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(birds chirping) (light music)
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- [Participant] Life itself,
down to a cellular level.
Everything about it is to protect our being
and push us further.
Nature is about pushing further and adding and multiplying.
And healing.
(calming music)
A farmer can sow good seeds.
A farmer can sow bad seeds.
'Cause a farmer is not a perfect person.
(calming music)
However, whatever you do plant,
the soil will return to you good and bad,
and everything that's against that is just against nature.
(calming music)
(television static)
- [Reporter] Despite playing an integral part
in the origins of country music,
black artists have been pushed to the margins of the genre.
A new crop of artists are seeking to change that
and reclaim their place on the country music charts.
(calming music)
- But as Amna Nawaz reports,
a number of black women are starting
to gain traction in the genre.
(calming music)
- [Interviewer] Congratulations on going platinum,
first of all.
- Thank you so much. - Yeah.
- Thank you.
Yeah, it definitely tripped me out.
I'm still like in that moment where
I haven't really grasped it all,
but I know that it is is reality and I'm not dreaming.
(calming music)
- And last September, the Texas native
continued to make history
when she became the first black female artist
to perform her song at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
(calming music)
- You're a history maker, man, like first black artist
to debut at number one.
(calming music)
- [Reporter] Since then, Spencer's song "Compassion,"
which tackles issues of racial justice,
has been streamed more than three and a half million times.
- [Brittney] It's been such a wild ride.
(calming music)
- Our first guest has been named one of CMT's
2021 Next Women of Country.
She's been praised by Rolling Stone,
Billboard, and the New York Times
and could very well be this year's breakout superstar.
- Things are changing.
You know, people wanna see a different Nashville.
(calming music)
♪ Oh sisters let's go down ♪
♪ Let's go down come on down ♪
♪ Oh sisters let's go down ♪
♪ Down to the river ♪
♪ As I went down to the river to pray ♪
♪ Studying about that good old way ♪
♪ And who shall wear the starry crown ♪
♪ Good lord show me the way ♪
♪ Oh sister let's go down ♪
♪ Let's go down ♪
♪ Come on down ♪
- I haven't done a whole lotta things right,
but I can do some music (chuckling).
(gentle music)
My mom, she was just on board with it from the very start.
She always told me that God told her
that I wasn't gonna be with her
in Baltimore for a long time,
and she knew it long before I did.
So, I just wanted to do country music.
I fell in love with it
when my friend Keisha down in Baltimore,
my hometown, found me a CD to listen to.
She was like, you need to check out The Chicks.
Back then they were the Dixie Chicks.
And I just fell in love,
went on this whole rabbit hole,
watchin' all the music videos
and listenin' to country radio.
I remember watching documentaries
on Taylor Swift and Reba,
and they always said the same thing.
You just have to move to Nashville.
When you realize that you have a passion for country music,
you just gotta get to where the country music is.
(gentle music)
I finally got the nerve and moved here,
and it's been eight years.
(gentle music)
I remember feeling discouraged
because my sound was different.
I sound like I'm from Baltimore.
I don't hide that.
I don't got a twang, but I got a Baltimore accent.
And I bring all of that with me,
because the thing that I've always wanted to do
is just make the music I wish I heard as a kid.
When I started listening to country music
when I was 14 or 15 years old,
I quickly realized it wasn't anybody that looked like me.
And I realized there wasn't anyone
bringing in a lot of the sounds
that I heard throughout my life, my childhood.
R&B, gospel, I mean even classical.
I love that, rock.
I wasn't hearing that all the time,
and so it may made me feel like an other,
listening to someone else's music.
(gentle music)
- Honestly, the thing that brought me to Nashville
was the people.
When I started meeting people from Nashville,
I could tell that,
kinda the thing that people always talk about,
that country music was a community.
Nashville is just this little scene unto its own.
There's this thing where country music singers,
they go to the grocery store,
they go to the same bars as you,
they go to the same whatever.
So there's this closeness,
this community that really exists.
I think that it speaks to the culture of country music
in a good way and a bad way,
because there is a level of
nobody wants to shake any feathers
because everything is calm and everything is kinda the same
and everything has existed in this way for such a long time.
(scenery whooshing)
(television popping)
- If we understand the history of this genre,
of this sound, and understand that
it is as much a part of black tradition
as it is white tradition,
and if we understand black people have always been here
and have always been a fan of this music,
have always created this music.
But, I think when you're an artist and you're comin' in,
like it takes a certain kinda mindset,
a special kinda mindset to be like,
I'm gonna start from scratch,
and I'm gonna do that on my own.
(curtain creaking) (haunting music)
- I think that sometimes you feel led to do something,
but you might be scared, 'cause nobody has done it.
Or very few people have done it.
I just had to make a pathway for myself.
I started makin' music
when I was probably like 11 years old.
My uncle bought me a keyboard.
By the time I was about 16,
I was workin' at Sears in the mall in Memphis,
and I met this guy named Chris who had tracks.
He said, "Come over here."
And I made my first song,
and that's when I knew for real,
like I knew I had to pursue this as a career.
I would always go to LA or Houston or Atlanta, New York.
I met a guy named Courtney Benson,
and I knew the Nelly song.
♪ I'm getting pages outta New Jersey from Courtney B ♪
♪ Talkin' about a party up in NYC ♪
♪ And can I make it ♪
♪ Damn right, I be on the next flight ♪
♪ Payin' cash, first class ♪
♪ Sittin' next to Vanna White ♪
- And I was like, you Courtney B. from the song.
Courtney was the one that really helped me.
That's how I got in the game was just doin' tracks
and singin' hooks for Nelly and Ashanti
and Chingy or Youngbloods.
I grew up in Memphis where Three 6 Mafia
was always in everybody's car.
And that was startin' to be the sound
of all rap music to me.
(muffled music)
And I was completely tired of it (laughing) at that point.
I listened to it my whole upbringing.
I was livin' in Atlanta,
and I was comin' up to Nashville a lot,
and I was hearin' country music,
and I was really startin' to like it.
I was hearin' things like Zac Brown Band,
records that sounded different
than the country music I grew up on.
So now I'm listenin' to this music
that has this whole band, guitars, and strings and steel.
Whenever something's bendin' like the steel guitar,
bendin', it's soul to me.
So I'm like, this has got soul music to it.
And then I started diggin' into older songs,
like realizing Dolly Parton songs were so beautiful
and Patsy Cline songs that had jazz influence
and all these different influences.
I was like,
the music that I love is all right here.
♪ I could call you a taxi ♪
♪ We could just call it quits ♪
♪ We could just throw our hands in the air ♪
♪ Act like we don't care ♪
♪ Say it is what it is ♪
♪ Say I can't forgive you ♪
♪ And I never will ♪
♪ Or we could let another sun come up on our love ♪
♪ And see what time might heal ♪
♪ It's gonna be hard on my heart ♪
♪ It's gonna be hard on my pride ♪
♪ So can we please try a little bit harder ♪
♪ While we're still here tonight ♪
♪ It's gonna be hard to let you go ♪
♪ Hard not having you around ♪
♪ It's gonna be harder ♪
♪ Harder than we know ♪
♪ If we take the easy way out ♪
♪ If we take the easy way out girl ♪
♪ Please ♪
♪ It's gonna be hard baby ♪
Yow.
