Music City?

Boot-$cootin' Yee-Ha!

We are in the middle of the huge wealth machine for the local business community: the CMA Music Festival. The amount of money this event brings in is so big that even the most catastrophic flood in the history of the city was not allowed to delay its 2010 opening less than a month later. And in fact that year's event and the revenues it generated were promoted in many ways as resources the city used to recover.

In spite of the wealth that CMA has produced since the flood, other music venues seem to be on life support. But can we be known as "Music City" rather than just "[Country] Music City" with these recent mishaps?

• Bank of America foreclosed on the widely acclaimed Schermerhorn Symphony Center, striking many as beat down of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, which has not received adequate financial support (for a city of this size) in recent years. Nashville's upper crust lusts over the old Downtown thermal site for a publicly-funded amphitheater locale for outdoor symphony performances. But the embarrassing realities at hand have gone national even as the Mayor submits his latest capital budget. Symphonic music in Nashville is on the ropes, but does Music City care? 
• The business community and Mayor's Office responded anemically to the international scope of the National Folk Festival, which arranges 3 year stints in host cities. September 2011 was the event's first year in Music City; it became the last year of the festival. What a wasted opportunity to have been able to host the 75th anniversary folk festival this year. Instead, Nashville will be known as "The City Where the Folk Festival Died".
• The long-delayed building of the National Museum of African American Music has set adrift from its logical home on Jefferson Street, the nerve center of African American musical history in Nashville, to the prospect of a nebulous co-existence in the old Nashville Convention Center with the House of Blues. Will a narrow, commercialized focus on African American music in a Downtown oriented towards the country industry bring any more money or audiences in? Or will it just be backwatered and forgotten if it does ever materialize?

A different kind of treasure.

Museums, special events, and symphony halls are often more trusts supported by the community without regard to whether they shake the money maker or not. They provide living milestones for remembering where we have come from and touchstones for expressing values (sometimes more profoundly than money). I fear that Metro politics is so entwined with the power of money that our leaders let cultural icons die or rust away when the latter do not maximize the dollars. There is a place in cities for large-scale events that draw obscene amounts of bling (like CMA). But there is wealth to go around and to certify that less popular, but no less important musical traditions have mediums in a place that lays claim to the title, "Music City".

Because the "Music" in "Music City" is defined narrowly by Nashville

At the National Music Festival in Nashville, 2011

Last year I braved the unrelenting heat and the threat of severe storms to catch several shows at the National Folk Festival held at Bicentennial Mall. The international scope of the music was significant, but it also suggested commitment of the Courthouse class and the business "community" to the development of North Nashville.

Apparently, Nashville's will to branch out and pull in all kinds of music, build an event with a view to long-term growth and likewise support the North End is feeble:

The National Folk Festival set to happen in Nashville this September is cancelled. One official blamed what she called “timing problems and acts of God” for sabotaging the event last year, and leaving it in debt. Now the festival hopes to regroup for 2013.

The National Folk Festival moves from city to city in three-year stints. Nashville beat out dozens of competitors when it won rights to host the festival from 2011 to 2013. But barely a month after that announcement, the city flooded. Organizers say the result was a huge setback for planning and fundraising.

Another report underscores a corporate community that looks less than bold. The flood was blamed for the anemic fundraising. However, recall how nobody thought twice about the necessity of moving forward restlessly with country music's big Fan Fair event weeks after the 2010 flood when we were still drying and and trying to recover.

There is no doubt that CMA brings in millions for the local tourist industry, but you would think that a corporate community would use its windfall from guitars and fiddles to broaden our global horizons by encouraging diverse forms of music in Music City. And where better than in North Nashville, which could use these events, even if they do not deliver CMA's bang for the buck in the Downtown commercial areas?

From small things big things one day come. But they will not be coming with the help of the National Folk Festival, because Nashville has apparently made up its mind that only a narrow-band of popular American music is good enough for us. And this embarrassing failure also shows that the powers that be are not as interested in the development of North Nashville as they tell us they are.