Everything is there: the bright colors of the neon signs, the bursts of music escaping from the honky tonks, these bars where live music is played, forming a beautiful cacophony, and the exuberance of the “bachelorettes”, single people who came in groups to bury their maidenhood, for which the capital of Tennessee, deemed safe, became the rallying point. The party is in full swing on South Broadway in Nashville, now nicknamed “NashVegas”. The clemency of autumn still allows shorts and bare arms, over boots and under straw hats, or well-made Stetsons. Wearing a checked shirt is not discouraged.
Joyful crowds crisscross the city’s noisiest stretch of thoroughfare using their calves, perched on both sides of a mobile bar equipped with pedals. Others perched on the platform of a party bus, or on a trailer pulled by a tractor. Everything here, at every moment, reminds us of the unique status of Nashville, that of the capital of country music, which has millions of fans in the United States and represents one of its greatest cultural prides.
This noisy kitsch says nothing of the virulence of the squalls which fell all summer on those who say they sing ” the real life ” of the “real people “. “ Everyone only talked about that », confirms Marcus K. Dowling, music critic at Tennesseanstrapped into a fringed jacket, about this season of controversy. “Country is the mirror of the country and this country is currently deeply divided. Everyone moved to the right, to the left, and the center became depopulated. It’s the same in music. » One year before an already tense presidential election, the cultural war that has been sweeping the United States for years has finally caught up with country music. Political radicalization is being emulated among artists whose public expects above all to sing about celebration, friendship and love.
Singer Jason Aldean, 45, a heavyweight who has a bar named after him on South Broadway occupying three floors of an elegant red brick building, opened hostilities on July 14. It all started with the broadcast of a video illustrating one of his songs, published with relative indifference in May. Try That in a Small Town (“Try doing that in a small town”), denounced the violence targeting ordinary citizens or the police and the contempt for the Star-Spangled Banner.
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