National Museum of African American Music | Places to Visit

·21 min·2 clips

How did enslaved Africans adapt their musical customs after forced conversion to Christianity?

The episode is a solo audio tour where host Natasha Nicolo describes her visit to the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville. She begins by apologizing for background noise from museum audio and explains her interest in the photography displayed. Nicolo starts with the exhibit on African roots, detailing how enslaved Africans carried musical traditions to America and adapted them under forced Christianity. She then moves to the gospel section, explaining its development from spirituals and its role in the civil rights movement, noting artists like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin who began in gospel. The blues section follows, with Nicolo mentioning its origins in the rural Deep South and spread during the Great Migration. She highlights the jazz room's focus on New Orleans culture, including Congo Square and second lines, and names artists like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Nicolo's favorite section is R&B, covering Motown and Stax labels, artists from the 1960s to 1990s like Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, and profiles of Black executives such as Clarence Avant. The museum concludes with hip-hop, which Nicolo discusses as a cultural movement encompassing fashion and entrepreneurship, rooted in neighborhoods like the South Bronx. She also mentions a special hip-hop 50th-anniversary exhibit featuring illustrator Andre Leroy Davis. Nicolo ends with practical advice: the museum recommends 1.5 hours, parking is validated for two hours, and it's located downtown. She encourages listeners to visit if they love music or photography.

As heard by us

A reflective museum walk connects Black music history, photography, New Orleans, and landmark labels.

The Nashville visit becomes more than a museum stop as the host moves through the National Museum of African American Music and traces Black music history through a personal lens.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Nashville museum visit where Black music history comes with New Orleans jazz context and memorable black-and-white photographs.

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