(Scenery whooshing)
- Country music.
Well, country music was somethin' always been here.
So when I think, when I stepped out,
outside the household, country music's what we heard.
It's country music city here.
- When you listen to the songs and just some of the things,
the struggles, 'cause a lot of that country music,
if you listen to the word and they struggle,
and they're just tryin' to put that perspective
on what they went through,
relationship, with marriages,
all that's tied up with country music,
'cause mostly what they're singin' about,
the past and the present
and how they was able to get out of it.
So my perspective on country music,
I enjoy listenin' to country music,
but I listen to a lot of the words
when I do listen to the songs.
- Music is the thing for me that
levels the playing field.
Initially I wanted to be an artist.
♪ My savior all the day long ♪
♪ This is my story ♪
I started doing YouTube throughout high school.
It didn't really do much.
♪ All the day long ♪
I eventually had a couple videos that had done well,
but just not anything enough on YouTube
to really push the needle professionally.
And some people were like,
"You could write songs
"and potentially you could write songs for people."
I was like, okay, cool.
Like I'm into that.
Let me see what I can do.
And so I ended up going out to Atlanta,
just kinda shadowed some producers.
And that was kind of how I started to level up
even more as a songwriter.
It was primarily R&B and hip hop,
just 'cause I was in Atlanta,
and those were kinda the opportunities that I had
based on producers and writers that I was working with.
But there were some people within country music
that I felt like were making progressive stuff
than the country music that I was
being put onto in high school and college.
I liked a lotta Sam Hunt stuff.
I was listenin' to some Kane Brown stuff.
The genre has come a long way quickly.
So I was like, this is a good time for me
to bring some of the influences and experience that I have
from living in Atlanta for the past few years
and try to incorporate it into what's going on.
So I was like, I need to go to Nashville
and see what is really going on within the genre.
'Cause I'm an outsider in this moment.
So I came out to Nashville and then I realized,
they're basically writing the same way
that I typically write.
They're just doing it with some different phrases
and they're doing it with some different instruments,
but the same stuff that I would do, my process,
in Atlanta was pretty similar to
what they were doing in Nashville.
So I was like, okay.
This is dope.
I don't have to relearn anything, really.
I was like, I just, they're just writing songs
based around concepts.
Like there's no nothing that
would allow you to write an R&B song that would preclude you
from being able to write a good country song,
because the best versions of both of those things
are pretty similar.
(gentle music)
- I think it probably speaks to the storytelling,
the instrumentation.
Country music is a genre that,
even as it's gotten more popular,
has still maintained this sense of purity.
There's still live guitar.
There's still live drums.
Even now, again, as we get to this hip hop
where there are these country artists
that really incorporate a lot of these R&B influences
or a lot of these hip hop influences,
you're still probably gonna put some pedal still over it.
And music is such a wonderful art form
in that it's always pulling from different spaces.
(birds chirping)
- My earliest memory of music is hearing my mom's voice
and hearing her piano.
She couldn't express her love with her words
or with physical affection,
but I could hear it in the way she played.
One of my earliest memories
is crawling under the piano while she played.
When she was very upset about things, she would play.
And I loved to hear her, so I would,
I remember seeing her feet on the pedals
and I could see the edge of her wrists
and the edge of her hand.
And that's where I would feel moments
of connection and safety with her
was when I could hear her play.
(gentle banjo music)
My mom says I was humming before I could speak.
And if she was playing the piano,
I would hum with her in the right key,
And I remember humming and singing
to make myself feel less scared.
And that is something that I feel like
connects me really directly with the black diaspora.
♪ Mmmm ♪
I got myself a secondhand banjo at a pawn shop in Vancouver.
That kind of opened a whole world to me.
I loved the sound of it,
and I didn't know anything about it,
but I just knew it resonated for me in this special way.
♪ Hush now don't you wake up ♪
♪ We'll be leavin' that first night ♪
♪ Mama's buyin' you a mockin' bird ♪
♪ To lull you through the night ♪
- I met Rhiannon Giddens in 2006.
She was in the Chocolate Drops.
They were one year in.
And I remember just being like thunderstruck
when I saw these three beautiful black people
playing fiddle and banjos and singing these old time.
♪ And I can't tell my daughters ♪
♪ All the things that I've said ♪
- [Allyson] It was revelatory for me to hear black women
singing their own experiences.
♪ Afraid of that bright glory up above ♪
- [Allyson] I understood that music
has always been the thing
that helped people survive trauma.
That's how I know how to do it,
is through writing songs and singing them for people
and trying to connect as much as I can.
(birds chirping)
- Growin' up I was a big Charley Pride fan, Matchbox 20,
Tupac, Sevendust, Prince, Brooks & Dunn,
kinda just everything.
My music, kind of the stories I tell through the songs
and kinda how I grew up, where I grew up,
what I liked to wear, country music fit me better.
I moved to Nashville in 2007.
And 2007
country was still pretty traditional.
Of course I had a few people at different labels saying,
"Well it wouldn't work."
'Cause I was black or I had this one dude at a label,
I won't say his name, but he was like,
"Yeah man, I like you, you're a good guy,
"but I'm not sure about how country music fans
"would feel about your people."
And I was like, "What?"
I ain't.
I remember after I signed with Broken Bow
my first single went number one, he emails me.
He said, "Dude, congrats, man.
"I always knew you'd make it."
I'm a straight shooter,
so I emailed him back, said, "Don't lie to me, bro.
"You told me it wouldn't do.
"You ain't gotta lie.
"You coulda just said congratulations and kept it at that."
But I feel like it's our job to realize
that there are certain barriers that are there,
certain obstacles that are there.
And we have to get past that.
And the one way to always get past it is great music.
If your music's trash, it's trash.
That's just facts.
No matter what your skin color is.
We can only control who we are,
what we do, and the quality of music we put out.
(gentle music)
- I grew up in Texas.
My church drove us to see a Texas Rangers baseball game.
I was in the nosebleed section,
and the announcer says,
"Please rise as 10-year-old LeAnn Rimes
"sings the National Anthem."
(crowd cheering)
When I heard her sing, that's when I was like,
I wanna do that.
My grandmother lived in a really tiny shack
in Riesel, Texas,
and when I would go over to her house,
she would have hanging on the back of her door
all these VHS tapes of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers
and "Steel Magnolias" and any Southern movie.
So I wanted to do country music.
(curtain clicking)
Hey, y'all, it's Mickey Guyton here.
I hope you guys are having an amazing CMA Fest.
This is my first CMA Fest, and I'm so excited to be here.
- Hey guys, I'm Erica Grace Powell hangin' out at CMA Fest.
One of my favorite girls in country music,
Miss Mickey Guyton, is here with us today.
How are you? - I am so good.
I'm just obsessed with you.
Hey, y'all I'm Mickey Guyton,
and I am so excited to be hosting the red carpet
with the ACM Awards with Sounds Like Nashville.
(gentle music)
I jumped in blindly, but when I signed to Capitol Records,
Mike Duncan did call me.
He said that it's going to be really difficult for women.
He didn't even mention people of color.
And I was thinking, it can't be that bad.
We'll be fine.
I'll be fine.
I've got a great label.
I've got great management.
Like this is going to happen.
