First there was the desk: the workspace of longtime NPR Music personality Bob Boilen. Then the brief concerts filmed next to it really starting blowing up online when major stars — say, T-Pain — came to that office in D.C. and shed their usual slick production, or in his case, his trademark pitch-bending AutoTune vocal effect.
Then Tiny Desk became a contest, one that independent artists across the U.S. could enter by sending in a live performance clip.
When I served as a contest judge a few years back, it was no easy task sorting through songs that varied so widely in style and presentation they’d rarely compete with each other in any other context. I didn’t envy this year’s judging panel either. They had nearly 7,500 submissions to consider.
Filipina rapper Ruby Ibarra emerged as the winner.
Ibarra’s on the Tiny Desk Tour, of course. And on the Nashville tour stop on Wednesday at The Basement East, she’ll be joined by local entrant Leah Marlene, who brings jazz complexity to singer-songwriter fare.
Marlene exemplifies a somewhat familiar path to the top-notch professionalism Nashville’s known for; she developed an early interesting in performing, then refined her songcraft at Belmont and brought her vocal chops to season 20 of “American Idol.”
And hers wasn’t the only head-turning clip out of Nashville this year. Tiny Desk entries music scenes paint a varied picture of Nashville’s independent music scene.
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