Taking Music to the (Museum) Masses: Museum Engagement with the Country and Grunge Music Heritages of Nashville and Seattle

In recent decades there has been an increased interest in popular music’s role and contribution to heritage, its engagement within museum settings and in turn, its capacity to drive tourism. This chapter examines genre- and place-specific music tourism as it relates to two large-scale cultural institutions—the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the Museum of Popular Culture—in the North American cities of Nashville, Tennessee, and Seattle, Washington, respectively. In doing so, it considers the rich genre-specific popular music heritages of each city—country and grunge—and explores the ways in which this heritage is leveraged within each institution. In turn, it considers the positioning of music within official tourism campaigns of the city, and through an exploration of their curatorial practices and their positioning with clusters of activity, demonstrates the capacity for each to contribute dynamic music tourism experiences in their respective locales.