Nashville and the CMA Music Festival

Located along the Cumberland River in Tennessee, USA, Nashville is the state's capital with a population of almost 700,000 people. Although its main industry is health care, it is best known as the Mecca of country music, and is nicknamed “Music City”. As the home of country music, Nashville is the second largest music production center in the USA, second only to New York. The city's music industry contributes almost $7 billion to its economy and employs almost 20,000 people in the Nashville area alone.

The jewel in Nashville's crown is the annual CMA Music Festival. Originally known as Fan Fair, the Festival started in 1972 and has grown to become the biggest country music event in the world. Hosted in June of every year by the Country Music Association, it is a four-day event which attracts over 400 country music artists from around the world who hold country music concerts, interact with their fans, and sign autographs for hours on end. Almost 300,000 people from more than 20 countries and 50 states of the USA attended the 2011 Festival enjoying 150 hours of concerts, over 30 hours of autograph sessions, celebrity sports competitions, family games and activities and interactive displays.

Artists perform for free at the Festival where half of the total proceeds of about $200,000 are donated to charity. In 2010, because of the floods which devastated Nashville earlier in the year, 100% of the proceeds went to charity, half for flood relief. The other half went to a program, in partnership with the Nashville Alliance for Public Education, called “Keep the Music Playing”, to support music education in public schools, and a “Words and Music” program which assists language arts and music teachers in the basics of songwriting. To date, donations by the Festival have reached almost $5 million. The 2011 CMA Music Festival is reported to have contributed $30 million to the Nashville economy.

There are many interesting sidelights in the history of the CMA Festival. Paul McCartney was the first non-country musician to perform at the Festival during its third year. At the same event, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner sang their last duet together before ending their partnership. Singer Kathy Mattea, under doctor's orders not to speak to preserve her vocal chords, “conversed” with her fans through a computer. At the Festival's 25th anniversary, Garth Brooks had so many fans that he signed autographs for 23 hours and 10 minutes straight, without taking a single break. The Festival was renamed CMA Music Festival in 2004. When the ABC network televised a special of the event, it ranked no. 16 in the ratings, with a viewership of 9 million people.

At the 2011 Festival, the big winners were Taylor Swift for Video of the Year, The Band Perry for Breakthrough and On Your Side awards and Blake Shelton for Male Video and Best Web Video trophies. Justin Bieber and Rascal Flatts received the Collaborative Video Award (the first country music award for Bieber). The other winners were Sugarland, Lady Antebellum, and Miranda Lambert, while The Zack Brown Band and Jimmy Buffett won the CMT Performance of the Year video.