And then, reality sets in.
(somber music)
I got questioned at every turn.
It was like you've gotta make sure
that you're really country,
'cause people are gonna think that you're disingenuous.
And I'm thinking to myself, I grew up in Crawford, Texas.
It doesn't get much countrier than that.
(somber music)
I was signed because people loved my artistry.
And it was like they tried to change everything
and wash everything that made me me away
and put this other person on top of me.
There's this formula on how to make it in Nashville.
I've followed the Nashville way for almost 10 years.
It does not work for anybody
unless you are a white, tall male.
Like it is golden for you.
You just follow that formula,
you're gonna have like 10 number ones
and a ranch and your own label and a bar on Broadway,
like all of the things.
Which is crazy,
'cause there's so many different people in the world,
and you could be shutting off
so many opportunities like that.
It doesn't just have to be one way.
(gentle music)
- I had went as far as I could go in my hometown,
which is High Point, North Carolina.
(gentle music)
- [Announcer] Please welcome Frankie Staton.
(crowd cheering)
- I would just like to say that I wrote this song because
at the heart of everybody,
they wanna be loved for who they are.
(piano music)
My wish for you all is that you find that in your life.
I was playin' for the International Furniture Markets,
which was the industry of our city.
And I would play for people from all over the world.
Every now and then I'd slip one of my own original songs in
and they would say, "Did you really write that?
"Is that your music?"
♪ Oooh yeah ♪
And they would say,
"You need to go somewhere where somebody can hear you."
Being a Southern girl
and having a love of all kinds of music
and especially country music,
I thought, I'll go to Nashville.
I was always about the talent
and the music and the creativity.
So at that point I had already been around
all kinds of people from everywhere,
and they seemed to enjoy what I did.
So I didn't look at it like, oh, I'm a black woman.
(gentle music)
Nashville taught me that I was a black woman.
They made me know that.
(gentle music)
They made me know that my blackness made me different.
(gentle music)
- [Participant] I do pose a question a lot,
just to get people to think,
and it's who built Nashville?
Like, who built this place?
- I mean, Nashville's a lot different
than what it used to be when I was growin' up.
But to me, this is home.
There's very few of us left, original Nashvillians,
kids that went to Metro, MMPS schools, and stuff like that.
So to me, this is always gonna be home.
If I close my eyes and think about it,
the first thing I'm gonna see is Jefferson Street.
You know what I'm sayin'?
The first thing I'm gonna taste is
the biscuits at Knock-Out Wings.
My sister went to Fisk.
I went to TSU right up the street.
(intense music)
(gentle gospel music)
A big part of music growing up
in Nashville was going to church,
and the choir was so incredible.
You would have these different musicians
that were just world class musicians playin' gospel music.
And at the time I didn't really have
the same appreciation 'cause there wasn't nobody
tryin' to listen to no gospel music for real like that.
I'd rather be listening to Ludacris
or somethin' like that, but,
when I look going it,
I realized how much of an impact it had on me
and how much I value
black music and black musicians in Nashville.
(gentle music)
- Me and my father,
we moved from Chattanooga to Johnson City, Tennessee
back in 2006.
My mother passed away when I was 17,
and we pretty much, just,
we needed to like start over,
have a fresh start in a different place.
I kinda felt this sense of in betweeness
because I was a black girl
growin' up in very conservative white suburbia,
also dealing with like my gender and my sexuality.
I was going to East Tennessee State University.
I was looking through the catalog book
and I came across this class called Bluegrass Guitar.
And that's when I really started to understand
my place musically and how I can contribute to music.
And the fact that my ancestors
were such a pivotal and important part
of country and bluegrass.
Like these are all things I had no idea of because,
for me, I didn't know if I wanted
to be part of a music community that, on the surface,
didn't seem to recognize me as a valid participant
because I was black.
(gentle banjo music)
- Country music is the music of the South.
It is Southern musical tradition.
And when you think about the American South,
you gotta think about black people period.
And all of these things that we hear
that we associate with whiteness
were absolutely being done
and really being revolutionized really,
like black people were really innovating in this space.
(gentle banjo music)
- [Amythyst] There were times where whites and blacks
would both learn music from each other.
There was like a trade
between the banjo and the fiddle, for instance.
The banjo coming from West Africa.
(gentle banjo music)
Adding that rhythmic playing, which we call claw hammer,
you're playing melody and rhythm at the same time.
So that going underneath these fiddle tunes
created this new sound.
("Eighth of January")
- We've got black string bands
along with white string bands,
but white people were put in this bucket
where they create hillbilly music
and black people are over here creating race records.
("Warm Wipe Stomp")
The music itself is the same.
The genres are really just marketing categories.
How do we get music in the hands of these people?
♪ Warm wipe stomp ♪
- And it really is the commercial music industry,
this idea that now we're gonna make money off of this
that starts to create that separation.
- Once more white people started learning how to play banjo,
there was this thing that started happening
in the early 20th century.
The blackface minstrel shows.
(intense music)
And people from all over the country
would go and see these shows.
That's how popular it was.
(intense music)
When you're faced with being a black person
during Segregation and trying to find opportunities
to just have some sense of dignity in greater society.
You are not gonna gravitate toward banjo or a fiddle
because you're seeing yourself portrayed so negatively.
Why would you wanna grab a banjo?
If anything, it's let's create jazz, let's create blue.
Let's create some other music now
that we can have that's our own,
because we can't touch this anymore.
- A lotta times, even as the music starts to shift,
as we see more blues coming to the fore,
they don't even want black people
doing this other stuff anymore.
They don't want the black string bands
because that has been clearly defined as white music.
So over time we lose the roots, which is that,
yeah, white people were doin' it,
but black people were doin' it, too.
(gentle banjo music)
- Every single bit of modern music,
black roots music is foundational to every single bit of it.
And just as black innovation, creativity
is foundational to blues,
it's just as much so to country.
It's just as much so to folk,
it's just as much so to any kind of pop music,
any kind of, obviously jazz, obviously rock and roll.
Like, there's no Elvis without Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
There's no Hank Williams without Lead Belly.
There's no, it's like, it's foundational.
And that's the part that I started to realize.
I don't need to apologize for being in any space.
I belong here just as much as anybody.
♪ I don't pass the test of the paper bag ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black myself ♪
♪ I picked the banjo up and they snare at me ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black myself ♪
♪ You better lock your doors when I walk by ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black myself ♪
♪ You look me in my eyes but you don't see me ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black myself ♪
♪ Is you washed in the blood of your chattel ♪
♪ 'Cause the lambs rotted away ♪
♪ When they stop shippin' work horses ♪
♪ They bet they own anyway ♪
♪ Ooo ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black myself ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black myself ♪
♪ Black myself, black myself, black myself ♪
♪ Black myself, black myself ♪
♪ Black myself ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm black my ♪
♪ Black my ♪
♪ Black myself ♪
(city noises)
- [Amanda] Country music is unique in that it is
associated with a city, Nashville.
And that's something you don't see in other genres.
(somber music)
People come here,
they have a certain idea of what Nashville is.
They come with their cowboy hats and their fringe
and their boots.
And they think that that's how people live here
and that it's a completely white city,
when that has not been the case in reality.
(somber music)
(people giggling)
- [Kid] Bubble power.
