Similar to the Fat Possum DVD of a couple of years ago (You See Me Laughin'), Down in the Woods is a loving tribute to the blues and to the ageing southern men who deserve some rightful glory before they pass on and their contributions are lost to the rest of us. This film focuses on Willie King, an artist who has spent all of his life in rural Alabama, as cotton farmer, social worker, activist, and gritty, poetic bluesman.

A documentary that is also the oral history of a region and a local music that is its lifeline, the focus is on a musician who embodies both. King's compassion and bravery come shining through; the film features a nice mix of concert footage, interviews and personal reminiscences, and special performances. The latter give the film its moral power. Performing in the street for residents of a nursing facility, who are brought out in their chairs and beds to watch, but dance anyway; an afterschool program that brings the blues and local history to youngsters; a visit to a male teen who had learned through King to play the blues instead of taking out his life's frustrations out on the street, to the point where he has come to call his guitar his wife and confidant; a chance meeting on a street in Selma with a ten year-old boy who had never heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. — a moment that makes the viewer wonder just how much that little child had been changed by such an impromptu history lesson.

Originally, directors Saskia Rietmeijer and Bart Drolenga planned on coming to America to film a documentary on the South and how African-American arts helped them cope with the continued injustices and poverty. Soon after they met Willie King, their plans changed, but only in the presentation. Willie King is a living symbol of the healing power of music, and his gentle but hard-won compassion for those around him allow the viewer to see the true power of the blues: the blues is healing because it makes you see that you are hardly alone in your troubles. To know that what happened to you last night, which made you feel shamed or embarrassed, or the other day that made you wonder how you were going to make it, are common woes, woes that are articulated and exorcised by some of the dirtiest, holiest guitar riffs — this is as good a definition of hope as any in my book.

I say holy because King says it at one point in the film: "The blues is not made by man. It was sent down in the form of a spirit to help heal people and help them cope with the circumstances they are in." It is that one-foot-in-heaven and one in the juke-joint that gives the blues its authority. King's blues is as tough as they come, yet he also adds some longer lines a la Otis Taylor/Robert Cray to his playing, making his sound traditional and trancelike at once. He just calls it the "Strugglin Blues."

The matter of fact and natural way both King and the locals see music as healing, educational and a necessary part of activism is refreshing given the rather selfish state of mainstream music, where such sentiments are rarely voiced except by aging folkies who no longer mean it or by superstars whenever it comes time to have a charity benefit that makes them seem caring. Willie's King's music was a product of his neighborhood and its history, its collective struggle. It is now part of what keeps that neighborhood together.

Highlights include extended scenes from what is a regular King gig at Bettie's Place in MS, complete with local dirty dancing and genuflecting toward the band; a duet with blues legend T-Model Ford (who was among the bluesmen profiled in the Fat Possum doc; the disc also, in addition to the film, comes with 40 minutes of extra concert footage with complete songs. Perhaps the highlight of the film, at least it is the most poignant, is when King visits his birthplace, a plantation not far from where he currently lives. He is visibly moved an angry as he recounts the struggle for basic survival and dignity.

It's his righteous anger toward that demeaning treatment that fuels his music and his deep commitment to the community. Speaking to a local DJ, he mentions a motto he learned from his grandfather, a slave who refused to be broken: "Never let nothin' go to you head, always be you, and if you can help somebody along the way, give them a helping hand." That fearlessness, fueled by experience and common sense, is what makes both Willie King and Down in the Woods essential.