There is a charming film from a few years back, with Janet McTeer and Adian Quinn, "Songcatcher", that is a bit of a history lesson, a romance and a musical all at the same time. Set in the early 1900s, McTeer plays Dr. Lily Penierie, a musicologist at a college who gets fed up with the glass ceiling and decamps to Appaliachia to record the ancient Scots-Irish ballads that the mountain folk have sung for generations. She lives with her sister and her friend, who run a school for the children around, and stirs up antipathy initially, but gradually gains the trust of the locals. She also falls in love with Tom, played by Quinn, who questions her motives: is she exploiting his neigbors like everybody else? She discovers her sister and her friend are lovers, and encounters the prejudice in herself and later in the local people. Her great adventures make a lively movie, and it's worth the price of admission to hear the singing. Emmy Rossum pops up as a young girl taken in by Lily's sister with the voice of an angel. Taj Mahal even has a small part as a blind musician. The scenery feels authentic, and the sense of place is important to Lily, as she is becoming atune to her own true nature.
Maggie Greenwald wrote and directed this film, and it's always fun to see what a woman does with a story. This one is unabashedly feminist, but then I don't mind that one little bit!
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