String Theory Media

A hard look at hip-hop

The Nashville Film Festival has excelled at showcasing the best music documentaries, and one of this year's bombshells is "Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs In On Manhood In Hip-Hop Culture." It not only asked questions I've been asking for years about hip-hop (especially gansta rap), it demanded answers in a powerful, undeniable voice, and it even answered a few. The director, Byron Hurt, attended the screening and spoke with an audience who seemed as spellbound as I was.

Hurt is an insider challenging hip hop culture's moral compass, perhaps not the first, but certainly a credible one...

Music City's Digital Summit

The recent Digital Summit at Belmont University, sponsored by Leadership Music, was a day well spent. The idea was to touch on all things digital that matter or perhaps should matter to the Nashville music business. And it attracted an impressive cross-section of the community: Songwriters. Artists. Labels, of course. Marketing folks. Online guys. New media authors.

In general, we heard entrepreneurial types from Nashville mix it up with leading lights from around the policy and business world.

Too Much of a Good Thing

This wonderful essay went up at Wired.com on April 11. Titled "Hell is Other People's Music," it describes our world in which music is too easy to access. "Just as music needs a backdrop of silence to signify, we need music-free stretches to make music meaningful. Suddenly, though, they seem endangered," writes Momus.  The article dovetailed perfectly with a piece I wrote about five years ago about the ubiquity of music and the promise/peril of personalized music technology. It never really saw the light of day, so I offer it here.   CPH

For many years I kept a quote of unknown origin above my desk, clipped from a campus newspaper. “Sometimes I wish my Walkman could play silence really, really loud,” it said. It reminded me how scarce silence is in the modern world and how hard it is to appreciate music without also appreciating the nourishing power of its opposite.

On the Air: The Women of Country

We were involved in the writing and production of this two-hour documentary coming this Friday at 8 eastern/7 central. Please tune in. Press release follows.

This Friday, A&E presents "Hairdos & Heartache: The Women of Country Music," a comprehensive look at the female experience in America's true-to-life music. This two-hour special edition of A&E's acclaimed "Biography" series features interviews with more than 30 of the most influential and revered women in country music, including Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire, Brenda Lee, Barbara Mandrell, Emmylou Harris, Tanya Tucker, Naomi and Wynonna Judd, k.d. lang, Crystal Gayle, Trisha Yearwood, LeAnn Rimes, Lee Ann Womack, Gretchen Peters, Matraca Berg, and many more. They offer an intimate look at women's struggle over many decades to make their voices heard, to have their issues taken seriously, and to have an equal shot at success as their male counterparts.

"The Women of Country" was produced for Arts & Entertainment Television Networks by Tremolo Productions in Los Angeles with assistance from String Theory Media in Nashville.

Tremolo's founder Morgan Neville is an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes "Honky Tonk Blues: The Life and Death of Hank Williams" and "Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied" for PBS's American Masters series, as well as numerous A&E biographies including Sam Phillips, Brian Wilson and Ray Charles.

Writer/researcher Craig Havighurst, president of String Theory Media, is a former staff music writer for The Tennessean in Nashville and author of the forthcoming book "Air Castle: WSM and the Making of Music City USA."