The Cedar sat down with Holly G., founder of Black Opry: an organization advocating for Black artists in country music. Learn about Holly G.’s venture into opening once rigid country music spaces to Black people, what it means to support artists equitably, and her evolving curatorial style.
The Cedar: What is The Black Opry about and how long ago did you start blogging about the lack of diversity in country music audiences?
Holly G: I launched The Black Opry as a blog in April of ‘21. It's been about a year and a half, but it didn't really stay as a blog for very long. About three months into the project, I met up with the other organizers and that's what sparked it to work. It shifted very quickly into touring and live events and panels. Building community has been the core focus of all of it. It was never my intention to do live music; I just wanted a blog.
I was in this weird space. It was right around the time after George Floyd was murdered, and I was in this weird space where [I thought], “I'm not an activist, and I don't really want to take that on. I don't wanna change the world, but what's in my world that I can consume better?” The conversation had really gotten into consumerism and how our buying habits affect white supremacy. I asked myself, “What do I consume and how do I do it in a better way?” The biggest thing in my world is country music. When I started looking towards how to consume country music better, there were not spaces that were given to diversity. There were not many places that were welcoming to people of color, so my goal was to create a space where I could find other artists of color. It blew up from there. We now have over 250 artists in our database. It's insane every time I think about it, because I just thought, “I’m gonna send out some tweets.”
White people don't realize there are rooms that you walk into where you are the only person of color. The white people that do notice make an effort to smile at you or make you feel a bit more welcome, but you have to know that is not the country music industry. They see you there, and they're glaring at you. “What are you doing here?” It's a very heavy sense of just not “you're not supposed to be there.”
The Cedar: Why?
Holly G: Because of what's been ingrained. That's the fan base that they built, and because they make so much money off of it, they don't want to do anything about it. I've asked a lot of the bigger institutions multiple times, “Are you willing to push out some of the people that are causing and creating a tension that prohibits a safer environment? Can you bring in people that you might not have had a chance to be here before?” and the answer is, unequivocally, “No.” They do not want to push anybody out. They don't wanna take that risk. They don't wanna lose any money. Because the powers that be are okay with the way it is, there is no change, and you're at the mercy of whatever that powerful white dude can control. I’m hoping we will have some type of ethical awakening because this industry is making money, so there's nothing else that you can use to leverage or try to force people to do anything because they've already got what they want and it's working for them. It's just waiting to see if they will decide that being a person is more important than money.
Holly G., founder of the Black Opry.
The Cedar: Why do you continue to push forward? Why not just walk away?
Holly G: I did think about that before I launched. when I was thinking about what I was gonna do about the fact that I love this music that I also felt was harmful. When I started thinking about it, I said to myself, “Just let it go.” It felt like a huge loss. We give up so much because of white supremacy and capitalism. We’re forced to constantly sacrifice and especially now with social media, we’re so much more aware of things that are problematic. I feel I'm constantly letting go and pushing things away, “I can’t support this place anymore, I can't go to this place anymore because of all these things, I'm not gonna do that this time,” you know what I mean? It's not our fault that country music has been built within systematic racism, but I have to give it up if I enjoy it. But instead of giving it up, I found a better way.
People who benefit from these systems are privileged, and those people see privilege as a bad word. We have to change that. I have privilege; I have to acknowledge that the thing that I get to complain about is music. Instead of it being that I live in poverty or bad work conditions, I'm literally complaining about not being able to go to a concert, and that's a privilege. There are so many other people of color and people that are out there fighting for a much larger cause. The fact that that was the thing that affected me so badly I wanted to do something about it, I have to acknowledge my privilege.
The Cedar: You quit your day job to do The Black Opry full time. What takes up most of your day now?
Holly G: The bulk of what I'm doing right now is trying to figure out the marketing and PR piece of it. I wasn't trying to start a business, but we got to a point where I had so many bookings, my agent said, “You have to start an LLC yesterday to make sure that you're covered for this.” It's just so crazy. Because I was working full-time as a flight attendant, the only thing I really had time for was to keep it going and not really put effort into growing it. I was very, very fortunate that it grew, but now I want to use the extra time that I have to make sure that we're reaching as many people as possible. That's what it's about: bringing people together, getting fans for these artists, and then building a community of fans that understand that they have a safe space now to enjoy this type of music.
The Cedar: Maybe it grew so fast, because there was a need for these kinds of spaces..
Holly G: Exactly. When I googled it, I couldn’t find anything. When I searched Black country singers, I was not really looking for a singer so much as it was for the platform. Let's figure out how to be different from that if there's a need for it. I was looking for something out there and wanted to find a way to support or work with something that was out there already. There was nothing there. Not a single website that focused only on Black country music.
