Various Artists "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" [2000]

Here it is -- America's shameful history, in musical form. Imprisoned black folk, white drunks strumming guitars on the porch, sad love songs performed by a gross circle of dirty folkies, and a whole bunch of yakkin' about Jesus. All in the service of some campy prison escape movie employing a charm offensive to cover its bleak ruminations on class warfare, vanity and racism, with this soundtrack as one of its weapons. The reason it worked is the same reason folk music came to popularity a half-century before: the contemporary music scene at the time was absolute dogshit. It took Elvis and Little Richard to rescue society from the milquetoast abominations of the Weavers and Woody Guthrie, and it took a bunch of drugged-out, obvious garage rockers like the White Stripes to blast us out of this lame farmers' market of an album. Does anybody actually enjoy listening to the banjo, or is it just because it's the only thing poor folk could get their hands on -- like the way vegemite is big in Australia? This album is a lot like those "world music" albums from the 80s, where amateur musicians from distant lands like South Africa or Kentucky struggle to plunk out their little tunes on instruments they can barely handle and voices they scarcely are able to comprehend the overall effects of; it's not quaint or charming, it's actually just kind of hideous and pathetic.