Music Cities
Every one of these cities owns a sound — a genre born in its bars or a composer buried in its cathedral. Music cities are destinations you visit with your ears first.
A music city is one where a sound was made, not merely performed — and the room where it happened usually still stands.
The room matters. Sun Studio is barely larger than a garage; Stax ran an integrated house band in a segregated city; Wagner sank the orchestra under a hood at Bayreuth so no seat would be socially superior and the sound would reach the audience already blended.
Institutions can be centuries old. Bach was cantor at Leipzig for twenty-seven years, writing a cantata most weeks, and the boys' choir he directed has existed since 1212 and still sings on Fridays. The Gewandhaus, founded by merchants in 1743, is the oldest civic orchestra there is.
Industry is not a dirty word here. Nashville turned songwriting into a business with staff writers, publishers and appointments, which is a fact about how the music got made.
Live is the test. These portraits point at venues and nights rather than at museums.
Find out who is playing while you are there.