It’s a tribute to artists with colorful nicknames like “The Singing Brakeman” and “The Hillbilly Shakespeare,” and those who can be identified by a single moniker: Willie , Dolly , Merle, Emmylou , Waylon, Reba , Garth .

And by God, it’s most definitely a Ken Burns’ production in every way, shape and form, right down to the slow-zooms into sepia-toned photographs and soup-to-nuts testimonials; you have not lived until you’ve heard the filmmaker’s go-to narrator Peter Coyote utter the phrase “quaint and quirky backwoods hayseeds” in his weathered baritone.

You are never allowed to forget that this sturm und twang was forged in the flaming-blowtorch fusion of the American South, incorporating melodies from English/Irish/Scottish ballads sung in the Appalachians and instruments brought over by European immigrants and African slaves.

And while most of the foundational business is laid out in the first episode — every subsequent installment covers a timeframe, from between four to a dozen years — all of Country Music ‘s chapters seem to have one eye on the past as they rocket forward into the future.

Two Cashes — Johnny and Roseanne — get a lot of lip service/screen time, as does Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Marty Stuart, Dwight Yoakam, Vince Gill and the late, great, irreplaceable Merle Haggard .

You can tell when Burns has found a story like Deford Bailey’s, an African American musician who went from early Grand Ole Opry stalwart to pariah, or Charley Pride’s, who won over racist colleagues, that he feels he can use as a microcosm for a given historical moment.