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“As well, there was still segregation, so by the time of the Bristol Sessions in 1927, race and racism are still inherently tied to the music and the culture of the region, too. So towns like Bristol, in their early 20th century roots, have a ton of Southern cultures coming together,” Flemons explains. “At that edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia come together. Thankfully, Americana musician and ethnomusicologist of sorts Flemons offered notes regarding race, commerce and music that, as they tie together, explain the bizarre confluence that inspired my conflicted emotions. Still, though, I struggle with the fact that, while in Bristol, almost magically, in my mind, country music - for once this year - was separated from the evils of racism and prejudice. “However,” she continues, “there were only six white dudes yelling with signs who were the ‘counter-protestors.’ The open-minded and progressive people in this area have a strong anti-racist sentiment.” “We were concerned that the Ku Klux Klan chapter in Carter Country would show up, so police helicopters, state troopers and private security teams were called. “Johnson City is a college town, so it’s somewhat liberal, but we’re also in the Bible Belt, so there’s tons of conservatism, too,” Kiah recalls.

However, she recalled the area’s first Pride celebration, in 2018, to impart knowledge regarding how the region accepts marginalized people celebrating their emergent civil rights. Kiah was on the road, touring outside Appalachia, on June 19, 2021.

“However, there are a lot of people in this area that are not that way and don’t put up with that.” “So yes, in “Black Myself,” I say, ‘I can go anywhere that I wanna go because I’m Black myself,’ but I still have to be smart about that decision,” Kiah adds. There are certain, more rural places around here, out in the holler, that, as a Black person - or, especially, me and my white girlfriend - I would not hang out at by myself. But, she continues, “‘Racist white people absolutely do live here. “I can’t think of any recent reports of any lynchings in the area,” Kiah says with a half-laugh in regard to my friend’s earlier concerns about me being in the heart of Appalachia on Juneteenth. She owes a significant debt of gratitude to the region, as she credits her studies at East Tennessee State University for stoking the musical fires that launched material such as her brilliantly incendiary, folk-tinged 2021 country album Wary + Strange. “Bristol is a place that’s close, near and dear to my heart,” says Kiah, a Black, queer Americana musician and native of Bristol’s neighbor - Johnson City, Tenn. I needed to ask two other Black folks familiar with Bristol - emerging folk-country star Amythyst Kiah and the American Songster-turned- Black Cowboy himself, Dom Flemons - just what it is about this 46-square-mile city that allowed my angst to be superseded during a racially and socially frustrating moment in country music’s century-long history. At some point during the past 12 months, country music had stopped affecting me, a Black man, in this way - but after six months of bearing witness to the symbolic citadel of country music being torn asunder by issues of race and gender, this moment really mattered.īecause I’m Black, my love of country music is deeply problematic to juxtapose against an industry beset as never before by the plague of racism. I had to pause when my heart went aflutter and my eyes got misty. As he sang it - seated onstage, accompanied by an acoustic guitar - the moistness of the air and the profound emotion of the moment allowed the moment to stick to my bones and soul deeply. Over our meal, I’d told the legendary artist that the song he wrote for Strait was one of my all-time favorites. In the hazy gauze of a humid late evening, after a brief post-dinner walk with a crew of Bristol natives, musicians and journalists, Lauderdale sang George Strait’s “The King of Broken Hearts” at a bare, wooden stage named for him adjacent to the Sessions Hotel. Yes, I was the only Black person walking down State Street, but, more importantly, I was having a “pinch me, this ain’t real” moment that impressively overwhelmed most everything else on my mind in that instant: I was casually chatting about modern country artists with iconic singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale. The fact that it was the first official Juneteenth weekend was actually lost on me after my first 24 hours in Bristol.

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