TV REVIEWS : ‘Nam Vets Celebrate Shared Experience

It looks like a song-swap from the folk era, all the guys (and one woman) with their guitars sitting in a semicircle and sharing their tunes. But the singers on tonight’s episode of “Austin City Limits” (at 10:30 on KCET-TV Channel 28) aren’t singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” or any of the other anti-war anthems that marked those times.

The eight Vietnam veterans featured on “In Country: Songs of the Vietnam War” recount battles, death and rescue, deliver enlisted men’s gripes, convey the oppressive regularity of incoming mortar and the release some found in drink.

As a celebration of a shared experience, the hourlong encounter (hosted by Kris Kristofferson) is touching on a human level, and the lasting intensity of the experience is evident in the performers’ serious concentration. But a certain insularity is also in force even as this obscure branch of contemporary folk music gets its widest hearing (seven of the eight also contributed to a recent album on Flying Fish Records).

Crafting taut, detailed narratives of combat adventures might have therapeutic value for the artists, but too few of them find the universality in the experience. And no one touches on the cultural and political complexities unique to the Vietnam War and its aftermath. One participant, Bull Durham, brings up the question of “why this war happened,” but the answer in the song he sings comes down to simplistic flag-waving.

Watching these singers in their uniforms, camouflage outfits and green berets, performing to an emotional studio audience of supporters, offering lyrics full of inside references, the uninitiated viewer has the feeling of being allowed to look in on this community without being embraced by it.