In the late 1920s, record company scouts toured America with a recording machine, and for the first time captured the raw expression of an emerging culture, democratizing music and giving a voice to the poorest in the nation. American Epic follows the recording machine’s trail across the United States to rediscover the families whose music was recorded—music that would lead to the development of blues, country, gospel, Hawaiian, Cajun and folk music, and without which there would be no rock, pop, R&B and hip hop today. The remarkable lives of these seminal musicians are revealed through previously unseen film footage, unpublished photographs and exclusive interviews with some of the last living witnesses to that era, when the musical strands of a diverse nation first emerged, sparking a cultural revolution who reverberations are felt to this day.