Ken Burns wants to build bridges between blue and red America. The clear intent of “Country Music” was to prove to blue people that country is worthy of their respect and admiration. He did that by focusing largely on artists with crossover appeal and country’s roots in African-American music.
Did he succeed? To some extent, yes. He convinced me, for example, that Hank Williams, who in some ways is a grotesquely modern figure, should be viewed as a writer of classic American songs, not just a tragic country artist. He also made a strong case that Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash have deep roots in blue as well as red America. On that point, I didn’t require a lot of persuasion.
Those artists were exceptions, however. Country music wasn’t particularly political until the culture wars, but the mainstream clearly took sides in the 1960’s, and never changed. Notwithstanding the efforts of some progressive country artists–most notably, some of the women–the quintessential country fan today is a white guy with a Trump sticker on his pickup truck. Nashville makes a huge amount of money pandering to that audience; there is no reason to believe that will change any time in the future. And so, in my eyes, the program, in spite of its obvious merits, was only a partial success.