New podcast examines growth of our Black music scene
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When people think about Music City, cowboy hats and country twang probably spring to mind. But, of course, there's much more to music in Nashville.
Why it matters: Hip-hop, R&B and soul artists also make Music City sing.
- Reporter Jewly Hight hosts a new Nashville Public Radio podcast, "Making Noise," about a team that has spent 20 years elevating those voices.
Zoom in: The podcast focuses on the history of the concert promotion company Lovenoise, which made room for the city's Black music scene starting in 2003.
- Hight tells Axios that their story deserves space "alongside all of the other musical histories that usually get centered and held up as the civic brand."
What they did: Hight interviewed several people involved with Lovenoise, which began as an effort to give contemporary Black artists a platform that wasn't available in Nashville 20 years ago.
- Lovenoise says it started as "Nashville's urban answer to the Bluebird Cafe." Across four episodes, Hight captures the company's evolution from a weekly party to a power player that expanded live music opportunities for a new generation of artists.
In 2021, Lovenoise worked with the Nashville Symphony to bring the hip-hop heavyweight Nas to Ascend Amphitheater.
- Hight says Lovenoise inspired parallel efforts that continue to add to Nashville's musical landscape.
What he's saying: "We really just wanted the artists to have a platform for Nashville to be able to experience Black culture," Lovenoise co-founder Eric Holt, who is also a music business professor at Belmont University, told "This Is Nashville."
- Participating in the podcast helped Holt understand the long-tail legacy of that work, he said.
- "Moving forward, it's like, we have to take care of this thing."
Zoom out: "Making Noise" also examines the broader history of Black music in Nashville, including the rich legacy of Jefferson Street.
- Hight hopes it will add context to conversations about "the segregation of music" that have emerged in the runup to Beyoncé's country album.
The bottom line: The city's country-centric identity "defines how the outside world looks at Nashville," Hight added while speaking about the new show on a recent episode of "This Is Nashville."
- "We're not trying to say all of that is invalid. We're just saying it is simply incomplete."
- "We are offering to help complete the narrative."
Listen: All episodes are out now. They're available at WPLN.org and on podcast apps.