The following is an online extra from our September issue, heading to newsstands now.
Image by Thinkstock
Proposed:
The Virginia Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Mission Statement:
To document, preserve and pay tribute to the influential and prominent musicians and indigenous music genres of Virginia, while also drawing attention to contemporary sounds from all musical genres.
The Layout
Hall of Fame Gallery: A permanent exhibit space that showcases the most celebrated Virginia-born artists. Incorporating rare film clips, sound samples, touch-screen interactive displays and original artifacts — like, say, bluegrass musician Jesse McReynold's mandolin, jazz and pop singer Keely Smith's cocktail dress or rock guitarist Link Wray's distorted guitar amplifier. (Hey, we're dreaming here, right?)
Spotlight Gallery: A rotating space to showcase visiting exhibits from other museums that feature Virginia musicians.
Performance Space: This 850-seat venue for live concerts could be wired to accommodate streaming and traditional broadcast audio, as well as recording projects and regular radio shows, including syndicated "Live From the Museum" programs that could feature noteworthy and emerging Virginia artists in all genres.
Listening Room and Library: Do you feel the need to consult "The Bible" — that would be Kip Cornell's "Virginia's Blues, Country, and Gospel Records, 1902-1943: An Annotated Discography" — or Ruth Brown’s autobiography? Would you like to watch a rare performance of Roanoke piano jazz legend Don Pullen, or hear an unreleased Patsy Cline song? This would be the place, filled with archival recordings, books, films and video collected by a robust archives division. Also, it will corral the music nerds and keep them from mingling with the general public.
Programming: The rotating exhibits in the seasonal gallery, four to six per year, would help to tell the story. Here, we could see a grand display on Southwest Virginia's rich bluegrass traditions, or on the influential and internationally known Virginia Beach hip-hop scene. A special retrospective on the art of Richmond's GWAR could be followed by a historical overview of the importance of early Colonial singing schools.
Far from a stuffy mausoleum, or a place to store old costumes and antique musical instruments, this mythical Virginia Music Hall of Fame and Museum, if planned with expertise and care, could serve as a cultural hub, a meeting space, a hangout and a source for inspiration.
Who Gets In?
The Virginia Music Hall of Fame would house and pay tribute to the giants. Virginians (or, really, everyone) would nominate each year’s honorees, and the inductees would be chosen by a hand-selected group of folklorists, music writers, historians and musicologists — no city or state officials, booster group reps, or Dominion Energy executives, please (unless they can pass a really hard test of musical knowledge administered by the Library of Virginia’s Gregg Kimball). For its first wave of inductees, the Virginia Music Hall of Fame should honor pre-1960s pioneers. Later ballots would be smaller and see the eligibility of 1960s-1970s performers and so on. Honorees should have career longevity and should be Virginia-born or have contributed sizably to Virginia's musical culture.
Outreach: Rotating exhibits, once they leave the hall, could travel to cultural institutions, museums and schools across the state.
Partnerships: Virginia Humanities, the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College, the Library of Virginia, The Crooked Road musical heritage trail, the Norfolk Musical Walk of Fame, the Richmond Jazz Society, the College of William & Mary's Hip-Hop Archive.
Affiliates: Winchester's Patsy Cline Museum, the Ralph Stanley Museum in Galax, the Virginia Musical Museum in Lightfoot.
