This recording brings together a rich variety of artists who

individually contribute to a complex understanding of how we

perform religion and spirituality, yet simultaneously provides a

strong collective voice how one urban community performs religion

on a daily basis. God in Music City focusses on the ways in which

local and regional identity is both formed (and informed) by religious

and musical practice Nashville, Tennessee-Music City USA.

How does music shape our religious identity?How does our religious

and spiritual experience shape how we listen to, perform, or

otherwise experience music? And how does location (Nashville, in

particular) shape these inter-related issues? In what sense is the

music industry shaped by, or a shaper of, religion?Is music a

religion in Nashville? Is religion made of music in Nashville?

Addressed in the texts of individual tracks are responses to these

questions by artists as they explore these and related issues while

engaging the ways in which music and religion are performed in

specific Nashville contexts (and in other Southern contexts more

broadly). This recording project grew out of the efforts of a cohort

of scholars at Vanderbilt focusing on Music, Religion, and the South

sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture.