Profs & Pints Nashville: How Nashville Became Music City

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “How Nashville Became Music City,” a scholarly examination of the historical forces that filled a city's streets with song, with Robert W. Fry, principal senior lecturer in musicology and ethnomusicology at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music and author of Performing Nashville: Music Tourism and Country Music’s Main Street.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-music-city .]

Nashville residents and tourists alike long have flocked to the city because of its thriving music scene and music-focused identity.
Come learn about the key players that transformed Nashville into a music destination with Robert Fry, a Vanderbilt musicologist who wrote a book on music throughout the city.

He’ll draw upon his archival and ethnographic research as well as courses taught on subjects such as jazz, blues, country, American popular music, music in the South, music tourism, and DIY music cultures. He’ll explore the development of Nashville's broadcasting, recording, and tourism industries, as well as the city's adoption and promotion of its Music City identity.

You’ll learn about the musical institutions and spaces that put Nashville on music’s map as well as the what makes the city unique among other music destinations. We’ll talk about how Nashville's musical identity has been changing in the 21st century and how the city has been adapting to these shifts.

We’ll examine how the city's identity is being reinforced through immersive experiences on and near lower Broadway. We’ll also consider how fans have shaped the city and its experiences and helped save Nashville and its music following the flood of 2010.

Fry will offer a provocative proposal calling for fans to begin seeing themselves as locals so that they can move beyond passive roles as spectator to become more involved in the preservation and production of music here.

You'll leave it with a heightened appreciation of the city all around you and a better understanding of how to take it all in. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Nashville’s famed Broadway Street. (Photo by Domenico Convertini / Creative Commons.)