Museum dedicated to Black music opens in Tennessee

BY DAVE PAULSON

After attending an event at the home of baseball legend Hank Aaron in 1998, the late Francis Guess asked himself one question:

“Why not Nashville?”

Guess was impressed with the diversity of folks who’d gathered at Aaron’s home to support a charity, says H. Beecher Hicks III, president and CEO of the National Museum of African American Music, recalling the story the late civil rights champion told him.

“On the drive back from Atlanta, he was thinking, essentially, ‘We really ought to have something (just as unifying in Nashville).’ I don’t think he went home. I think he went directly to the home of his friend and publisher T.B. Boyd, and they stood outside in the driveway and talked about what could be.”

Guess and Boyd created what was the African American History Foundation of Nashville and began discussing the prospect of a museum with city leaders and community members.

By 2001, a concept had taken shape. A task force formed by the local Chamber of Commerce chartered the Museum of African American Music, Art and Culture.

One name change, 20 years and $60 million later, the National Museum of African American Music opened to the public in January, offering an experience that could only be created in Music City.

Why is this museum located in >

of African American Music offers traditional galleries with artifacts displayed behind glass and interactive exhibits for visitors to enjoy.

Nashville, instead of Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis or Detroit, among other famed hotbeds of Black music?

Hicks has no shortage of answers. The simplest one: “Nashville decided to do it, and nobody else did.”

Nashville has its share of Black music history to celebrate, including trailblazers such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers (the group celebrates its 150th anniversary this year) and harmonica great DeFord Bailey, who was the first Black star of the Grand Ole Opry.

Nashville is center stage in Tennessee, a state that encompasses blues, R&B, rock and gospel, in addition to country music.

“If we’re going to be Music City — country music’s great, and I enjoy it, but that’s not all that’s here,” Hicks says. “We have the opportunity as a city to capture that brand and really continue the success of the city.”

The museum’s central room, called the Rivers of Rhythm Pathways, bathes visitors in the sounds that have defined America for 400 years.

On one end, you hear voices harmonizing over centuries-old spirituals, blending into the earliest recordings of Delta blues. At the same time, the opening saxophone flourishes of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme beckon from the other side of the hall, while Ice Cube tears into the first bars of N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton.

The way these sounds and their corresponding galleries flow into one another is intentional. Walking through its halls, it’s clear the museum’s mission isn’t just to trace the history of music made by Black Americans, but also to drive home that our collective love of these sounds unites us all — as “One Nation Under a Groove.” You’re also reminded that the most precious artifact of this history is the music itself.

That’s not to say there aren’t scores of tangible items to inspire awe. You’ll find a Gibson “Lucille” guitar played by B.B. King and a gold-plated trumpet owned by Louis Armstrong.

You can pore over the fine print of one of Billie Holiday’s performance contracts and picture Nat King Cole donning his mustard-yellow argyle sweater that now sits behind glass, along with apparel once worn by Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, Jay-Z, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes.

There’s also plenty for guests to actually get their hands on. There are touch-screen tables in each of the galleries, letting you draw connections from musicians in one genre to their influences and followers in others. The innovative high-tech spaces that invite you to be a part of the music, too.

Nashville gospel great Bobby Jones hosts an interactive video that makes you a member of the choir, via greenscreen technology. There’s a disco dance room that puts your neon silhouette on the wall and a vocal booth where you can record your own freestyle raps. All of this activity is recorded on a personal radio-frequency identification wristband and uploaded automatically, so visitors can share their content with friends online.

Sharing the museum’s treasures is part of its mission to “educate the world, preserve the legacy, and celebrate the central role African Americans play in creating the American soundtrack,” reads the NMAAM website.

“A lot of people are trying to wake up to the Black experience and understand it a little bit better,” Hicks says. “But also, our country probably couldn’t be more divided, and we need things, like a museum that celebrates music, to try to bring us back together.” l

— Dave Paulson writes for The (Nashville) Tennessean.