I never imagined making money off of it, because I just wanted it to be a blog. It became a way to sustain ourselves financially, but that happened by accident, too. We had rented this house at Americana Fest in Nashville, and because everybody was here for that, Every day we had about 40 or 50 people at the house, and it was such a beautiful intersectional experience of community. We said, “You don't have to be Black to come, but you need to know that this is a Black space, so if you're not respectful of that, then we ask that you don't come,” and all of these people came and they said, “We don't have anywhere else to go that feels safe. This is a diverse experience that we see here, so we want to be a part of this.” I had a house for a week, and there was never a time that there was ever less than 15 people in there. Everyone would sit around on the floor at night, and all of these people would just pass a guitar on songs for six or seven hours at a time. A couple of days after we left, one of the artist that was there was supposed to play a show with another girl, but the girl got COVID and so she called me and asked, “Do you think that we could get five of the artists to come up here to New York and do a show with a writers around?”
Everybody that I called immediately said yes, and then all of these artists around the US called and said, “We didn't know that. Can you come to a show here?” I was like, “I don't know. Luckily, a booking agent stepped in and helped me navigate all of that. It just happened so organically and almost by accident. I thought, “Maybe in 2025, we'll have something built up on where we could do a show,” but that was such a far away thing that I could not have conceptualized something like this. It never connected to me that this could be built into a business.
The Cedar: Did someone explain how to be a booking agent?
Holly G: It felt like somebody dropped me in the middle of a McDonalds kitchen and said, “Alright, good luck. You get all the ingredients, there's an order on the waiting list, figure it out.”
It was very fortunate that we did have a booking agent, so our booking agent takes care of all of the logistics of getting the show booked with the venues. From that point, I step in and curate the lineup for the show. I had to learn as I was doing it. We had probably about 15 shows in the first few months, and I went to every show. From the time we got there, to loading in, to the time that we were cleaning up the green room at the end of the day. I was just watching and figuring out how things were in a venue. I was asking people a bunch of questions, which I'm sure got on their nerves. But I was able to learn very, very quickly.
Typically you learn something better when you get put in an environment, and there's a process. When you’re not immersed in a process, you may miss out on a lot of stuff. I feel if you’re there, you absorb it in a different way that sticks with you a lot better. You're gonna remember the time that you forgot to ask for the cables or something.
The Cedar: How do you curate the shows? Do you take on budding artists?
Holly G: We are a little more selective now, only because we have so many festivals that we're doing this year that are not really suited towards newer artists. For the festivals, we take more experienced artists, but for the one-off shows, those are really a mix of more experienced musicians as well as new musicians. They're not thrown on stage by themselves. I didn't realize how big of a deal stage banter is. Especially when you play an instrument, you have to be able to interact with the crowd, like when you have to tune your instrument or something, it's very awkward if it’s too quiet.
I have them in these writer rounds, and I've watched them develop their onstage techniques on how to interact with the audience. Because they get to be around other artists, there are things that they can learn and pick up and figure out. It's also a great opportunity because we have more experienced artists that want to work out new material, and it's a really good environment for that. It really works, but as far as who I decide I will take on, I really don't look at anything other than I'll listen to the 30-second clip and make sure that they can sing and they can play their instrument adequately. I try not to take into account a lot of the things that have been barriers of entry to the industry for these artists.
“Is this person talented enough to be on the stage?” If the answer to that is yes, I give them the chance. I don't wanna put myself in a position where I'm continuing the legacy of gatekeeping that has kept them out in the first place. We know that these artists have not had the same resources and opportunities as some of their white counterparts, so I don't feel it's fair to judge them on the same standards.
The Cedar: What can someone who has not seen a Black Opry show before expect to see when they come to the show?
Holly G: One of the most engaging things about our show is the story telling. The really cool part about it, especially in a city that doesn't get a lot of writers, is the writer's rounds. You really get to hear the stories behind the songs, and the other thing that people always tell me that they are excited about when they see one of our shows is watching the artists interact with each other on stage. There's not a lot of environments where artists get to exist with each other without somebody directing what's going on. This is a place where they get to exist together, and you can see the community on stage as they engage and interact. Sometimes they'll sing on each other’s songs, so it's a really special experience to come and feel like you're part of something bigger than just that one night of music.
The Cedar: Why do you love country music so much?
Holly G: I don't know, I wish I had a better answer. It was one of those things where you don't always get to choose what you're drawn towards. Everything that I grew up enjoying gravitated towards as a child, all of my other interests and hobbies have pretty much faded, but country music was a thing that stuck with me for some reason.