opinion is worth a hell of a lot more > than mine. > > You bring up something else I really was interested in, which is the > musicianship in Country music. The fiddlers, and the banjo players and the > rest. This is part of what has always attracted me to bluegrass music, but > I think I have been guilty of grossly under appreciating the guitar > virtuosity in a lot of country music. > > > On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 6:22 PM Diner <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I am a country fan, though I've always thought of myself as more of a fan >> of specific artists than of the genre as a whole. I've been a longtime fan >> of Buck Owens and Chet Atkins (Chet is my guitar god - I can play dozens of >> his songs at about half the speed!), but I know next to nothing about >> Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. But this series gave me a great >> education on them, and many others. And I loved that they spent so much >> time interviewing people like Rosanne Cash and Marty Stuart who are steeped >> in the music's history and can discuss it with great insight. >> >> I tried to watch it during the first run, but after a few nights I knew I >> wouldn't have the time. Fortunately, one of the stations in my area was >> running one episode a week on Saturday afternoons, so after a couple months >> I caught up. >> >> I saw the final episode last weekend, which was a month after my dad died >> suddenly. The last episode had a segment on the Kathy Mattea ballad >> "Where've You Been," which I've heard hundreds of times but never made me >> cry before. Then the very next segment was on ANOTHER weeper about death, >> Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain." So it was a real double >> whammy! But stuff like that is what country does so well that no other >> genre can do. And Burns' documentary examined that well without wallowing >> in it. >> >> >> On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 1:26:24 PM UTC-5, PGage wrote: >>> >>> 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/533597fd-d418-4b38-b98e-96eeca601ffa%40googlegroups.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/533597fd-d418-4b38-b98e-96eeca601ffa%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > 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/CAKGtkYL_LE%3DMXfaXfZ9AWSqpVyHtfjbyQRR0T0hEfa6HnQs_Vg%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYL_LE%3DMXfaXfZ9AWSqpVyHtfjbyQRR0T0hEfa6HnQs_Vg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. 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