It’s time to start thinking about the entire city of Nashville as an enigma. Mislabeled and oft-disregarded as anything more than what it is that the mislabeling embosses upon its creative - especially musical – spectrum, the real Nashville – the real Music City – has a thriving creative culture much more worthy of the title than the reputation that its country-oriented posturing leaves it known for through a pop culture lens. Beyond the party busses humming and the chaotic human low points reached every minute by another lost soul on the stretch of Lower Broadway, everyone truly standing up for Nashville – really working in and representing the city – and its surrounding webs of townships and neighborhoods, is seemingly an artist or involved in the artsy undergrounds to some extent, working on extracurricular explorations of their passions, be it musical, visual, stylistic, photographical, or otherwise. Nashville’s creative scene is deeper than you may think – deeper than we once knew. It’s legitimate and growing and locally sourced. And during the Summertime, there is no better display of it all than the spectrum of the Deep Tropics Music Festival, which merges together the artists and movements currently lifting the city with theartists from elsewhere who want to be a part of its renaissance.

 

From those on the stages to those in the crowds; from those professionals documenting it all on their cameras to those fans simply doing so on their phones, there is something unique about what it is that Deep Tropics is really doing for the merging of lanes on, in front of, and behind the stage; on the team and behind what it is that led for Deep Tropics to begin in the first place in 2018. A music festival, sure. A successful green experiment on zero-footprint gatherings, too. But also a cultural mosaic where the interwoven network upon which the festival is ultimately founded – upon the networks of Nashville’s own creative communities – and the artists from elsewhere willing to bring their own unique performances to the scene for a night or two from, feels so effortlessly natural. There’s beauty behind the simplicity in it, and organic texture in its collaborative and understanding energy. It’s an energy in the city connecting those from Nashville, new to Nashville, or simply part of Nashville for a weekend.

 

And it’s the same beauty that’s often also behind myriad cityside festivals with smaller grounds than their camping in bum-fuck-nowhere counterparts. There is intimacy in the urban setting of a celebration of music and art; something intimate and more layered about after-parties in local clubs. It is a celebration of not only culture, but culture founded first and foremost locally. There is ultimately something even more intimate about such a festival, with such a well-curated list of quickly emerging local talent, starry global names, and grimy late-night DJ sets spun from the rooftops and the basements, when it happens in a place so historically founded on the wide-ranging creation and cultivation of music. Through Deep Tropics, all of it is not only happing in the Music City, but breaking the mold of Nashville’s expectations. More than anything, it is the thumping of bass that draws the festival’s stylistic expanse akin.

 

In the corner of the grounds lies Deep Tropics’ secondary stage. Named Congo, the space existed through the weekend as an explosively high-octane space for local talent, particularly a select half-dozen or so names putting on proper display the rangy underground hip-hop scene that Nashville will soon be known for. As the festival grounds open, so too do set times that could be longer, on a stage that could be bigger and better designed. But through the adversity – through the mud – and at least once quite literally through the stage itself – the collection of local Nashville rappers and producers tasked with starting the party ended up stealing it – or at least leading it – altogether and through the rest of the weekend. Vibrant performance led by volatile runs of poeticism turned the sweltering sauna-like uncomfortability of August Nashville afternoons into an interactive mosh-pit where the sweat and the heat felt entirely accpetable. And when those performances ended, and things begun to tee up at the main stage, the party, too, made moves.

 

Called Meru, the main stage at Deep Tropics, built into the amphitheater at Bicentennial Park beneath the shadow of the Tennessee State Capitol Building, is certainly a larger space than Congo, but still provides the intimacy that makes the entire weekend such a special annual event. DJ’s spanning both the stylistic and geographic gambit of modern electronic production came to spin their best and most bass-ridden rhythms for a Nashville crowd that those from outside of Nashville would probably not assume is in Nashville at all. And at the front of the crowd, every time, was a mosaic collection of artists, creatives, and fans who first lit the match at the Congo stage. Here, the blended atmosphere of Deep Tropics where hip-hop artists and electronic DJ’s; where local rising talent and established global names converge as one, is both an image and an homage to what is already in the city, and those that already see it. As things continue to churn in Nashville, and as the impossibly talented collection of local artists continue to forge their own paths, especially through the hip-hop and Neo-Soul centric undergrounds, artists from Nashville, too, will be main staging alongside the DJ’s that have long defined Deep Tropics’ central lineups.

 

Those same local talents are already also leading the way for the scattering of Deep Tropics after-parties around the city. From a rooftop club called Acme overlooking – and henceforth reimaging – Broadway’s all-too-cultureless span, to more downtempo, neighborhood club spaces like the Back Corner that feel more tried and true to the heart of the Music City, local DJ’s and producers are keeping the party going that they – alongside local rappers and vocalists – started earlier in the day. After all, all of this – all of Deep Tropics – is ultimately a testament towards and a festival celebrating what it is that those same artists along with many, many more have started themselves, and have since turned into a burgeoning renaissance worth exploring for yourself.

 

Until next year.