- No. - That was a huge one.
(voices muffling)
- Try not to shake it, though.
I remember when I was probably like 12 or 13
the "Achy Breaky Heart."
(Niema laughing)
It was the music.
It was the tune that caught me,
and I've always cherished the song.
So Billy Ray Cyrus,
I was a fan of his, when I was younger.
I'm not afraid to say that now,
but I've always loved country music.
I've barely scratched the surface,
but I'm always in the mood to hear a good song.
- Pop. - Oh,
- Oh, baba.
- How you feel about it?
(Niema laughing)
- You took my song, but yeah, I was in,
I think second or third grade
when I heard "Achy Breaky Heart."
I mean, I didn't know at the time that it was country,
because of being so young,
you really don't separate genres and everything.
But, to this day,
I do know that that twang and that guitar
and the way that he was sayin' his words
were definitely unforgettable,
and that's country in a nutshell.
(gentle music)
I think country, for me personally, me being a black male,
it doesn't really call out to me, I would say.
It doesn't call out to me.
It doesn't ask me to listen to it, per se,
because I think that a lot of the years over time
have been catered to another type of people.
(gentle music)
- It's tough because country music,
when it strikes the ear it don't sound like black music.
You know what I'm saying?
A lot of the iconography surrounding country music,
it's not how we dress, it's not what we look like,
it's not what we talk like.
We didn't listen to country music growing up in my house.
We was a jazz and gospel house.
So it was just so strange,
and it's like, everywhere you go you're inundated with
a ton of country music, and there's no,
there was nothing else playing.
If you're goin' to the gas station, country music;
you go to the mall, country music;
you go to a store, country music.
Everywhere you go it was country music everywhere.
- If you look at the scholarship on country music,
it's very well established how country became white.
But my question was really, okay,
we know how it became white,
but how has that whiteness been maintained?
Because here we are 100 years later,
and we still think of country music as white,
probably even more white than we did 100 years ago.
Historically the country music industry
has really capitalized
on finding a base audience of white conservatives.
And that is a pocket of consumers
that doesn't exist across the board elsewhere.
(gentle music)
By the late 1970s, as a nation,
the U.S. really took a conservative turn.
(gentle music)
The cowboy came back in fashion.
And this was coupled with Ronald Reagan
assuming the presidency in 1980,
and he sold himself as a cowboy.
And in turn, the country music industry,
and the CMA in particular,
really leaned into those associations.
(crowd cheering)
- And I don't know about our opponents,
but there's an old Country and Western song
called "Home on the Range,"
where seldom is heard a discouragin' word.
I guess they haven't campaigned there yet.
(audience laughing)
You could invite them here.
If you don't, that's just as well.
(audience laughing and cheering)
But they probably couldn't,
they couldn't perform here anyway,
because all they do is sing the blues.
(audience laughing)
(intense music)
- [Amanda] By the 1990s, country music
was the most popular format on radio.
And of course it all funnels back to radio,
because radio is the most influential force
within the country music business.
It's across the board,
within the country music industry
for the past several decades
where every pocket of the industry
is invested in a certain type of listener.
It's building on generations and generations
of only selling country music as a product
by and for white people.
(gentle intense music)
- Part of the big reason why country music is the way it is,
is because of the fan, the culture around it.
- [Reporter] Controversy over the Confederate flag
hits home here in Connecticut.
- [Andrea] You cultivate whiteness for a very long time,
you're gonna get a certain demographic of people.
- I think individual freedoms,
you don't wanna tramp on that.
Don't tread on me.
(television static)
- There's no denying the tying in of Southern heritage
to what traditional country music has been.
I was a day-to-day manager for a couple country artists
for about nine years.
I mean, I remember goin' to concerts.
You pull in the parking lot
and you see all the Confederate flags,
and those people might not be actively racist,
but they're at a country music show,
and they feel like that means
that they should fly the Confederate flag.
(gentle music)
If you're not workin' in the music industry
or you don't have a real reason to be there,
you're only gonna put yourself through that experience once.
I think all of it together has just sort of
made this not so welcoming space for black people.
And so I think that's why it hurts even more,
'cause it's hard to see this thing that you love
and work so hard for,
it's hard to feel like it doesn't love you back.
(gentle music)
- [Andrea] Even as it sits in the heart
of this very diverse city, the city that is a third black,
this city with this rich civil rights history,
Where the freedom riots started.
Where you've got Alexander Looby's house is bombed
because of the work he's doing to desegregate schools
to fight for civil rights for black people.
Where there are four HBCUs in town.
(gentle music)
There has been this constant shift away from
or avoidance of or just really clear lines
between this industry and the black community that's here.
(gentle music)
- I am a lifelong resident, 69 years here in Nashville.
I grew up listening to country music.
My mother was a choreographer,
so she always listened to music,
and having grown up basically on a big farm
and going to hoedowns and square dancing,
I still have the silver dollars that I won
in the square dancing contest when I was a little boy.
So, country music, two step, square dancing,
it's what I've done all my life.
I was born in 1952.
Of course, it was a different Nashville.
My first time going to the Grand Ole Opry,
I had to sit up in the top because it was segregated.
(somber music)
So I never felt that country music was welcoming me.
And so if I didn't feel it was welcoming me,
and I've been loving it all my life,
then I can only imagine how people
who don't have any connection
or people who even were trying to get
in the business would feel, because they weren't there.
(somber music)
So it caused me to dig a little deeper,
to try to get a better understanding.
And the fact is that,
as Nashville was not welcoming back in the day,
country music wasn't either.
(gentle music)
(dog barking)
- When I moved here, it was 1981,
and it was quite different than now.
There were tour buses everywhere.
Busloads of people would come
into these different clubs or restaurants,
and they would have these jam sessions,
and everybody wanted to get up
and have a picture made singing on a stage in Nashville.
There was one particular jam session I was interested in,
was in the Captain's Table.
I studied the marquee and it said
Sammy Davis Jr. had performed there,
and I love Sammy Davis, Jr.
And so I said, I'm gonna be clean when I walk up in there.
(gentle music)
So I come down Church Street one night
in my evening gown with my little fake rhinestones on,
and the cops stopped me and said, "Where you goin'?"
I said, "I'm going to the jam session
"at the Captain's Table."
And he said, "To do what?"
I said, "I'm singin' Loretta Lynn."
He said, "Oh, really?
"I'm going with you."
I said, "You wanna hear it?
"Come on."
So my entree into the jam session was with the police.
And I was the first one there.
I signed up at 11:30 at night.
It started at midnight.
And he just kinda hung around a few minutes
and gave his card to the manager, said,
"If you have any problems with her, let me know."
I thought, why would they have any problems with me?
I'm just here for the music.
I was drinkin' black coffee.
I was the first one to sign up.
And busloads of people came and went,
and they got all them up to sing.
They wouldn't get me up, and I thought, I'm not leavin'.
I'm staying.
If we have to have a sunrise service here,
I'm stayin' till the sun comes up.
(gentle music)
And so I just sat there,
and 2:30 in the morning, they said,
"You know, we don't know this woman,
"but this is a jam session that's open to the public.
"So we're gonna get her up to sing a song."
"And her name is Frankie Stratton."
I said, "My name is Frankie Staton."
