Country Music Almanac 2022: The Black Opry Makes Vital Space for BIPOC Artists | Cover Stories

Though the Black Opry was founded less than one year ago, the quickly growing community for country artists who are Black, Indigenous and people of color has already made an indelible mark on the country music scene in Nashville and beyond. The grassroots effort, founded by country fan and advocate Holly G, saw many successes in 2021, including a much-celebrated Black Opry House gathering at AmericanaFest and Black Opry Revue events in cities across the country.

The Scene caught up with Holly G and two Black Opry artists, Roberta Lea and Aaron Vance, to talk about the organization and its influence on mainstream country music. Lea is a Virginia-based singer-songwriter whose 2021 EP Just a Taste was one of the year’s more exciting introductions to an emerging artist. And Vance, a Nashvillian by way of Mississippi, has been writing and performing for more than a decade, with 2021’s Cabin Fever finding a broad audience on streaming platforms.

Our conversation took place just days after Morgan Wallen, who was caught on tape using the N-word about a year ago, made a surprise appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. The incident sparked outrage from country fans who long for greater equity in the genre and inspired hateful, racist vitriol from defenders of Wallen, who at press time has done next to nothing to discourage his fans from perpetrating such attacks.

For readers who are discovering your work for the first time, could you each describe what drew you to pursue careers in music, as well as share a bit about how you got connected with one another?

Roberta Lea: I’m a singer, songwriter, producer. I write and produce all of my work. Before, I was more in the lane of pop and R&B. I was in just about every lane. Now that I take a look at some of the work I’d written before, a lot of it was country. But as far as my pursuit in the music industry, I didn’t quite think that country had a space for me, despite the fact that I did write and sound like country. I would get a lot of compliments when I would do open mics and sing. I didn’t know how to receive that because I didn’t think there was space for me in country music. … When it came to doing country music, I started to follow [Apple Music Radio show] Color Me Country with Rissi Palmer. I started to follow the conversation on Twitter just to see if we were out there. That’s how Holly and I ended up meeting, was commenting on one of Rissi’s posts. My comment was that I wasn’t sure about our Black presence in Nashville, because I didn’t want to go down there and have them receive us reluctantly. What if they say, performatively, “OK, fine, we’ll let you guys in,” but is their heart there to support us? Holly pumped me up and we ended up following and being connected.

Aaron Vance: I’m the son of a preacher, singer-songwriter, artist. Everything I write, I publish it, own it, copyright it. What got me into country music was my family. My dad’s a preacher and my granddaddy was a truck-driving farmer. When I was born, I come up around farming and country music. My granddaddy was a big Waylon [Jennings] fan so I took to that, and my dad was a preacher so I sang in church every Sunday. With that, I’ve always been around it. I connected with the outlaw country and I connected with traditional country, like George Strait and Randy Travis. I was always around that type of living. … I guess you could say I’ve been in it since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

Holly G: I just really, really love country music. I’ve always been a huge fan of it. It was just a matter of trying to figure out a way to continue to enjoy something that had basically unequivocally stated that it didn’t have any respect for me in return. That’s when I started seeking out these people. I have a background in hospitality management, and it became clear that my passion for music, my business background — all of those things have come together and it made it easy for me for this to fall in line. My day job is a flight attendant, so I’m able to travel to get to these guys, and I have more freedom in my schedule to do this work. [To Lea and Vance] So, this January compared to last January, what’s the difference in how you feel about the trajectories of your careers?

RL: Well thanks to Black Opry, the trajectory is going straight up. That speaks volumes, of course, to you and Black Opry, but it also speaks to the country music scene and why there hasn’t been a space there [for Black artists]. Between last January and this year, it has been a whirlwind in a very positive way.

