- Hi, I'm Marcus K. Dowling.

I am the country music reporter at the Tennessean in the music capital of the world, Nashville.

(gentle acoustic music) I've been a lifelong fan of music.

I love music, I love expression, I love storytelling as well.

When I became a journalist, I became a journalist 20 years ago, just inspired by the idea that there was a void in the journalistic space for linking the story to the artist to the fan, and making that link stronger than ever before.

And that's something that my work has been predicated on for the large part of that time.

Nashville is important to the history of music, if only because country music is one of America's oldest genres and became commercialized here in Music City.

It's all the fruit coming back to the root, that's the shortest way of putting it.

I think that one of the most fundamental things about popular music is that you have music that are made by marginalized people throughout America's history, and their history is divorced from the music because it goes and is recorded and promoted by people who are not of those marginalized communities.

And something that has happened, largely because of streaming, also because of just pop access to music, is that it's allowed for these strange, unique couplings to occur where Tracy Chapman records "Fast Car" and then Luke Combs covers it.

Lil Nas X was attempting to make a rap song, and he found a country track, and he found a through line between trap music and country music, traditional country music at that.

Beyonce's a native of Houston, Texas.

She's been wearing cowboy hats since she was seven years old.

She's performed at the Houston Rodeo almost a half dozen times.

Her connection to country music and understanding, fundamentally, especially of the contemporary mainstream stylings of the genre is unparalleled, for sure.

Music is a great unifier because it either puts a singular vocal advocating for a broad thought, or a sound that is greater than any social condition at the forefront of everything else in that exact moment.

A three minute and 30 second pop song can change the world.

(gentle acoustic music) - [Narrator] This "NPT Arts Break" is made possible by the generous support of The Martha Rivers Ingram Advised Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.