And I go up there and I say,
"I'm doin' the 'Coal Miner's Daughter' in the key of D."
And I turn around and tell the audience,
and the place is still packed at 2:30 in the mornin',
that I came to Nashville because of this movie,
"The Coal Miner's Daughter."
I love Loretta Lynn.
And I start singin' this song, and people,
I gotta standin' ovation.
They said, "Well, sing another song."
And I sang another song.
And they said, "Well, sing another song."
They came down and said, "Can you audition tomorrow night?"
And I auditioned the next night.
And the next night, my name was on the marquee.
♪ Where have you been ♪
♪ What did you do ♪
♪ Did you know I was here patiently waiting for you ♪
Sometimes you have to stay
when you don't want to.
And I've learned to stay a lot.
♪ I missed you so much ♪
♪ Where have you been ♪
♪ I'm your dream ♪
♪ I'll never give up on you ♪
♪ I'll always be here ♪
♪ I'm with you no matter ♪
♪ if you're happy or full of fear ♪
♪ can we start working on tomorrow today ♪
♪ Never give up again and please don't walk away ♪
♪ I'm gonna be here with you ♪
♪ 'Til the bitter end ♪
♪ I love you with all my heart ♪
♪ I'm your dream ♪
- Everybody say hello to Charley Pride.
Charley. (audience applauding)
Welcome, thank you for coming.
You know, Charley,
I always wanted to get a chance to talk to you.
When I was small my mom and dad were in the music business,
and I just kinda grew up in it.
But did you always wanna be a singer
from the time you were a little boy?
Or did you just kind of-
- I've sang all my life,
but I wanted to be a great baseball player.
(audience laughing)
- You didn't make it?
- No, just in the door.
Got- (host laughing)
- You made it in the music business anyway.
I think you're the only man in country music
that's got four gold albums.
Is that right?
- Well, I don't know, but I have 'em,
and I'm proud of 'em. - He's got four gold albums.
I think that's great.
(audience applauding)
- [Participant] Yeah, Charley Pride, man.
Charley Pride started it all.
♪ Tomorrow ♪ - Charley Pride
was the first black artist signed
to a major country record label in 1965.
And he became a huge star.
- [Andrea] Like this guy was not just, okay.
He was a massive success.
♪ You stopped loving me ♪ - And he just did his thing.
He didn't let anything get in his way
of bein' what he wanted to be,
to be a country artist
when there was no people of color doin' it.
- And you know, it's a strange thing on the radio,
you just hear this voice,
and I associate with voices, and you'd never think
that there was a black man would be singing country.
What happened the first time you walked out
and was introduced at the country fair?
- Well, it was actually, Ben, it was in Detroit, Michigan,
and I had 10 minutes on the show.
I drove all the way from Montana,
and I walked and I'm down in the shadows, and they said,
"Ladies and gentlemen,
"how about it now for RCAs Charley Pride?"
It was like (imitating a drum roll).
Big applaud, and I come outta those lights
up in the shadows.
I mean, out of the shadows, up in those lights.
And they said (imitating drum roll).
(hosts laughing)
- They didn't stop applaudin'.
They just like turned the volume down.
(audience laughing) - Put on the gloves.
- No, the whisperers came up.
(voices muffling)
- I had this little spiel.
I didn't have but 10 minutes.
I had to have somethin' quick to loose 'em up.
They're sittin' there goin' (imitating whispering).
I said, "Ladies and gentlemen,
"I realize it's a little unique,
"me comin' out here on a country music show
"wearin' this permanent tan."
So I said, "I'm gonna do the three songs I have,
"and then the ones I've been doin' all my life
"before I had my three, and I hope you enjoy it."
And I hit it.
And when I came off it was a three o'clock show
and an eight o'clock show,
I sang from that show until the next one at eight o'clock.
(audience applauding)
(television static)
♪ (voice muffling) my whole life for this ♪
♪ Few acres on the outside of town ♪
♪ I've always pictured this moment ♪
♪ This mornin' they're gonna start breakin' ground ♪
♪ If this is gonna be ♪
♪ Where we're gonna be ♪
♪ Let me drop down to my knees right now ♪
Charley Pride, man, it's still crazy
gettin' to say that he was a friend.
The last two and a half years
we talked on the phone every other Sunday
for an hour or two.
And he told me a lot about
how to handle yourself in certain situations,
to where you handle yourself with grace.
But at the same time,
you don't shy away from issues that you need to address.
♪ Turn this house into a home sweet home ♪
♪ Paint some memories on these walls ♪
♪ And keep this family together ♪
♪ Forever and ever I know ♪
♪ The prayer it works ♪
♪ So God bless this day ♪
I feel like Charley did his part.
Charley came into the genre in a time
when they were still hangin'
and hosin' black peoples in the streets,
in the 60s and 70s.
And he was there.
He was there for a long time at a high level.
He showed that it could be done.
♪ And prayer it works yeah ♪
♪ So God bless this day ♪
(city noises)
- We've seen throughout history that representation
in and of itself is not enough,
or Charley Pride would have fixed everything.
There have always been moments
where you see this kind of push of black artists
trying to get in, but then ultimately being shut out.
Charley Pride becomes this massive success.
Of course other black people
think that this is my opportunity,
but the walls came down pretty quickly
because there could only be one.
(intense music)
- Everyone told us to go to Charley Pride.
Oh, you wanna get a break in country music?
Go to Charley Pride.
And I never could understand why they did that.
But basically it was to get us out of their face.
You're black in the country, oh go find Charley Pride.
Well, why, did he have they label?
Was he lookin' for talent?
No.
You're the label.
It solidified the powers that be
the ability to say, "We're not prejudice.
"We have a Charley Pride.
"We have a black man in country music."
Now I'm gonna quote Dr. Cleve Francis on this.
He said, "What 30 some million black people
"shook the country music tree
"and one brother fell out in 75 years
"when I know there were many more trying."
(low rumbling music)
- I'm a member of a oratorical people.
We tell stories from the beginning through song,
through poem, and I think our story's gotta be honored.
It's kinda hard to find country music
from black artists in Nashville that are from Nashville,
that are really,
that are really reflecting who we are.
And I feel like if there was more that
it would totally change my perspective of the music.
Our story's gotta be honored,
and it's gotta be held,
held with the degree of authenticity and respect
in order for it to resonate with the people.
(light banjo music)
- Places like these are important,
because this is really where we start
to see the music merged together,
black musicians, white musicians,
like you see a lotta old pictures
where you got guys that are playin' the banjo,
black musicians, they're doing it in these settings.
They're entertaining white crowds.
(gentle banjo music)
These settings are so indicative
of what is happening in country music,
what has been happening country music,
because we're standing on a place of stolen labor.
We look at the industry now that is birthed
out of these black genres, these black musical traditions,
and it's really stolen from our people,
because they don't get to participate
in the wealth that's being built here now.
And you can't separate the industry
that comes out of this place
without talking about the ugliness of this place.
(gentle banjo music)
- I had always been apologizing, almost,
for being in these spaces,
where I was always the one black person
in these very white...
And people like, "Why aren't you singin' jazz?"
I was constantly being asked to explain myself,
"Why are you doing this?
"Why are you doing this music."
- First and foremost,
music is about how it makes you feel,
regardless of what you look like or where you grew up.
