the tennessean's strange and disappointing music feature

The Tennessean published a momentous sounding story in Sunday’s paper whose headline asks breathlessly: IS COUNTRY CRUSHING NASHVILLE’S CREATIVITY? Over about 1500 words, reporter Naomi Snyder fails to answer, frame or contextualize the question.

Snyder quotes rock veteran Rick Vito who’s personally ambivalent about his experience in Nashville. She cites an academic who ranks Nashville below several other cities on a musical diversity index, and identifies a band from Portland that plays left-of-center music as a kind of anecdotal thought provoker about what WE have in Music City. But she never really attempts to sketch a portrait of this city’s musical diversity, which is well known to its musically diverse practitioners but apparently not Snyder’s editors. I’ll put the Sparrow Quartet, Space Capone, the Nashville Symphony, Jeff Coffin, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Sarah Siskind, The Features, DJ Wick-It and the entire performing roster of Next Big Nashville and the Americana Music Association’s fall confabs up against Blue Martini any day. Nor does she even mention the newly formed Nashville Music Council, which is at least addressing Music City's generic diversity.

The Tennessean SOUNDS like it's asking if songwriters hoping to make a living in this town find themselves considering (consciously or unconsciously) the narrow expectations of country radio programmers and the other gatekeepers between their song and publishing revenue when they’re at work in the writing room. Any honest assessment, as I’ve learned vividly at Leadership Music and in  hundreds of conversations with musicians and writers, would find that of course they do. The days of the free-thinking genius like Kris Kristofferson writing icy tales of human struggle or dangerous behavior getting on country radio are over. Our home town industry (aided of course by their multi-national media conglomerate parents) abdicated creative control to focus group and research-based programming years ago.

Another stab at the question might ask whether Music Row’s country music business effectively crowds out other genres trying to use Nashville as a base of operations, with its extensive management, legal and media infrastructure. She would have found evidence in both directions I think, but at least it would have made an interesting article.

At the end of the day though Snyder is asking the wrong question. It makes country music, which is, bless its heart, just a business, sound malevolent towards Nashville’s jazz and hip-hop aspirants. I can’t see that they really care one way or the other. The related and much more vital issue is how far Nashville has come developing an alternative artist development infrastructure that will work in the 21st century, share-everything, post-FM radio, post MTV/CMT world. We became Music City with nationally powerful radio stations (WSM and WLAC) that broadcast Nashville-based pop, jazz, R&B, gospel and yes country music. We continued with a record business that for all its flaws, acted as a pretty amazing curatorial force for great and exceptionally diverse music. That lasted until sometime in the 1990s when the record business lost its way and mass exposure became just another commodity to be purchased on the open market, not a gift given to the most exceptional. People are building the models to replace the record industry at the center of the music business ALL AROUND THE WORLD. If we don't build some of it here, the Music City dream could be in trouble.

Country music (the industry as distinct from the genre) has been crushing its own creativity for ages, but it’s hard to see how the CMA or its members could effectively stifle Nashville’s most innovative artists, even if it occurred to them to try.

Comments

[marko]

nailed it craig!

[Jeannie]

I agree; there is so much going on here ... all I hear is that it is an exciting time to be in music. I would have written a much different story. (But not for The Tennessean!) In her defense, music and music biz is not Naomi's beat and she's making the best of what she's handed in a limited-at-best newsroom. You're right, The Tennessean should not be attempting what it cannot deliver. But the really sad thing is, that's one thing Music City's daily SHOULD have a lock on. Since you and I left, Craig, there hasn't been anyone covering the music business in all its facets and genres with the kind of frequency and depth - and genuine love - that we did :(((

[steve keller]

well played!

there's trouble. right here in music city. with a capital "t" and the rhymes with "p" and that stands for "pull your head out of your ass."

not to level this at poor naomi, but it seems music city has been asking the wrong questions for quite some time now.

the good news is that the chaos of the last ten years has opened up opportunities for us to emerge as a new epicenter for the music business (across all genres.) the bad news is, the city as a whole is still struggling with what "music city" really means.

to reframe our moniker and move us to the front of the trending topics, we need to broaden the discussion to include issues of diversity and integration, the role of new tech startups and venture capitalists, the need to revisit our city's relationship with the arts as a whole (particularly when it comes to education)...and i'm just getting started.

"People are building the models to replace the record industry at the center of the music business ALL AROUND THE WORLD. If we don't build some of it here, the Music City dream could be in trouble."

truer words were never spoken.

[N.J.Stuckey]

Amen Brother Ben!
NJ

[lorendasue]

I thought what the Tennessean piece confused was the difference between diversity and creativity in music and financially successful music. There's plenty of music which uses all types of instruments and all types of styles being written and performed in Nashville. But the music which is getting the largest $$ is in the country and gospel/christian areas. That's partially a function of what people primarily buy today and partially a function of where the roots of Nashville's music industry lie. I found it somewhat amusing that this article appeared in the same paper which publishes quotes from songwriters and artists who say they have a home in Nashville and/or love coming to Nashville because the songwriting community here is "so creative."

[Steve Weaver]

Thanks for the insight Craig. I've been reading the comments to the Tennessean article this morning. Perhaps I am too simple, but I do not find it at all unusual that the "Country Music" branch of a major label is not not interested in signing an artist from another genre. Hello!!!! Do one thing and do it good -- advice given to me a few years ago by EMI Music Publishing's Gary O. (Advice I did not take sadly.) We are the home of the Country and Christian music business. That in no way means that there cannot labels and others in Nashville specialized in other genres of music. Just don't expect those who are paid to create and market Country or Christian music to be the ones to do it.