AV: Last January … I was offered an opportunity to write a song on a guitar with the Acoustic Guitar Project that was hosted by the Country Music Hall of Fame. Little did I know that a year later I would be singing this song and representing Black Opry with it. Within 365 days, the time I have spent writing songs and the opportunities I’ve taken, it’s like cooking biscuits. The Black Opry said, “All right, let me come put this bad boy in the oven.” And everything’s just rising. I’m glad I stayed ready. The timing was everything.

HG: Which is crazy, because we didn’t exist last January, when you worked with the Hall of Fame. I didn’t know I was going to do any of this.

To your point, Holly, it’s wild to think that Black Opry is less than a year old, given all the success you’ve had so far. When you first began the work, what sense did you have of how the community would grow?

HG: I was hoping to find, like, five people I could talk to about Miranda Lambert. [Laughs] I was like, “If I can find five other people that also have any mild interest in country music, I’ll be happy.” It really started as a journey to healing with my own relationship to country music. I felt like there had to be a better way for me to participate in it than to feel like I was always looking over my shoulder, or always having to prove my interest. As a Black person who says you like country music, there’s a test that comes after that. “Oh, you like country music? Well, name five artists.” Or, “You like Brad Paisley? Tell me one of his songs.”

To have a community of people where I don’t have to prove myself and I can be myself, I don’t have to present myself in a way that I feel like won’t piss them off for some reason, it’s a relief. I didn’t have any inclination that any of this would happen, because the message sent to Black people who are making country music or working around it is that you’re the only one. That’s why any time we get together, there will be a few moments when we get really quiet and go, “Holy shit, there’s a lot of us.” Can’t tell that lie no more.

Roberta, a moment ago you mentioned the difference between true inclusivity and people being performative and wanting to give off the impression of being equitable. Can you dig into that a little more, with relation to how it’s affected your career?

RL: It’s interesting because, even locally speaking, if I grab my guitar and I go to a predominantly Black space and sing country music, it’s a very positive experience. All eyes and all ears, and respect for the stage, respect for the microphone — they hype me up, big time. But when I would go to predominantly white spaces that were etched out for country music it was completely different. I’ll never forget, when I first started going to open mics I went to one space and got up to perform a song I’d just released. It was a predominantly white bar and the artists performing that night were white men. In the midst of singing my song, there was a drunk white man in the back mocking me, like, “Yo, homie, what’s up?” It’s like, “Wow, I didn’t notice you acting like this when the other guys were performing.”

It’s hard to have those experiences and think genuinely that if you go to the biggest country city in the world that you’re going to be received. … Even over this weekend, with the Morgan Wallen situation, people need to understand that it’s not just about Morgan Wallen. It’s about these layers of exclusivity when it comes to a community that’s heavily contributed to the genre.

When white artists make music and do interviews, they generally get to talk about the song or the album without having to tell a story like you just told, about being assaulted with racist language. Right this minute, we’re addressing equity and gatekeeping before really even digging into the music itself. That has to be a heavy extra burden to bear.

HG: I was talking to [CMT’s] Leslie Fram about this. When a Black artist goes into an interview — even if it’s a great interview and they only talk about their music — there are so many other things they have to carry with them into that interview. They’re not just going to promote or talk about their music. They have to make sure, when they walk into that room, that that person is not going to prejudge them based on the color of their skin. They’re walking in like, “How do I make sure that I don’t make them mad? How do I know if they actually like me? How do I know that I’m not being tokenized?”

There are all these things they have to think about, whereas a white artist going into an interview is focused on, “How do I get them to like my music?” We have 15 steps to go through before we can even get to that point. … That’s also why we need more Black people in the journalism space. It’s a much different experience being interviewed by someone who looks like you. I’ve been interviewed a lot and the questions that come from Black people and the questions that come from white people are very different.

Going back to your point earlier, Roberta, if we’d spoken a few days ago, before Morgan Wallen appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, this conversation might have gone differently. And Holly, you seemed to land right in the middle of it.