For me as a kid, I really struggled with feeling in between.
I'm either not white, I'm not black enough.
I'm in the middle of all of this,
tryin' to figure out who I am,
and when I discovered this history and this music,
that's when I was like, this is what makes me an American.
♪ Quasheba, Quasheba ♪
♪ You're free now, you're free now ♪
♪ How does your spirit fly ♪
- I've had very academic discussions
about the transatlantic slave trade.
You can't just sit down
and just start talking about that with people,
because we're still healing from it.
Black people and white people are still healing from this.
A song and music has this way of disarming people.
It takes a story or an idea and makes it to where
the person kinda has to hear it.
♪ Blood of your blood ♪
♪ Bone of your bone ♪
♪ By the grace of your strength we have life ♪
I believe that's how we break these cycles
of bigotry and violence.
♪ From the Golden Coast of Ghana ♪
♪ To the bondage of Grenada ♪
We can't do any of it,
if we can't face that they're happening.
And if we can't talk about that they're happening...
The white policeman assaulting me when I was 12,
the white guy spitting on me in the street when I was 15,
the white woman who told me I couldn't use the bathroom
after my entire band had, because they didn't have one.
♪ You're free now, you're free now ♪
I have to talk about these things to be able to live,
to be able to survive.
♪ Blood of your blood ♪
♪ Bone of your bone ♪
♪ By the grace of your strength we have life ♪
♪ You were forgotten, almost forsaken ♪
♪ But your children founded generations ♪
♪ Your strength sustained them ♪
♪ They won their freedom ♪
♪ Traced our roots to find you waitin' ♪
♪ Quasheba, Quasheba ♪
♪ You're free now you're free now ♪
♪ How does your spirit fly ♪
♪ Blood of your blood ♪
♪ Bone of your bone ♪
♪ By the grace of your strength we have life ♪
♪ Quasheba, Quasheba ♪
♪ You're free now, you're free now ♪
♪ How far your spirit's flown ♪
♪ Blood of your blood ♪
♪ Bone of your bone ♪
♪ By the grace of your strength we are home ♪
♪ We are home ♪
♪ We are ♪
♪ Home ♪
(eerie music) (distant crowd cheering)
(crowd cheering)
(television static)
- I'm like, this is the biggest song of all time.
Arguably.
We have never seen a song in the internet era this big.
And it's not just that the song is big.
It's big and it's controversial.
- [Announcer] And let me tell you right now,
it's a country song, so make some noise right now.
- It wasn't controversial to me.
I was like, that's dope.
But I'm saying it was controversial to some people.
(voice muffling) (audience cheering)
- [Announcer] Let's make some noise right now
for Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus.
(audience cheering)
(television static)
- He made like this one beat,
and it was like,
I used it on a song, and the song blew up.
- You know how it goes.
- What was the name of it?
(children yelling)
- [Reporter] 2019 Officially belongs to Lil Nas X.
- That song became the longest running number one single
in Billboards history.
- I like Nas X, though. - That song, that song.
He came out with a good song. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- He caught it at the beginning.
He wasn't even around country music.
So he had to prove himself
who he really was so he
can be respected out here as a person.
- What he did was such a shock to the world,
and to the country music world,
especially once he came out,
and then it was like, okay,
so we have this young gay black dude,
and he's got Billy Ray on the song.
- I mean, the impact was huge.
Song went freakin' diamond.
You know what I'm sayin'?
It opened people's eyes and ears up that
we can do it all.
We can do whatever, it's no limitations.
Especially when it comes to creativity.
Like, it's none.
And with "Old Town Road,"
it definitely opened up, like I said,
people's eyes and ears to be like, oh,
there's black people doin' this?
- As a kid growing up, what that role model
that we talkin' about- - A lotta kids
are listenin' to that song.
- Yeah, yeah, so you know you need
some positive role model around
to hear something positive to say,
"Hey, I can do that."
(gentle music)
- Lil Nas X (voice muffling) "Old Town Road."
(voice muffling)
And a couple days ago it just reached number one.
The song made Billboard chart history.
It's the only song to simultaneously appear on the Hot 100,
the Hot R&B Hip Hop Songs Chart,
and the Hot Country Songs Chart.
- But now Billboard has pulled it
from the country songs chart because they no longer believe
that the song is country enough.
(television static)
- People were mad.
People were mad, and I'm like, I was just watching it,
and I'm like, I wonder what they're gonna do.
Are they gonna boycott him?
So I was just really fascinated by it.
I followed the whole thing.
And then when I saw kind of how it started to resolve itself
and people were like, "Well, why can't he do it?"
Obviously that song was massive.
And then he dropped some more music
that was not like that at all.
And I was like, wait, but people like this.
I was like, people like that.
Then I was like, okay, well, why can't I do it?
- There's no genre that sounds today
like it sounded 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
As we've seen in country music throughout the years,
as the sonics have changed,
there is this constant borrowing from other genres,
from other sounds.
There is borrowing from gospel, from black gospel.
There's borrowing from black R&B.
Now we're in this era where there's
a lot of borrowing from hip hop.
It all evolves, and that creates more of an opportunity
to bring in people from outside of this,
particularly when the artist
that is doing this genre blending
looks like a Breland or a Blanco Brown.
- Lil Nas had to take some Ls
as a young black man in this space,
and I don't blame him for not wanting to stay in this space.
However, by him doing that,
he made it easier for me to do what I'm doing.
♪ Scuff these Jordans ♪
♪ You can say you hate me ♪
♪ You can call me crazy ♪
♪ But don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
I put it out in September of '19,
and randomly in December someone hit me up and was like,
"Yo, your song is on TikTok."
And I went and checked, and I was like,
every minute there was new videos being made.
It put up like 200 videos in like a day.
And I was like 200 people made videos to it?
And then I went and checked the numbers,
and we were at like 30,000 streams.
And I was like, oh, we just spiked crazy.
I was like, this is dope.
And then every day after that,
it was just like going more and more and more.
And about a week after that,
I started getting calls from labels,
and they were like,
they're like, "Hey, you're an artist?
"You're Breland the artist?"
And I was like, "I guess so."
And they're like, "We wanna meet with you."
And I'm like, the first couple calls that I got,
I was like, all right, sure.
But then I got calls from like 15 different major labels
in a 24-hour span (laughing).
And I was like, oh, this is for real, for real.
- Your song, "My Truck," was very popular.
So popular, in fact, that I have a surprise for you.
So on behalf of Bad Realm Records-
- Oh y'all, oh no.
(Kelly laughing and clapping) - No, oh no.
- So wait, on behalf of Bad Realm Records
and Atlantic Records,
we wanna present you with a platinum certification-
- Don't do me
like that, Kelly. - For selling
one million copies of "My Truck,"
which is hard to do right now, y'all.
That's incredible.
- I just knew there was a lane that was open,
and if the lane is open for one, it's open for everybody.
(wind blowing) (city noises)
♪ I get red roses while you rob me blind ♪
♪ Red roses (voice muffling) ♪
♪ Oh ooh over you ♪
♪ And I get red roses while you rob me blind ♪
♪ Red roses while the girls you hide ♪
♪ They don't mean a thing ♪
♪ They don't mean a thing to me anymore ♪
I feel like music is my life, it's everything.
