CMA Festival: The Ultimate Fan Experience

Abstract

Nashville’s CMA music festival is a popular annual event where detailed schedules outline musical performances and regulate most aspects of the festival experience. Many country-music fans consider the festival to be a homecoming. This perception is largely due to the country-music industry and the city of Nashville, which during the festival provides a theatrical space for fans to both witness and perform their preconceived notions of country music. Such performances are reinforced by the festival’s setting: Downtown Nashville, where narratives of country music’s past are combined with and reinforced by the current, vibrant music industry occurring alongside the city’s historic places of production and performance. The festival space, therefore, permits fans to both witness and become part of the country-music tradition through a performance of Nashville and country-music fandom in the present. In this portion of the chapter, I explore touristic performances of Nashville and the country-music tradition at the 2014 and 2015 CMA music festivals, illustrating the importance of participation in the realization of the festival and the fan experience. Through participation, festival attendees move beyond the role of spectator and, in their assumption of true fandom, realize a heightened fan experience, perform the role of the local, and become a vital part of the country-music tradition and Nashville’s multifaceted musical identity.