Charleston Living Magazine May-June 2023

TRAVEL
The Country Music Hall
of Fame and Museum
Musically Inclined
The perfect weekend in Nashville
By KATIE MCELVEEN
Before I visited Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum,
I imagined some sort of rhinestone-paved Yellow Brick Road studded with life-sized
figures of Johnny Cash, Taylor Swift and other country music legends, all clad in authentic
stage costumes. There would, of course, be music blaring in the background.
That assumption ended the moment I stepped into the guitar-shaped
building, where I discovered a multi-sensory experience that utilized
photos, videos, artifacts and even wonderfully huge wall-mounted diagrams
to trace the origin of country music from its 18th-century roots
(really!) to the present.
I had no idea, for instance, that it was Hollywood that added the
Western component to country music or that cross pollination between
country and rock artists started in the late 1950s, not the 1970s as I’d
thought. I left the museum with tremendous appreciation and admiration
of the talent and innovation of country music’s artists and songwriters.
Oh, and I was humming, too.
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum isn’t Nashville’s
only museum devoted to music. There’s also the Musicians Hall of
Fame & Museum, which pays tribute to the musicians who played on
famous recordings; RCA Studio B and museums devoted to Johnny
Cash, Glen Campbell, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and George Strait.
The newest entry is the National Museum of African American Music,
which opened in 2021 and looks deeply into the 400-year evolution of
Black music in America.
We started in the Roots Theater, where a film sets the stage for
the experience, linking Black music to the arc of history. From there,
galleries use photos, videos and artifacts to take a deep dive into vari-
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