TV REVIEWS : ‘Families’ Studies U.S. Musical Styles

Linda Ronstadt has only a cameo appearance in tonight’s “Great Performances” installment, which turns its cameras toward six distinctive varieties of traditional music in America, from Celtic to Cajun. But, in talking about her beloved mariachis, she delivers the most obvious, universally applicable tag line: “You just think it’s impossible this thing could survive one more generation, and it does.”

That survival is documented in “The Songs of Six Families,” which focuses on five relative unknowns and one legend, B. B. King being the climactic drawing card. Before getting to the bluesman, the 90-minute show visits slightly more exotic subcultures--an Eskimo wolf dance, an Irish American flutist’s communal celidh , a New Orleans tribe of Mardi Gras Indians, a Cajun stomp, a mariachi festival.

The passing on of such specific music in an increasingly homogenized (yet increasingly multicultural) country is what’s most intriguing here--and most skirted. The Irish flutist is seen giving a young descendant a penny-whistle lesson. A daughter in the Mexican American family tells how she used to beg her grandfather to turn the mariachi music off; she’s quite a fiddler herself now. But these segments are all too short to really delve into difficulties the elder generations might face in competing with popular culture for the souls of their scions. The continuation of the lineage is mostly presented as a given, and the special--charming as it is--doesn’t show us much of the chafing.

You don’t have to be unduly prejudiced toward the genre to be anticipating King’s concluding segment most; if the blues aren’t inherently superior to the preceding styles, there’s still an awfully good reason why he’s an icon.

King is also the most direct, and poignant, in addressing the generational problem: “In the black community, my fans are usually my age and older. I think a lot of the young people are ashamed of it. . . . If anybody knew what we’ve had to put up with and go through, to still be surviving today, I think a lot of them would pat us on the head, even the kids that don’t like it.” An understatement.

* “Great Performances: The Songs of Six Families” airs tonight at 9 on KCET-TV Channel 28 and at 8 on KVCR-TV Channel 24.