Update, July 14: This event has been postponed until further notice. A statement on the Ryman website notes that there will be a special announcement regarding the event, and tickets already purchased will be valid for the new date.
Thanks to longtime contributor Betsy Phillips, there’s a good chance Scene readers know the significance of the Morris Memorial Building on Charlotte Avenue downtown. In a recent article about the effort to preserve the historic building, which operates under the name Save the Morris, Phillips points out that a previous building on the site was home to the biggest slave-trading firm in Nashville in the 19th century. Following multiple fires that eventually led to the destruction of the old building, the Morris Memorial Building was built on the site and opened in 1925, housing a number of businesses owned by Black Nashvillians.
“This is the secular miracle: to turn this place of casual brutality and evil directed at Black people into a place where Black Nashvillians thrived,” Phillips writes. “They took this fundamentally desecrated land and made it a place that was good for Black souls.”
The ultimate goal of Save the Morris is to get Metro to purchase the building and dedicate at least part of it to a museum dedicated to the experience of African Americans in Nashville. Saturday night, the Ryman will host a benefit concert to raise the profile of and funds for Save the Morris. Headlining is the one and only Grandmaster Flash, a head from the Mt. Rushmore of hip-hop whose work created some of hip-hop’s fundamental DJ techniques.
R&B-schooled pop songsmith Parson James, country singer-songwriter Reyna Roberts and DJ Kurtwurk will also join in. Tickets start at $25 and are available now.
