There are many reasons why My Kind of Countrythe Apple TV+ talent show of which the first six episodes have just been launched in world premiere, something truly innovative.
We can start from the musical genre, the country, which from its origins in the first decades of the last century until today has imprinted in the collective imagination the story of an everyday life, especially on the margins, seen through the eyes of a white and male American .
It is America told by the various Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt, even Johnny Cash, who ended up representing the Caucasian, patriarchal, and cisgender share of American popular music.
The series instead tells a completely different way of seeing country. The title already declares it openly and it is a choice of field. Country as a personal, free expressive genre capable of subverting clichés.
The cast of My Kind of Country
Then there’s the cast. Starting with the creators of the series, written by the producer and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon together with a key character of contemporary country like Kacey Musgraves (six times Grammy winner, seven Academy of Country Music Awards, five CMA Awards).
Kacey was also honored with the Innovator Award at Billboard Women in Music. In both cases they are artists capable of combining tradition and pioneering. And above all to bring about change in the world of the old pioneers, making rules, content and style recognition something open, inclusive and flexible.
In this adventure the role of the three scouts is already decisive at the authorial level. The same team of scouts, consisting of Orville Peck, Mickey Guyton And Jimmie Allenis two-thirds black, no small feat in the country setting.
The narration then becomes even more incisive if we consider that the “white man” is here Orville Peck, one of the most committed American artists on the subject of LGBTQI+ rights. Orville, with his enigmatic bearded mask, has always bet on his talent and charisma in bringing his own vision and identity within the genre.
Mickey was the first black singer to be nominated for Best Country Solo Performance at the Grammy Awards. Jimmie Allen instead managed to conquer the country charts already with his first single One Shot.
The link between the scout team and the creative process itself that led to the conception of the series is very strong and it was the protagonists themselves who clarified it in the presentation press conference. Mickey Guyton tells us: «I think the authors were really inspired by our three storiesdto our way of experiencing country music and singing such different versions of it, starting from heterogeneous perspectives».
Structure
The structure of My Kind of Country is the other innovative element that characterizes the series and is a direct emanation of the three protagonists.
Allen, Guyton and Peck each choose a roster of highly talented emerging artists and invite them to participate in their workshops. The artists come from all over the world, including Congo and Bombay and truly reveal the ability of country music to express its vocation roots in a universe of cosmopolitan signs. Indeed «in the next series we hope to invite Italian singers», says Mickey again. “So we can spend some time in your fantastic country.”
The topics of the different workshops are very interesting. They range from working in teams to the discipline of “visual storytelling”, in which Orville is a specialist. «I’m not a technical player working to predetermined chord progressions» says Peck himself. «I go by images, trying to capture the ones that translate the feeling or reaction I’m experiencing in a precise way. It’s a bit like making a movie of your own emotions. This intimacy is very important in country music.”
Nashville, borderland
In one of her very popular editorials in the New York Times, the American writer Pamela Paul recently spoke on the theme of “lived experience”. She says: “Unless you have walked in my shoes, you have no business telling my story”. Until you’ve been in my shoes, it’s none of your business to tell my story.
Country, like hip hop and blues, is one of the most first-person narrative based repertoires. In the essay Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Musicthe two musicologists Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker indicate T.B. Blues, of the great Jimmie Rodgers, as one of the foundations of autobiographical song.
With the skilful musical direction of the Emmy Award Adam Blackstone (former musical director of Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Faith Hill, Rihanna), the autobiographism of the country opens up here to truly exciting contaminations (remarkable for example the Congo Cowboys, or yes could already be rooting for Ismay right now).
Finally there is Nashville. In spite of its conservative primacy, it proves to be a borderland here, of discovery, of smiles, encounters and dreams that light up, even of experimentation. A travel destination beyond barriers.