This story about my brother Devin’s new radio show has already vanished into the Southern Illinoisan’s paid archives, but it’s definitely worth a mention here.

The roots music movement could have lived and died in 2000 with the release of the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

The Homeric odyssey set in the 1930s Deep South introduced a nearly forgotten soundtrack of American life to pop culture.

Somehow Depression hymns and spirituals, chain-gang songs, spirited bluegrass knee-slappers and old-time folk resonated in a way that surpassed the fad.

“It’s music that was made not necessarily to make the person who wrote it rich. It was an expression of what was going on their life. There wasn’t this artifice that is associated with everything that goes on now,” explains local disc jockey, musician and publisher Devin Miller on the genre’s appeal.

While roots music is resounding on a national level, Southern Illinois sticks out as what Miller calls an “originator.” […]

Miller’s “Original Roots” radio program, which shifts from its home on local indie station WDBX to NPR affiliate WSIU this weekend, celebrates both area and national artists in the blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, zydeco and beyond, representing both old and new creators of roots sounds.

The 9-year-old show moves to bigger markets in an area that not only represents talented makers of such music but ardent appreciators of it as well. […]

“It’s a reaction to a very post-modern society where people feel disconnected,” Miller says. […]

Original Roots: hosted by Devin Miller, airing 7 to 9 p.m., Saturdays starting April 2, on WSIU radio stations FM 91.9, 90.3 and 88.9. Visit wsiu.org for more information.