Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. Nashville is the second largest city in Tennessee, after Memphis, and is the fourth largest city in the Southeastern United States. It is located on the Cumberland River in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the music, healthcare, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home to numerous colleges and universities. Reflecting the city's position in state government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for Middle Tennessee. It is known as a center of the music industry, earning it the nickname "Music City".

Since 1963, Nashville has had a consolidated city-county government which includes six smaller municipalities in a two-tier system. Thirty-five of 40 members are elected from single-member districts; five are elected at-large. According to 2013 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the total consolidated city-county population stood at 659,042. The "balance" consolidated population, which excludes the semi-independent municipalities and is the figure listed in most demographic sources and national rankings, was 634,464. The 2013 population of the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area was 1,757,912, making it the largest metropolitan statistical area in the state. The 2013 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area, a larger trade area, was 1,876,933.

Country music

Country music is a genre of American popular music that originated in the Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the southeastern genre of American folk music and Western music. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, dobros and fiddles as well as harmonicas. The term country music gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to the earlier term hillbilly music; it came to encompass Western music, which evolved parallel to hillbilly music from similar roots, in the mid-20th century. The term country music is used today to describe many styles and subgenres. The origins of country music are the folk music of mostly white, working-class Americans, who blended popular songs, Irish and Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, and cowboy songs, and various musical traditions from European immigrant communities. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute in the United States.

Music hall

Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era circa 1850 and lasting until 1960. It involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. British music hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United Kingdom the term "vaudeville"' referred to more working-class types of entertainment that would have been termed "burlesque" in America.

Originating in saloon bars within public houses during the 1830s, music hall entertainment became increasingly popular with audiences, so much so, that during the 1850s, the public houses were demolished and specialized music hall theatres developed in their place. These theatres were designed chiefly so people could consume food and alcohol and smoke tobacco in the auditorium while the entertainment took place. This differed somewhat from the conventional type of theatre, which until then seated the audience in stalls with a separate bar-room. Major music halls, were based around London and included Early music halls like the Canterbury Music Hall in Lambeth, Wilton's Music Hall in Tower Hamlets and The Middlesex, in Drury Lane, otherwise known as the Old Mo.

Hall of fame

A hall of fame is a structure housing memorials to famous or illustrious individuals in a certain field, usually chosen by a group of electors. The meaning of "fame" has changed over the years, originally meaning "renown" as opposed to today's more common meaning of "celebrity".

In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actual halls or museums which enshrine the honorees with sculptures, plaques, and displays of memorabilia and general information regarding the inducted recipient/s. Sometimes, the honorees' plaques may instead be posted on a wall (hence a '"wall of fame") or inscribed on a sidewalk (as in a "walk of fame" or an "avenue of fame"). In others, the hall of fame is more figurative and just simply consists of a list of names of noteworthy individuals (or sometimes groups, for ex. Sporting groups or Rock groups) maintained by an organization or community or honouring its inducted members legacy or legend.

The English-language term was popularised in the United States by the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College, in New York City, completed in 1900. Its inspiration is the Ruhmeshalle ("Hall of Fame") in Munich, Germany. The Walhalla memorial in Bavaria, Germany, is an even earlier hall of fame, conceived in 1807 and built from 1900 to 1907.

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is one of the world’s largest museums and research centers dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of American vernacular music. Chartered in 1964, the museum has amassed one of the world’s finest and most extensive musical collections. From major exhibitions to school programs, and from books and records to special events, collection-based research and scholarship provide the foundation for everything the museum does.

History of the museum

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is one of the world’s largest and most active popular music research centers and the world’s largest repository of country music artifacts. Early in the 1960’s, as the Country Music Association’s campaign to publicize country music was shifting into high gear, CMA leaders determined that a new organization was needed to operate a country music museum and to carry out research and education activities beyond CMA’s scope as a trade organization. Toward this end, the nonprofit Country Music Foundation (CMF) was chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964 to collect, preserve, and publicize information and artifacts relating to the history of country music. Through CMF, industry leaders raised money to build the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened on April 1, 1967. Located at the head of Music Row, the museum was erected on the site of a small Nashville city park. At this point, artifacts began to be displayed and a small library was begun in a loft above one of the museum’s galleries.