News

Tennessee Partners with NEA for 50th Anniversary Video

By Suzanne Lynch, Director of Marketing and Development —

Screen Shot 2016-01-20 at 1.42.55 PMOn October 14, 2015, the Country Music Hall of Fame (CMHF) graciously hosted the Tennessee Arts Commission along with a video crew to film interviews for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) 50th Anniversary video the Commission created in partnership with the NEA.

To celebrate their anniversary milestone, the NEA invited all states and territories to tell their story of the arts in a three minute video. This impressive project can be found at arts.gov—videos are being added each week as the NEA collects finished videos from arts councils and commissions.

Fortunate to have such breadth, depth and diversity of the arts and culture in our state, telling the full story in such a limited time would be near impossible. The Commission therefore selected Tennessee music to represent our state’s arts and culture. Hailing from the east, middle and west regions, the video features mountain, country and soul music respectively.

The Commission was honored that Doyle Lawson, legendary blue grass musician drove from Bristol to tell us his story and share some of his music; Deanie Parker, original Soulsville music executive traveled from Memphis to give an in-depth interview on the history of soul and blues; and CMHF music editor, Peter Cooper reported on the vitality of country music. The Commission thanks each of them for their participation and willingness to help celebrate Tennessee music.

The Commission would also like to thank Kyle Young, Lisa Davis Purcell, Ben Hall and Drew Maynard from CMHF for all of their assistance and support of the project, including use of archival images from the CMHF library. The CMHF is truly a cultural asset for the state and we are proud to partner with them.

Additional archival images for the video were provided by Soulsville Foundation, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. Thank you to everyone who researched the images on our behalf, and also thanks to the Tennessee Department of Tourism Development Commissioner Kevin Triplett and Cindy Dupree for their assistance.

We wish the NEA a very happy 50th anniversary and are so appreciative to them for putting this project together. Long live the American arts and culture!

View the video HERE.