Hendrix, like Little Richard and Etta James, cut their teeth on Jefferson Street.
Once everyone was on board, they decided to music would be the beat that the local history and other cultural elements would play to. "Being one of 10 is not near as cool as being one of one," he says.įolks started to realize the theme of all their conversations was music. Spyridon was thinking about the tight market for civil-rights museums, with the Lorraine Motel to the west of town and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute deeper south. He saw the museum as a piece of the larger picture he was working to create, but thought it should focus just on music. "We're already pretty diverse," he says, matter-of-factly. Spyridon has been in on the 20-year rodeo of revamping the city's image. "Do you wear shoes? Do you have tall buildings? Do you have restaurants?" While that was simmering, the city was trying to change its national brand: "The hillbilly," says Butch Spyridon, president and C.E.O. It was going to focus on all things Black Nashville, including fine arts, sports, politics and our three HBCUs.įor years the idea was refined in boardrooms and around the city. Boyd, pitched a Museum of African American Music, Arts and Culture. In 1998, two community leaders, Francis Guess and Dr.
The museum also offers chances for visitors to get in on the action, like in the "Wade in the Water" exhibit, where museum goers dress up and play choir.īut this wasn't the original idea for the museum. "I've always thought Nashville, country music-I mean, that kind of seems how it's presented on television and movies," she says.Īt the museum, Young was greeted with history about Black artists and their genre-stretching impact. Quiana Young, a resident of Frisco, Tex., had never heard of them when she visited the museum while in town for her son's soccer game. The group is the reason Nashville is deemed Music City, and recently won a Grammy.
The local HBCU students were direct descendants of enslaved people who went on tour and made Negro spirituals popular around the world. The walls are lined with national and local history, including a focus on the pioneering Fisk Jubilee Singers. But with the opening earlier this year of the National Museum of African American Music, the city hopes to serenade more diverse tourists. The National Museum of African American Music, in Nashville.įor decades, Nashville's tourism has drawn in mostly white tourists for its country music, bachelorette parties and honky-tonks on lower Broadway.
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