Attendees of the Americana Music Conference who might have expected a heated debate during a fitting conversation on political activism instead encountered an impressive calm on Sept. 11, as a decidedly progressive panel called for a respectful response to the assassination of a controversial conservative personality.
America was dazed, confused and angry following the Sept. 10 shooting of Charlie Kirk, with people on both sides of the political aisle engaging in familiar verbal attacks online.
But Americana artists Allison Russell and Margo Price avoided outrage, as Russell expressed empathy for Kirk and other members of the conservative movement responsible for taking rights away from women and immigrants.
“The news was devastating,” Russell said. “The reaction I found, in some ways, even more devastating. When we lose our moral compass — out of anger, out of vengeance, out of grief — we become that which we repudiate. We become it. So when people say things like, ‘He deserved it,’ that’s not it. We can forgive… We cannot operate from a place of vengeance, of violence, of shame and blame. It just doesn’t work.”
The Americana Music Association announced the panel “Art & Activism” weeks before the convention’s start. Even if Kirk had not been shot, the discussion would still have been appropriate. It was moderated by Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones, D-District 52, who gained national attention as a member of the so-called Tennessee Three, legislators who were punished by the Republican majority for their animated demonstrations in favor of gun regulation following a shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School in 2023. Lawmakers declined to enact any meaningful reform at the time.
Jones has modeled his efforts as an activist and reformer on the work of Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, who was among the demonstrators at Nashville lunch counters when sit-ins broke out across the South in 1960.
The city now boasts the National Museum of African-American Music, located on the same block where Lewis boarded a bus for Alabama in 1961 to join the Freedom Rides, employing nonviolent strategies in a key milestone of the movement. While much of mainstream country’s audience, and many of its artists — most of them based in Nashville — are squarely conservative, a good portion of the industry’s executives are determined to expand the genre’s reach among minority populations, including Blacks, Hispanics and the LGBTQ+ community.
“Being in this country music space has been so challenging for me,” Price said. “People tell me that I can’t say things or to tone it down. [But] I think that we are at such a crucial time in the loss of our democracy. You’ve got to be able to sing truth to power. Let’s dream of a better world.”
Russell, an openly gay Black artist adopted by a white supremacist family in Montreal, recalled a visit with extended relatives in Edmonton, Alberta, when she heard Tracy Chapman’s a cappella “Behind the Wall,” a song about domestic abuse featured on the same album as breakthrough hit “Fast Car.” It was the first time that Russell realized she could change the trajectory of her life, and it informed her passion for songs that make a difference in the world.
“Anytime you’re singing a message, it’s kind of like that ‘spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,’ ” she said, referencing a song from Mary Poppins. “It opens people up to receive, maybe, news that they would not otherwise take into their system.”
Russell referenced Bloody Sunday — a moment in 1965 when Lewis and others were beaten by state troopers while peacefully marching for civil rights in Selma, Ala. — and mentioned meeting an activist from that era who talked about extending forgiveness to his oppressors. Russell said that same spirit is required while progressive forces fight against the erosion of rights that’s taken place in America over the past decade.
“We have to learn to forgive the unforgivable in order to liberate ourselves from these endless cycles of harm and violence,” she said. “It’s the only way.”
Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Woody Guthrie and folk singer Odetta — artists who opposed the Vietnam War, racism and fascists in previous eras — were among those mentioned as inspirations for Price and Russell. Their support of blue-collar communities set an example that the “Art & Activism” panel encouraged today’s musicmakers to follow.
“These are very difficult times,” Jones said. “The saying that ‘democracy dies in darkness’ — I say that creativity dies in isolation, and fascism thrives in both. We are connected for a reason, and I know that we shall overcome.”