Weaving my way from backstage at the Grand Ole Opry to my seat, I marveled at a ceiling lined with suspended Gibson guitars. The audience and I had come to celebrate the Opry's 100th anniversary. The performance, which was being broadcast live, had “Whispering Bill” Anderson, the Opry's oldest living active member, perform before John Foster, a fresh-faced 18-year-old making his debut after a run on American Idol. I was still clutching the tissues I hadn't expected to need for Anderson's ballad “The Last One I'll Forget” when I joined the crowd in cheering Foster through his rendition of George Strait's “Murder on Music Row,” a fitting choice for the teenager whose sound has been praised as a return to the country music of the 1980s and '90s. “It doesn't happen in many other places where you have someone who's just been on American Idol share the stage with someone who's been around for more than 60 years,” executive producer Dan Rogers told me. “It just doesn't happen.”
For the past century the Opry has been Music City's crucible for forging country music myth and legend. In 1945 at the Opry, formerly called the WSM Barn Dance, Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys introduced American listeners to the genre that would come to bear the group's name. In 1959, following an introduction by Johnny Cash, a 13-year-old Dolly Parton made her Opry debut at the Ryman Auditorium, the program's longtime downtown home before moving in 1974 to the Grand Ole Opry House, north of the city.
Nashville became Music City with the Opry as its voice. But when familiar names like Anderson introduce new talent like Foster, whose career is steeped in nostalgia and tribute, the transition feels more like the renewal of tradition than an evolution. The Grand Ole Opry can still feel like a club with a very specific type of member. I am a native Tennessean and lifelong lover of country music. Going to the Opry always feels like a homecoming, even if the place never exactly felt like a home for someone like me, a queer Gen Z Taiwanese woman. But its original mission—to bring country music to new listeners—thrives within Nashville's next generation of venues and museums, which are creating inclusive spaces that counter the Opry's exclusivity.
Over the past five years, more than 100,000 new residents have moved into the Nashville area. Many have brought with them a fresh vision of what country music can mean. Inside one of the RNBW Queer Music Collective's biweekly music nights, disco balls and swathes of rainbow fabric surround young, fun, and queer fans of country music. Hosted at East Nashville's Lipstick Lounge, one of the 38 remaining lesbian bars in the United States, RNBW's packed queer music nights paint LGBTQ+ country as not the margin but the center. I stopped by a show later the same month as the Opry's anniversary extravaganza and bumped shoulders with a country crowd that felt unlike any other I'd ever found myself in. Cowboy hats sat atop dyed hair and wolf cuts; trucker hats and muscle tees were worn by more than just the men; and for once, I didn't feel like I was the minority—or that a human existed who didn't belong there. The collective was founded in 2016 by queer music executives Emily and Jamie Dryburgh at a political moment when the rights of the queer community were increasingly being threatened by Tennessee's passage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Just across from the Ryman, which is still going strong as one of Nashville's most iconic concert venues, and a five-minute walk away from the Country Music Hall of Fame, the four-year-old National Museum of African American Music shines an overdue spotlight on the Black artists who have long been integral—but too often overlooked—in shaping country's sound. The museum's 1,500-strong collection spans five centuries of African American music, from its West African origins via slave ships to the political roots of hip-hop.
These narratives of queer talent and musicians of color are scarcely addressed at the Opry, which has inducted only three Black members (DeFord Bailey, Charley Pride, and Darius Rucker) in its 100-year-history. Instead of waiting for the invitation to play, the Black Opry, a traveling revue and online community by and for Black country music lovers—and all country music lovers turned off by the genre's blind spots—has begun throwing its own parties. Founder and codirector Holly G launched the Black Opry as a blog in April 2021 to address a critical gap in the representation of queer and BIPOC voices in country music media. Through her own outreach and coordination, the Black Opry has become a nationally touring revue that has performed in venues including Washington, DC's Kennedy Center and the Newport Folk Festival. “As an institution, the Opry has a lot of work to do,” says Holly G, who does not use her surname in media interviews due to death threats she's received for her work to fight racism in the country music industry. “At a place that big, it's going to take more than just a few people to be able to make meaningful change. Our response to those ceilings is to build things on our own that do not rely on those institutions.” Followers of the Black Opry can catch its shows at live concerts such as West Nashville's Studio Mama Supper Club and cultural celebrations like Nashville Pride.
As the drama of Nashville's future and past plays out across its auditoriums and sawdusted dance floors, I'm reminded of the hope that can emerge from dissonance and difference. The Opry stands as a symbol for country music's history. That tapestry will remain incomplete without better representation, but the Opry's original mission is flourishing in places beyond its hallowed grounds.
This article appeared in the December 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