HG: Last year, when he actually said the N-word, we were still quarantining and I’d been holed up in my house, and the only thing I’d been listening to was Morgan Wallen. His music had brought me out of a very dark place. People think I do this stuff because I’m just trying to take the white man down. And I’m like, “No, you guys don’t understand. I really love this kind of music. I’m doing it because I like it and I don’t want to have to feel the way that I feel when I listen to it.” So, I’d been really enjoying Morgan Wallen, and then he did that, and it felt really heavy and depressing and reinforced feelings I had of not being wanted in the genre. I had the idea for Black Opry and the time — I was thinking of launching it in 2023 — and then that happened and I was like, “It can’t wait that long.”

The difference between then and now is that I don’t really care what he’s doing. I don’t care that he’s on the Opry, because we have so many other things going on. I care in the sense that I know now where the Opry stands, and I know that I don’t need to deal with them anymore. But it doesn’t affect me negatively anymore. I feel so energized. It’s gotten so many eyes on what we’re doing. Black Opry platforms Black artists, but it’s not just for Black people. There are so many white people that are completely fed up with having to participate in a system that they know is harmful to marginalized people and feel just like I was — “I love country music but I don’t want to sit on the same side as these folks.”

AV: People are scared of things that are new. But it ain’t new. It’s old. Hank Williams was taught by “Tee Tot” — Rufus Payne. The reason I say that is I’ve played in places where I’d be the only person in that bar this color. … During the Morgan Wallen situation last year, I’d just come off the high of playing at the Country Music Hall of Fame. When I heard this, I thought, “Man, what’s really going on in country music?”

HG: People say to me a lot, “Why can’t you just forgive [Wallen]?” But honestly, it really has nothing to do with forgiveness. And it has very little to do with Morgan Wallen. The problem is that, when he did what he did, he created an environment for racist people. He created a safe space for them. He’s apologized for what he’s done, but at no point has he come out and said, “I don’t want these people at my concerts. I don’t want them to follow me. I don’t want them harassing Black people on social media.” So, he basically created this bubble where people that are racist can come and feel safe and feel comfortable. When you invite him somewhere, like the Opry, the message you send to Black artists is that it’s also OK for the people who follow him to show up, too.

RL: I’m old enough to remember when Jennifer Lopez said the N-word in a song [“I’m Real”]. There was backlash. People expressed that they didn’t like that. And then it was over and moved on. Why? Because R&B was not a hostile space for Black people. We just didn’t like that she used that word. But that space, R&B and BET, had Black artists, white artists. There was space there. Why, in country music, are we not there?

People have really weaponized Morgan Wallen. His album sales skyrocketed after he used the N-word and his fans have defended him vehemently, in a way that seems more like an excuse to engage in deeply racist behavior than a genuine interest in the music.

HG: That’s the problem. If he was coming out like, “Look, I don’t want to be a part of that. Stop bringing that to my fan base,” it would be something different. But he doesn’t. He characterizes the criticism as simply being “noise.” When you describe something as “noise,” that’s something you don’t want to hear and is getting in your way. When you do something that hurts people and respond that it’s a distraction to you, that means those people don’t matter to you. … What he said might not have been in a racist context, but it’s hard to argue now that he’s not when he’s OK with those around him.

Incidents like this just further underscore the importance of Black Opry’s work. As you look ahead into 2022, which sounds like it will be a big year, what’s bringing you excitement and hope, both with Black Opry and individually?

AV: I ain’t gotta write no more songs for a little bit. I was at the office yesterday like, “Man, there’s a lot of shows coming up, and I’ve got nine years of songs.” That’s a good thing.

HG: I think I’m most excited about us having more opportunities to get together. It feels like therapy when we all get together.

AV: It is.

HG: I’m always thinking in my head, “There’s no way the next time can top the last time,” but every time we get together there’s always something new and cool. Meeting each other was cool, but watching these relationships develop was even cooler. We’ll be at the house and there are 20 people in there and one of them will start singing their songs, and you’ll hear everybody in harmony all throughout the house.