Visibility, with the volume up loud, in Tennessee

This essay originally appeared in NPR Music's weekly newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter here.

I want to take you to a rainbow-lit room in Nashville where laughter and the scintillating light of mutual adoration created a sanctuary, momentarily, in a state full of hunters. And then I want to take you to another, smaller room, with walls made of glitter that kept out the cold of a rainy night. I need to tell you about two shows I saw this week, one in an arena and the other in a dinner theater, that reminded me of something I've long believed but recently doubted: that music can sustain people, and if not change things itself, make change conceivable. But first I need you to come with me back to Alabama, where I lived before Nashville, to a moment that changed my perspective on how political activism works.

In 2017 Doug Jones ran for Senate in a special election. Jones is a Democrat, and his win would mark the first time in a quarter century that the party captured one of Alabama's seats in the U.S. Senate. I am telling this story not to endorse a party in office, by the way), but to show how awareness and empowerment spreads at the grassroots level. The polls and the pundits often treat the cultural shifts that shape politics as linear and quantifiable. But sometimes they bloom like clover across a meadow, and you have to know how to recognize the efflorescence.