A new documentary journeys through the trailblazing era when the music of ordinary Americans was recorded for the very first time. In the late 1920s, record company scouts toured America with a recording machine for the first time and captured the raw expression of an emerging culture.

Two British filmmakers, Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, have pieced together this extraordinary story of how the recording machine democratized music and gave a voice to the poorest in the nation. The filmmakers follow the recording machine’s trail across the United States to rediscover the families whose recordings would lead to the development of blues, country, gospel, Hawaiian, Cajun and folk music — without which there would be no rock, pop, R&B or hip hop today. Over three episodes, the remarkable lives of these seminal musicians are revealed through previously unseen film footage, unpublished photographs, and exclusive interviews with some of the last living witnesses to that era, when musical styles from across the country first emerged, sparking a cultural revolution whose reverberations are felt to this day.

American Epic will air on Tuesdays, May 16-30, at 9 p.m. on WHRO TV 15.

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