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I want to like the Ken Burns "Country Music" documentary, ambitious as it wants to be, but I have a few big problems with it.  It completely underplays the importance of every kind of black roots music from the plantation era through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and segregation.  It also barely mentions how important exported African music through the era of slavery was to every kind of fingerpicking and especially to the invention of the banjo and the many ways to play rhythm on it.  All of the styles of what people superficially call "Country Blues" had a huge influence on country music through almost every era (not to mention the rhythmic influences of Black Gospel Music.)  Another missing part of the equation is the music of Spanish-speaking Mestizo people and otherwise the culture of all along the Texas border (and all of what used to be Mexico.)  Going back hundreds of years before the Louisiana Purchase the West was full of Black and Brown people, and colonial Mexico had a rich and varied string playing tradition.  Everything from Cowboy style to how guitars were built is completely influenced by the cultural clashes of colonial Mexico under Spanish rule.  Black and Hispanic culture are an essential part of every kind of American roots music, and this doc. just really pushes an extremely white narrative in which everyone else is a footnote to a story about which white people were the most famous and which people made the most money in the 20th century recording industry.  I personally am more interested in how all of this music was made and it's deeper historical and political context.  It also seems mostly invested in what things became popular and how they were marketed to white people.  Every doc. like this is going to discuss the importance of touring minstrel shows and parlor music after the civil war more than the actual music that slaves on the plantations played (which minstrelsy was a racist parody of.)  My final issue is with not even mentioning how huge the "Hawaiian Music" craze was a good ten years before the "HillBilly Music" craze.  From lap-steel to pedal steel on to some aspects of melody and harmony in country music, many things go back to the "Hawaiian Music" craze of the 20's and earlier.  Maybelle Carter, who pretty much invented the way people play guitar in Country Music was inspired by Hawaiian players on the radio.  Slide playing also goes back to African music as well.  Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of Country, especially the early stuff.  I guess I'd just rather read a book about it or listen to the music than watch a paint-by-numbers talking head documentary that barely scratches the surface of American Roots music.