Saturday, January 24, 2009

Thoughts on the documentary

The movie was very informative and entertaining, not to mention, had an excellent soundtrack. The most fascinating things I found out from the movie were the demographics of Appalachia; I had no idea that it was ever an immigrant or black destination. One often hears about both groups in the context of urban migration and immigration, not mining company towns. I had also never heard about the racial tensions that existed in corporate mining towns, or that companies even promoted it, but it makes a lot of sense. I've read a bit about the same situations in factories in Chicago and other manufacturing cities across America around the same time. My question is how internal relations in former coal towns work now; whether much of the same population from the 19th and early 20th century remains, and whether they have integrated since the decline of the coal mining industry.

The second portion of the film I found interesting was the focus on music. I had no idea that "country" music originated in Appalachia; thinking about Appalachia in this context makes me think that what many Americans consider a backward part of the country has been one of the most artistically influential in American culture. So much of what is distinctively American in music can be attributed to Appalachia. However, as the documentary reminds us, perhaps nothing really is truly America. After all, country music arose out of Scottish, Irish, and African influences. That is a true wonder, how unexpectedly inclusive something like music can be.

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