African American members of Nashville’s music industry will continue their groundbreaking conversation this Thursday, June 11, with a follow-up panel to answer an “outpouring of support and response” for their first revealing discussion.

“Follow-Up Q&A: A Conversation on Being an African American in the Nashville Music Industry,” again hosted by MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment, is set for 5 p.m. CDT Thursday.

All the June 2 panelists are returning for this second virtual event. They are:

• Charlene Bryant, founder of Riveter Management.
• Mickey Guyton, a singer-songwriter currently on Capitol Nashville Records.
• Gina Miller, senior vice president and general manager, Entertainment One Music Nashville.
• Shannon Sanders, a multi-Grammy Award-winning producer and program director for radio station 102.1 The Ville.
• Kortney Toney, corporate partnerships manager for the Nashville Symphony.
• Candice Watkins, vice president of marketing for Big Loud Records.

Click on the poster to register for the June 11 Zoom event.

Media college dean Beverly Keel and MTSU political science professor Sekou Franklin will return to moderate this Zoom discussion.

The event is free and open to the public. Attendees can register at http://smarturl.it/NashMxEqualityQA and submit questions at http://smarturl.it/NashMxQuestions.

“Due to the outpouring of support and response, we thought that it would be great to return with the original panel to answer questions that we were not able to get to on the music industry’s Blackout Tuesday,” said Toney, one of the event’s organizers.

“There appeared to be a space that we still needed to fill with answers, and we are glad to return and be able to do just that.

“Thank you all again for coming with an open heart and mind toward us and the painful experiences that we have had endured. I hope that this panel will stir up conversations within our music community and begin to reflect changes moving forward.”

More information about the June 11 event is available at http://facebook.com/NashvilleMusicEquality.

This discussion is the second in a series of events planned in 2020 to address race in Middle Tennessee. Nearly 1,000 people registered to attend the June 2 panel, which was part of Blackout Tuesday, the music industry’s nationwide observance designed to show solidarity with the African American community.

The first panel received national media attention, including coverage in The Washington Post and the Nashville Scene, which called it “monumental.”

The June 11 virtual panel discussion is sponsored by Change the Conversation, Digital Divas Nashville, Entertainment One Music Nashville, mtheory Nashville, the Music Business Association, the National Association of Black Female Executives in Music and Entertainment Nashville, Quinton Digital, the Recording Academy Nashville Chapter, and 102.1 The Ville.

For more information about MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment, visit www.mtsu.edu/media.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)