Country Music Almanac 2025

BIPOC
LGBTQIA+
By
Stephen Trageser
January 16, 2025
Nashville Scene
Article

In this issue we catch up with phenomenal songsmith Fancy Hagood about how he’s found his voice within country music. We also check in with Saaneah, who was featured on Alice Randall’s My Black Country and made her debut on the Grand Ole Opry, seemingly the first Nashville-born Black woman to perform on the show. We consider what the CMA Awards giving Beyoncé a cold shoulder — for a second time — says about the industry. We recommend 10 artists to keep an eye on this year, and we hand over the mic to journalists and historians for their take on the highs, lows and in-betweens of country in our survey. It’s a big table; pull up a chair and dig in.

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Collage of three country music artists with different styles: a man in a leather jacket, a woman in colorful attire, and a woman in a white cowboy hat, beside the words "Country Music Almanac."
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Shoes Off Nashville

The brainchild of songwriter Benn Park, Shoes Off Nashville is a multi-faceted project created to celebrate and empower the Asian Pacific Islander community in Nashville, Tennessee. Live music showcases are held and interview articles are published every month.

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Playlist

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Gay Ole Opry Playlist

Karen & the Sorrows have been building queer country community in Brooklyn by running the Queer Country Quarterly and the Gay Ole Opry (gayoleopry.com) since 2011. Most of these bands have come to play for us, but some we're still wishing on!

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Bluegrass Pride

Our mission is to recruit, encourage, and support LGBTQ+ bluegrassers of all levels, promoting their advancement and acceptance within all areas of the bluegrass music industry and musical community. We aim to uplift the genre of bluegrass as a whole to receive LGBTQ+ folks openly, and to promote allyship with all marginalized peoples within the industry and musical community.

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