It's never been a question,
like, what do I wanna do?
What will my career be?
I've always just been like, I'm going to make history.
I'm going to be a singer,
and I'm going to do what I love.
When people ask me why did I choose country music,
I just tell them country music chose me.
That's how I feel.
(gentle music)
I've only been in Nashville for two or three years.
(gentle music)
They haven't seen a lot of black women or black men
in the country space.
And so, because of that,
they don't know what to expect from me.
I feel like especially being in country music
I kinda have to be aware of everything that I do,
but I'm just like, I'm gonna be me.
And for me, I'm like, I wanna be as extra as possible.
Like that's just me.
(intense music)
(piano music)
- Oh yeah, I'll do freestylin'.
(piano music)
Country music was so simple to me, and it told stories.
You didn't have to create a facade.
You just could tell whatever story you wanted.
And I just, I gravitated towards it.
You gotta create your own path and go for your own glory.
So, couldn't nobody tell me what I couldn't do.
I was gonna keep on doin' it either way it go.
If it didn't work,
I'm great with listening to myself goin' down the highway.
- In 2018, I realized I would never fit the mold.
I stopped asking myself if something was good enough
or radio enough, commercial enough.
I started asking, is this me?
Is this who I am?
Is this what I wanna do?
Am I communicating my heart?
And that for me was the most freeing thing
that could have ever happened to me artistically.
- Whenever you are makin' music,
and in particular, if you have dreads and you're black,
then (laughing) people automatically assume things,
like I'll be walkin' through the airport
in some random city and people be like,
"Oh, I love your hair.
"Oh, you have a guitar.
"Are you gonna do reggae?"
And I'm like, "Oh, I love reggae, but no I'm not."
Makin' life easier would be conforming
to what people would see me do physically.
But I do what I do.
I do what my heart tells me.
And I sound like I sound.
And I don't feel like I wanna spend my time
explaining all that.
♪ Mmmm ♪
- You know, they say,
country music is three cords and the truth.
So, I'm just sayin' my truth.
This is what I wanna write.
This is what I wanna put out.
This is what I want people to hear.
And especially being in this space,
like why shy away from who I am and how I feel?
♪ Sometimes mmm ♪
♪ Mmm ♪
- It is my honor and it is my privilege
to talk about being black because I am black.
It's my honor and privilege to talk about being a woman
because I am a woman,
and I have all of those experiences,
I think, reflected in my music.
This music thing that everyone loves and we love, it's hard.
It's a whole lotta stuff that goes on in the background,
and it can get discouraging,
but if you push through it,
you just never know if a time like this will happen,
where we're basically seeing a renaissance in music
and in country music especially.
♪ Mmm ♪
♪ As I walk through the cornfield alone, full of emptiness ♪
♪ As I look to my left and my right ♪
♪ There's no one there to hold my hand ♪
♪ As my nerves get to shakin' ♪
♪ And my voice gets to tremblin' ♪
♪ Just start prayin' for me ♪
♪ Just start prayin' ♪
♪ On the ledge ♪
♪ I take in all of the fresh air ♪
♪ On my way down ♪
♪ A million miles away ♪
♪ I met an angel ♪
♪ And she told me everything'll be okay ♪
♪ That's when I woke up, baby ♪
♪ Show me love, show me love, show me love ♪
♪ Girl I love, girl I love you more than I love myself ♪
♪ I need love, I need love, oh, I need love ♪
♪ We all know that a drink can't heal my heart ♪
♪ That's why I need you by my side ♪
♪ I need love ♪
(low rumbling music) (cars rumbling)
(doors squeaking)
- Okay, be cool.
Be cool when I let you out here, okay?
You just enjoy yourself.
Be cool, buddy.
That's a big boy.
Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo.
The feeling in the country is amazing.
It's peaceful.
You know,
when you're lookin' around at all this stuff, you feel God,
you feel peace.
It's phenomenal, man,
to have my babies out here in the open field.
Up under this beautiful light from the Lord upstairs,
peaceful, quiet.
They can run around, do whatever they want.
Woo, woo, woo.
- Woo, woo, woo.
(Shy chuckling)
I've been here doin' this since 2008.
I felt like we needed to be down here,
openin' the doors up because this music is amazin'.
This music is beautiful and it's positive.
I felt like I could shine a light on this genre,
and say, listen, we don't have to just do this.
We can move out to the country.
We can be out here with horses and cows.
You could be where the air is clean.
So it's deep in my heart, and say, listen,
we can enjoy this dream.
We can enjoy this life.
And you can make music in these environments,
about these environments.
And you can just sit and write a song
and sing a song with nothing,
like with no electricity, sit outside and be like,
I don't need anything.
I could sit here and I could write a hit song.
And that's powerful when you can do somethin' like that.
♪ Kick it in the country, man, eatin' on some hay ♪
♪ I can kick it with you big Joe all day ♪
♪ Don't let me fall ♪
♪ Baby, don't let me fall ♪
♪ We can do it all ♪
♪ Yeah, we can do it all ♪
♪ Winter, spring, in the summer or the fall ♪
♪ Whatever you do my buddy, just don't let me fall ♪
♪ We don't need no saddles we ride bareback around here baby ♪
♪ All I wanna do is take you out ♪
♪ And show you love, my dear baby ♪
♪ Meet a pretty little lady in the field ♪
♪ Ridin' horses with me ♪
♪ Out in the country in Tennessee ♪
♪ Where we feel free ♪
(Shy beatboxing)
(gentle music)
My whole experience in the music industry,
I wished that there were more people of color
to sing the songs I was writin',
because there's a different way that we sing sometimes.
There's a different way that soul comes out.
The experiences of being black in America,
that puts something in your soul deep down
to where you sing the song a little different.
(gentle music)
- I do think that there is a shift.
There's a shift in consciousness that has occurred.
Starting with the lockdown,
all of the abuses that have always gone on
that continued to go on,
but which were filmed and absorbed
in people's psyches and their emotions
in a deeper way than ever before in my lifetime.
(crowd chanting)
Nashville is a part of a whole macrocosm
that I think there is a wave of change happening
in a sustained way that I have not witnessed in my life.
- [Reporter] That truth earned Mickey Guyton
her first ever Grammy nomination
for her deeply personal song, "Black Like Me,"
making Mickey the first black female solo artist ever
to earn a nod in a country music category.
- Now you are headin' into the weekend
with a trophy already in your hand,
of course, that is for New Male Artist of the Year.
You are the first black musician to do that.
- This weekend Mickey Guyton
will become the first black woman to co-host
the Academy of Country Music Awards.
She was the only black woman
to be nominated for an award this year.
But as Amna Nawaz reports,
a number of black women
are starting to gain traction in the genre.
- When I started meeting Reyna Roberts and Kären McCormick
and Camille Parker and Mickey Guyton,
I just started feelin' like, oh, this is a thing.
This is happening.
It's not just me.
There is a shift happening.
There is a whole new sound comin',
and it's not to take place of something else.
We just wanna join the story.
(gentle music)
- No matter how many different ways I sang,
mo matter what makeup you put on me,
I'm still a black woman.
And that's never going to change.
And I have to be who I am and love that and accept that.
