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Brooke Vespoli proudly claims the pop genre. She is a pop musician in Nashville, a place not known for pop music.
"Claiming pop is important to me" she told Music and Culture reporter Justin Barney. Adopting the genre of pop is a bit of a turn, because for the past couple decades there has been an effort to get rid of music labels to broaden the industry and up inclusivity.
When she moved to Nashville she didn’t even know what a mix was or how to produce music at all. She started experimenting. “I wanted to do performance art in Nashville” she said. At the time she was trying to figure out the connection between her music and her body.
She focused on movement. It planted the seed. And then one day, the way she should make music clicked and the Dancer First Philosophy came to her.
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Photo 1: Elizabeth Marsh
Photo 2 & video: Justin Barney
Photo 3: Elizabeth Marsh
Sports, education, music — quotes of the week is back, bringing you the quotiest quotes from our local stories.
We had a lot of gems from @thisisnashville_wpln profiles including an Olympic Gold Medalist, a public school teacher who performs drag, one of the few Black artists to ever crack the Billboard country charts and a director from Music City Baseball.
Plus a quote from Nashville musician book NOT brooke, who proudly claims the genre of pop (and wants to make you dance).
Tap link in bio for more stories and to listen to This is Nashville.
The latest poll from Vanderbilt University finds that the majority of Americans are concerned about the country’s future as the cost of living rises and trust among politicians weakens.
When asked, over 77% disagreed on the idea that their living expenses have decreased, and 63% believe the US economy is “bad.”
John Geer, co-director of the Vanderbilt Unity poll, worked with his team to learn what people are thinking.
They found that Americans are frustrated with how the two main political parties interact, and the majority don’t believe politicians care about them.
Only 12% of people believe that Democrats care about them, and only 13% of people believe Republicans care about them, with both describing the parties as lacking sympathy.
Geer says the lack of trust, along with a struggling economy, appears to signal that there will be a shift of power in upcoming elections, like ones we’ve seen across the world.
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Marianna Bacallao (@ba.marianna marianna) reports that Tio Fun Taqueria in North Nashville became a makeshift call center Monday afternoon for people contacting their representatives on behalf of Estefany Rodriguez Florez, a local reporter detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE arrested Rodriguez last week while she was driving a car marked with her Spanish-language outlet, Nashville Noticias. Her attorneys allege that ICE did not produce a warrant when they arrested Rodriguez, who claimed political asylum in the U.S. because she received death threats for reporting in Colombia.
ICE officials say that they did have a warrant, although evidence of one submitted to the court was partially blank and missing her alien number.
A federal judge has set a Thursday deadline for ICE to submit written justification for the arrest.
Rodriguez had been reporting on immigration enforcement efforts in Nashville. Her colleagues at Nashville Noticias joined community members Monday to advocate for her release.
Photo 1: Courtesy of Nashville Noticias
Photo 2: Marianna Bacallao / WPLN
As immigration enforcement in Tennessee faces increased scrutiny, state lawmakers want to further limit what records of ICE operations are open to the public.
As Marianna Bacallao (@ba.marianna) reports, the Tennessee Senate approved a measure that would make confidential the names and addresses of officers involved in immigration enforcement — and shield any documents related to future operations from public records requests. If a state employee releases that information, they could be charged with a felony under the proposal.
Follow along for more and tap link in bio for full news coverage on our site.
There’s a good chance that you already know Nashville is the radio capital for country music. That’s what gets the most attention, but it’s not the whole story.
Contemporary Christian radio and hip-hop and R&B radio have their own Nashville presence, and comparing them side by side, like I’ve done in some of my recent research, is telling.
Welcome to Key Changes, created by our Senior Music Writer Jewly Hight. This is an invitation to join Jewly as she flips through her reporter’s notebook every two weeks— on air, online and in social media videos — and shares with you how she`s making sense of what’s happening in the rapidly changing music landscape.
Follow along for more, and tap link in bio to see her full story on our site.
Unearthed video footage and a documentary changed our Music and Culture reporter Justin Barney`s mind about Elvis. He asserts now that Elvis` best years are the Las Vegas years.
Baz Luhrmann unearthed new footage of Elvis (from a salt mine) and created "EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert" which captures Elvis as he goes from innovator to icon.
Follow for more music and culture stories. Tap link in the bio to get more of our ongoing news coverage.
Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that he was removing her from her position, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivered a keynote speech at a Nashville hotel on Thursday.
WPLN’s Marianna Bacallao (@ba_marianna) reports Noem still touted the president’s mass deportations efforts and rallied against “sanctuary cities” in her address to law enforcement.
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Curious Nashville Returns!
Back by popular demand, the WPLN fan favorite series Curious Nashville is here to investigate oddities, share local history, tell stories of interesting people, and explain how local institutions operate.
You ask the questions, and we answer.
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NashVillager Podcast: Milky Way Farm
Artificial food dyes banned from Tennessee school meals as lawmakers advance MAHA policy
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