Americana, the beautiful

A movie soundtrack introduces Americans to their musical heritage | Gene Edward Veith

It was a good day for American music when the soundtrack to the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? became one of the biggest selling albums in the country, hitting No. 2 at Amazon.com, No. 14 on Billboard's top 200, and No. 1 on the country music charts.

Country music, in particular, had been in the doldrums, with record sales down, radio stations shifting formats, and the repertoire crowded with acts in hats and tight jeans that sounded indistinguishable from pop stars. It had gotten so bad that country music stalwarts George Strait and Alan Jackson put out a song, "Murder on Music Row," charging the industry with killing country music, "and for that someone should hang."

But with O Brother, people are rediscovering the very roots of country music in all of its purity and authenticity, what bluegrass legend Bill Monroe called the "ancient tones." The album includes old but timeless songs like "You Are My Sunshine," "Big Rock Candy Mountain," and "Keep on the Sunny Side." But it also introduces to the larger public a number of contemporary artists who have been keeping up those musical traditions as a living art form.