Imagine a museum where you walk in and listen to all the music you want and afterwards you get to take it home.  I may not need to say anymore about this museum because that alone is so wildly wonderful it’s stands on its own as unique.  

Music is in your face in Nashville.  From the the largest Country Music Hall of Fame to the tiny Johnny Cash museum, you can’t turn an inch without being bombarded by music history, not just Nashville music history, but USA music history.  Each museum is splendid in its own right, but the most creative, cutting edge and marvelous museum is the National Museum of African American Music.

Now you might wonder why particular museum is in Nashville and not say Mississippi.  First of all no-one would ever see it in Mississippi cause no one in their right mind goes to MS to see anything.  I am aware that I am describing myself and our travels through the south.  I was out of my mind, although I learned a lot!  But that’s not it.  African Music patterns, brought to this continent via slaves, reverberate and are the backbone of much of the music we listen to, in all genres.  This museum proves that through their audio and visual exhibits.  Nashville is music central and therefore we ought to understand how the introduction of African rhythms and melodies are imbued in that music.  

Let’s start at the beginning.  When you enter the museum you are given a bracelet.  As you move through the museum there are multiple places you can listen to the music, through headphones.  If you like it, you press the bracelet up against the cabinet.  It stores your choices and when you leave everything you chose is available to you through Spotify.  You can listen to all the music for free.  

If that isn’t terrific enough for you, imagine starting in a large hall, with tables that are really giant computers in front of you.  Hit an image for a particular time frame, say pre-revolution, and you will get a history of that time, including the music history.  Each time period present you with new sounds accompanying the history of that time and explains how African American musical traditions added to the music of that time period.  

You move from that room, which is overwhelming, into rooms displaying later periods and specific artists.  Just like the Country Music Hall of Fame, costumes, musical instruments, and recordings are on display.  Unlike the CMHF, you get to a room with the computer tables and headphones.  In the center of the computer table is a circle of musicians headshots.  Touch the one you are interested in and it becomes bigger and centers in the middle.  Spokes radiate out in three sections.  One section is musicians who influenced this artist, one section is artists who were influenced by the artist and one section is contemporaries of the artist.  Touch any of them and three songs by them come up, which you can listen to and place your bracelet on the table rim to add to your Spotify list.   Since there are thousands of musicians, you can literally do this for hours, listen to music, see where the roots of that music were (the influencers) and how it was passed on (the influenced). It’s mesmerizing.  We got so caught up here we had to come back to finish the rest of the museum.  

We absolutely loved every square inch of this museum.  It utilizes a new, cutting edge concept of information delivery to provide the visitor with full musical information, not locked in time, but obviously and ever evolving.   We urge everyone to visit it and enjoy it as much as we did.  

PLEASE NOTE: The exterior of the museum was pretty nondescript - rather modern in style actually. But the inside of the museum was chock full of exhibits and information all of which I found really really compelling. I realized pretty quickly that I would never be able to absorb so much information - even in 2 visits! So I took copious photos of the displays and information. I have posted many below however, they are not presented in any kind of coherent historical order - they simply reflect tidbits of information I found particularly interesting. And to think this is only a small sampling of all the museum has to offer. Just marvelous!