Magical Nashville

This holiday season has been rough. This whole fall has been filled with “firsts”: my mom’s birthday, my step-dad’s yahrzeit, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and now Christmas/New Year’s. All without my mom and step-dad for the first time.

I’ve frankly felt lonely lately. I’m working on it – I have great friends and am picking up some new hobbies like getting back into dance. It also comes with the time of year – lord knows I get the winter blues. It’s just hard to spend time with family that’s gone – while your friends spend time with the ones they still have.

So I decided to go to Nashville! Nashville? Why go to Nashville? Isn’t that just for bachelorette parties? Well, to get a break from the loneliness of the holiday season, I turned to the best medicine I’ve ever found for the blues: travel. And as an avid fan of country and bluegrass music, Nashville has long been on my list.

I certainly bumped into the bachelorettes and drunk middle aged women thronging Broadway’s honkey tonk bars. But then I quickly realized that my scene was elsewhere.

My first night in Nashville, I made my way to a local bluegrass jam session away from the center of the city. It was everything I wanted and more. I sat in a heavenly daze for over an hour and a half and just soaked in the amazing tunes. As more than a dozen different fiddles, banjos, mandolins, guitars, and other instruments plucked away and made my ears melt with joy. Santa Claus even made an appearance and played some bluegrass tunes! If I did nothing else in Nashville, dayenu– this would’ve been enough.

The next day I woke up energized and headed to East Nashville for a mural tour and photo shoot. My guide Aidan was one of the kindest, funniest, and most engaging people I’ve met in my travels. I immediately felt at ease and felt I had found a kindred spirit. We took some great photos, including this post’s cover photo of a Dolly Parton mural. My mom would’ve loved to see it- she was a huge fan. Here are some of my pics:

I then headed to a country line dancing lesson on the main strip on Broadway. I was joined by a Canadian bachelorette party and a 15-year-old girl’s birthday crew. It was a riot. While not exactly my scene socially, the dancing was so much fun and the instructor was really patient and engaging. I’m going to get a video in my email later this week so we’ll see how I did! It reminds me of the good old days in college when I used to go to Wild Country bar outside of St. Louis and go line dancing with friends. And boy was it a workout – I had really worked up a sweat by the end and was having a great time. Plus, I got to dance to one of my favorite country songs- “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”. I’m hoping the meaning was lost on the 15-year-old haha.

Tuesday I hit up a historic mansion outside the city that was beautifully decorated for Christmas.

During my stay, I got to visit several museums documenting music history, including the National Museum of African American Music and the Country Music Hall of Fame. I learned how so many bluegrass and country music stars drew inspiration from black artists in their communities and often learned their instruments with them. Latino acts such as Los Lobos drew from and influences country music styles. Jazz, the blues, ragtime, bluegrass, country, and folk music are inextricably connected and all make this town pulsate with life.

On that note (pun intended!), I got to hear a truly wonderful concert at one of America’s most famous venues, the Grand Ole Opry. A live radio show in front of a several-thousand-person studio audience that has been running for almost a century, the Grand Ole Opry was so much fun. I got to hear some amazing bluegrass, country, and soul artists and get exposed to new sources of musical inspiration.

An Israeli friend once told me to guess which part of the United States most resembled Israel. At the time, I hadn’t lived in Israel yet and had only visited twice. I wasn’t sure where she meant. But she told me – “the South. There, life is simple. People aren’t as materialistic. They are warm and friendly.”

Having spent a lot of time in the South (where I went to summer camp growing up) and in Israel, I think she’s on to something. While the South (much like the Middle East) can suffer from conflict and racism and misogyny, it also is the place where I’ve encountered the warmest people in the U.S. Of all races and religions. Whether they’re hipsters, locals, transplants, conservative, liberal, white, black, or none of the above, I’ve found in my travels to the South that people just have an extra soft spot for helping others feel welcome. It’s social lubricant that frankly my hometown of Washington, D.C. sometimes lacks.

Nashville is a creative place. It’s artsy, it’s musical, it’s filled with murals and the dreams of hundreds of songwriters and guitar players. Of fiddlers and of new residents coming to its communities from around the country and around the world.

They know something that not everyone else has discovered and I hope remains somewhat of a secret for the sake of keeping the magic of this city alive. Nashville isn’t just bachelorette parties. Far from it. It is the people who live there who make it so special.

For now, I live in Washington, D.C. and I don’t know if I would move to Nashville or somewhere like it. Kinda hard to live there without a car. But maybe one day there’ll be more public transportation or I’ll simply come back to spend some more time there. Because one thing’s for sure- Nashville’s got a hold on my heart. And if that doesn’t sound like the beginnings of a country song, then I’m not sure what does!