And when I got to that place, it was,
it almost makes me teary eyed to even talk about,
but it was truly one of the most freeing things
I could have ever done for myself.
(gentle music)
There's so many amazing things happening for me,
but there is so much sadness because I do know too much.
(gentle music)
I know entirely too much.
(television static)
♪ My daddy work day and night ♪
♪ For an old house and a used car ♪
♪ Just to live that good life ♪
♪ Mmm ♪
♪ It shouldn't be twice as hard ♪
♪ Oh now ♪
♪ Now I'm all grown up and nothin' has changed ♪
♪ It's a hard life ♪
♪ On Easy Street ♪
♪ Just white painted picket fences far as you can see ♪
♪ If you think we live in the land of the free ♪
♪ You should try be a black like me ♪
(television static)
(television clicking)
I've been in town for years,
and it took a song like "Black Like Me"
and a man dying for people to notice me.
How do you celebrate that?
(gentle intense music)
There are times, even to this day,
where I still question if I have a home
within the country music genre.
And I just have to be honest.
(gentle intense music)
I don't always feel like I have a home,
But I'm creating a home.
And I hope I'm creating a space
for other people of color and black people
to feel like they have a home in this genre.
(gentle music) (curtain clicking)
- It's gonna be difficult to have conversations
about what we need to do or whether
there's actual hope and movement right now
when it ain't been this lit in Nashville in a minute.
All these articles and that hasn't happened in a while.
So if you're a part of that, if you're ridin' that wave,
everything's too good right now.
(gentle music)
- It's almost come every generation, right?
Where been these moments in time
when commercially speaking there was potential there
to maybe be hopeful that something
was gonna change within the industry.
It's a business.
And it's a business that does very, very well for itself,
which makes me cynical because,
from their perspective as a business
where the goal is to make money, not to do the right thing,
there really isn't an incentive to change.
(gentle music)
- We're doin' a lotta talking and a lotta discussing,
which is great, and which is a wonderful first step.
But I have yet to see a lot of action against racism.
- [Andrea] We're seeing kinda surface level things.
Some organizations in town that
as they cultivate the list of who's next,
they're making sure there's black faces on there.
The CMAs and the ACMs they're, okay,
we don't wanna have another award show
where there are no black people.
That is happening.
- But there's no consequences.
There's not a lot of action of people saying
we are not going to do this anymore.
There's a lot of dismantling that needs to be done.
I think if one artist says,
"I don't want Confederate flags at my show,"
and that rule is followed,
it can't even be expressed
what a difference that will make moving forward.
- Nashville is growing,
and Nashville is getting better,
but I have not seen that same growth
in the country music industry.
And I'm startin' to see it now,
but it makes me wonder is it cause of what's going on
in our society right now?
Or is it because they finally get it
and understand that the country music industry
will be better if it becomes more diverse?
- It's gonna take a lot to change country music.
It's gotta be people behind the scenes,
people at record labels, people in radio.
It's gonna take a lot to change and it's gonna take time.
- We need to own the infrastructure,
and we need to have black executives
and black business owners
when it comes to the music business.
I think that's what changes it.
It's not just opportunity,
because opportunity just gives you the chance
to operate within the parameters that's already set
before you walk in the door,
but power gives you the opportunity
to do something pure.
If we could change that, if we could hold power,
I think that's the key.
- It's cool to be able to be in a position
to where I can help other artists,
because I wouldn't be here without people helpin' me.
I feel like if I, as a black man,
had kind of pushed through in this industry
because people believed in me, only signed white artists,
I don't feel like that's why I was placed here.
And I feel like if I see other people of color
that are strugglin' but talented,
I feel like it's my job to help 'em.
- We literally all have to
be having this conversation with each other.
Like, hey, did you do everything that you could today
or this week or this month or this year
to help make this space more equitable,
more fair for everybody?
Did you do your part?
It means very little to me to win a CMA, a Grammy,
a Billboard Award, have a number one, or any of that,
if I'm not able to do anything for the people
who are also trying to do that.
How can we help black people win in this space?
And how can we help everyone else
who's already been in this space
and has benefited from those systems,
how can we help them understand what's happening here,
and so that they can also be a part of it?
And I think if we're able
to accomplish both of those things,
then we can achieve real inclusivity and real equity.
- There has to be not just one or two or three black people
that go on to have successful careers
every 25 years or something like that.
There has to be several black country artists
that have viable careers.
And we have to walk through that door together as a whole,
as a unit, arm-in-arm, through these doors,
and saying, "Hey, we're here and we're talented.
"And we deserve to be here.
"Our dreams are valid."
- There's no pushing the tide back.
There's no turning the river the other way.
It's that long arc of justice.
It's long and slow and we're not there yet,
but I do hope and believe that we will get there.
- It's a very exciting time for Nashville.
And I have great hopes for this city.
I've been here 40 years, seen a lotta changes.
I have a lotta hope for this generation,
which has certainly went further than anyone I've seen,
other than Charley Pride.
So I would say, learn how to work together,
because there is such power in numbers.
Learn to write together,
exchange ideas together,
develop your sounds together,
support each other.
Help the platform.
Where can you go if you don't have a platform?
That's what I would love to see happen in Nashville.
And I think if it's powerful enough,
a whole lot of things could happen.
(energetic music)
♪ You can drink my liquor ♪
♪ You can call my lady ♪
♪ You can take my money ♪
♪ You can smoke my blunt ♪
♪ Scuff these Jordans ♪
♪ You can say you hate me ♪
♪ You can call me crazy, but ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Skrrt, skrrt ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Brrp, truck ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Woo-oo ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my ♪
♪ V8 engine with the windows tinted ♪
♪ Boy, we came from the bottom ♪
♪ Got it out the mud ♪
♪ Whole block jumpin' 'cause the subs stay hittin' ♪
♪ If they roll up on me, know I keep one tucked ♪
♪ Ooh, yeah ♪ ♪ Woo ♪
♪ Tell them boys come and get me ♪
♪ I be ridin' through the city ♪
♪ Young, rich and I'm pretty ♪
♪ Homie, don't get it twisted ♪
♪ Keep a semi in the hemi ♪
♪ Red cup full of Henny ♪
♪ My hitters come in plenties, for real ♪
♪ You can drink my liquor ♪
♪ You can call my lady ♪
♪ You can take my money ♪
♪ You can smoke my blunt ♪
♪ Scuff these Jordans ♪
♪ You can say you hate me ♪
♪ You can call me crazy, but ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Skrrt, skrrt ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Brrp, truck ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Woo-oo ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my ♪
♪ Wood grain dash with the matte black finish ♪
♪ And it match my shawty with the big ol' butt ♪
♪ Tell them boys come and get me ♪
♪ I be ridin' through the city ♪
♪ Young, rich and I'm pretty ♪
♪ Homie, don't get it twisted ♪
♪ Keep a semi in the hemi ♪
♪ Red cup full of Henny ♪
♪ My hitters come in plenties, for real ♪
♪ You can drink my liquor ♪
♪ You can call my lady ♪
♪ You can take my money ♪
♪ You can smoke my blunt ♪
♪ Scuff these Jordans ♪
♪ You can say you hate me ♪
♪ You can call me crazy, but ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
♪ Skrrt ♪
♪ Don't touch my truck ♪
(gentle music)