NASHVILLE, Tenn., Apr. 13, 2023 – Today, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum released to its website 13 original songs written and recorded by local students through an extension of the museum’s flagship educational program, Words & Music®. The songs were created between August 2022 and May 2023 in collaboration with Metro Nashville Public School’s Nashville School of the Arts (NSA) and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Through the program, NSA students received semimonthly guidance and mentoring from professional songwriters, artists and business leaders. They learned about and experienced every aspect of how a song finds its way to audiences, from the earliest idea of lyric-writing and music composition to the recording process and performing live.

Guest artists, songwriters and recording professionals included Shane Adams, Ellen Angelico, Kyshona Armstrong, Justin Croft, Wesley Dean, Eleonore Denig, Mason Douglas, Caitlin Evanson, Shannon LaBrie, Maestro Lightford, Rachael Moore, Adam Ollendorff, Ebonie Smith, Micah Tawlks and Phil Towns.

Images can be downloaded here (Courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum).

The museum’s program provides interdisciplinary support for both the school and the teacher that aligns to curriculum standards in core subject areas for students from preschool through 12th grade. Experiences for every grade level are designed to meet classroom needs through engaging, hands-on learning opportunities. Standards-based lesson materials are available in the museum’s Teacher Resource Portal. This online resource hub is filled with primary sources, making it easy for educators to incorporate country music history and culture into the classroom. Virtual fieldtrips and homeschool programs are also available.

Designed for grades 3-12, Words & Music allows students to tell their stories by writing original song lyrics, while developing language-arts skills. The program embraces and showcases country music’s legacy of songwriting and passes it down to the next generation of writers and thinkers. Through Words & Music, students interact with a professional songwriter, paired with their class, in an engaging performance workshop that transforms students’ lyrics into finished songs. More than 150,000 students have participated in the Words & Music program since its inception in 1979. More information on school programs and Words & Music can be found on the museum’s website.

Words & Music is made possible by the Country Music Association Endowment for Words & Music and is funded in part by American Airlines; Chet Atkins Music Education Fund of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee; CMA; CMA Foundation; Dollar General Literacy Foundation; The Memorial Foundation; Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission; Nashville Predators Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; PNC Grow Up Great; and Tennessee Arts Commission.