The Defy Film Festival is a unique gem in the landscape of Nashville. For the past ten years, it has showcased a staggering variety of films - short films, full-length, fictional, documentary, experimental, musical, humorous, heartbreaking, inspiring, confusing, disgusting, invigorating and all points in between. It's a labor of love from founders Dycee Wildman, Billy Senese and their crew.
If you live in Nashville, you already know this.
To celebrate their 10th birthday, Defy asked YK to contribute a small writeup and playlist for a limited edition zine available at the festival.
Below is the text of that contribution and the playlist. My intent was to showcase a smidgen of the local musical talent in Nashville in the same manner that Defy showcases the film talent from across the globe. I do hope you enjoy.
There’s a saying around town that is as trite as it is true: “Nashville is more than country music.” Mostly you’ll hear it spoken by anyone from Nashville talking to anyone not from Nashville, desperately trying to express that while Music City has a deep history with country music it’s also rich with delights well outside of that. Of course we do! Every city is more than the stereotype that strangles it.
However, that doesn’t mean that finding and enjoying those gems outside of pop country are easy to come by. Part of the commercial infrastructure of Nashville is a pipeline of country songwriters, country record labels, country radio, country bars and country tourism. The mechanisms for finding an audience when you’re an indie rock band, or a hip-hop artist or a shoegaze adjacent noise band are not quite as refined.
But Nashville is more than country music.
This playlist captures the tiniest slice of music from Nashville that defies the expectations put upon the city. In just over an hour, you’ll hear moving art rock, Italian electro dance, psychedelic freakouts, clever hip-hop, delicate R&B, at least one protest song against transphobic ideology and a whole lot more.
Brevity is the soul of wit, so there is a lot excluded here. Massive treasure troves in fact! Heavy hitters like Paramore, Jack White, and Taylor Swift do plenty for the visibility of Nashville but you don’t need to discover them. Innovative acts from decades past like Dessau, Jason & The Scorchers, or The Ratz are still out there for you to discover. The list of music you need to hear from the independent Nashville music scene is damn near infinite but this is a good place to start.
DEFY Film Fest has always felt like it embodied the same spirit as these artists; creating something artistically authentic that blooms into existence outside of the establishment. Congratulations to Dycee, Billy and everyone involved for the past ten years to document these works and get them into our eyeballs. Nashville truly is more than country music. Trite but true.