When Gina Miller was growing up in South Memphis, one of her school bus stops was in front of the abandoned Stax Records studio on East McLemore Avenue. “It was graffiti-laden and looked like nothing else would ever be born from it,” she says. The soul label had been forced into bankruptcy in 1975 after a local bank foreclosed on the loans keeping it alive — a move that one of its co-owners, Al Bell, in the 2014 documentary Take Me to the River, attributed to Memphis’ white establishment and its determination to destroy successful Black-owned businesses.
“All of the things I saw and experienced there helped shape me,” says Miller, who moved to Nashville in 1995, and, while rising through the ranks of Entertainment One’s outpost there, has become a vocal advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion in Music City.
Miller’s first break in the industry came through sheer determination. After meeting Light Records president/CEO Michael Olsen at one of her two sons’ football games — “he was the only one driving a luxury car” — she took an unpaid internship at the gospel label for over a year. “I did whatever I needed to do to learn,” she says, “and to offer the wisdom I had” from earning a music degree, a license to teach music and her deep knowledge of the Light catalog, which included The Winans, The Hawkins Family and Andraé Crouch. “It was the music I had grown up with,” says Miller, who was hired in 2004 as the label’s radio and retail promotions coordinator.
In 2009, eOne acquired Light Music, and in 2019 Miller was promoted to senior vp/GM of eOne Nashville, where she oversees the label’s gospel and R&B output, among other responsibilities.
Miller is also a co-founder and vp of the board of directors of Nashville Music Equality, which champions diversity, inclusion, equity and opportunities for minorities and underrepresented groups in the music business. The group, founded in response to the murder of George Floyd and the formation of #TheShowMustBePaused, marked its one-year anniversary in May. Asked what grade she’d give the Nashville music industry in effecting change, Miller is blunt about the challenges ahead: “I’m going to give us a C+ right now. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. Changing mindsets is very hard. It’s uncomfortable, it’s dirty, and it is not glamorous work.”
How has your business changed since Hasbro sold eOne Music to Blackstone?
It hasn’t. I’ve been through six acquisitions in 17 years. My job is to keep everything moving forward, and that’s what we’re doing. SESAC is one of the companies that are part of our new family; so are CCLI [Christian Copyright Licensing International] and Harry Fox [Agency]. I’ve met with SESAC president Kelly Turner and other Blackstone team members, and we’ve had candid conversations about the future. I can tell you that when I conveyed my plans to them, they said, “Go, girl, go.”
Is SESAC going to represent your artists who write their own material?
It won’t be a mandate. But I am excited about new opportunities we can create in partnership for our artists who have not yet decided upon a PRO or want to make a change.
What eOne artists are you excited about?
I can’t say enough about our veteran artists — Jonathan McReynolds, Todd Dulaney, James Fortune, Syleena Johnson and Q Parker, to name a few — and I am stoked about being able to give young, talented, independent artists a shot. Three to watch are Jabari Johnson, Randy Weston and Shana Wilson Williams, who will be releasing albums in the fourth quarter or 2022.
What’s the political climate in Nashville?
Historically, we have been a conservative Republican town. I’ve lived in and all over Tennessee my entire life, and what’s happening to the political landscape right now is serious. Gov. Bill Lee signed a measure into law banning the teaching of critical race theory. Public schools can no longer teach certain concepts of race and racism or they risk losing state funding. History is history. Whether or not you agree with it, it should be known, shared, examined — taught.
How did you become politically active?
When you grow up in Memphis, you have no choice. I grew up not far from where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and one of the things that people say about Memphis is that you feel, even today, a heaviness looming over the city. About three years ago, I went to Memphis with Lalah Hathaway for a show at the Orpheum Theater. I told my mom, who’s 87, and she said, “When you get there, take a look at the fire escape, because that’s how we would get into the theater if we wanted to see something.” Moments like that are profound for me and connect the dots to why my mom signed me up to be active with the NAACP as a kid, and why I still am today.
How has that translated into what you are doing with Nashville Music Equality and other organizations?
With Nashville Music Equality, it’s important to me that we don’t lose sight of the racial injustices that happen day to day. Sometimes, if it doesn’t look like Charlottesville [Va.], people don’t relate to it as an issue. But we see microaggression and systemic racism every day at our companies, our churches, our communities and even our families. So I remind people that in addition to the big issues, we have to talk about things like what happened to my friend when she got her COVID-19 vaccine. The nurse squeezed her arm and said, “Oh, I thought your skin would have been tougher than that.” When people tell me that racism doesn’t exist anymore, I’m like, “Well, racism may be dead, but the racists are not.”
Nashville’s music industry is largely white and male. How much resistance does NME encounter?
Right now, I am leading diversity and inclusion initiatives in a lot of different spaces, including the Recording Academy, where I am an ambassador. Management companies, agencies, the leaders of a lot of country labels have come to our monthly events, and a lot of them have called us to have private counsel. They want us to figure out what they’re doing wrong, because they do want to do something different. But we are also dealing with a lot of people who would rather have conversations about diversity and inclusion instead of coming up with a real plan. I’ll have an agency ask, “What can we do?” And when I get on a Zoom call to work with them, I see 20 people who do not look like me. I’m like, “Well, before we jump in, let’s deal with your staff.”
Have you had any personal encounters with racism in the music industry that fuel your activism?
I’ve looked back at encounters I’ve had and thought, “Have I been a victim of racism or the unequitable circumstances of being a woman?” In terms of my own career disappointments, I would say both. But if I had to pick one, I would say women in general have a hard time moving forward in the music business, getting proper salaries and high-level opportunities. Ethiopia [Habtemariam] just got promoted to chairman/CEO of Motown this year, which is definitely worth celebrating. But we’re seeing more women, and more Black women, rising to leadership roles in other sectors than we are in the music industry. There are so many Black female mayors now; in Texas, 17 Black female judges were elected in Harris County. And the Vice President is a no-brainer.
What’s your take on Morgan Wallen’s record deal being suspended by Big Loud and Republic?
I don’t know what was involved in the suspension, but that was the right starting place for the label. Let’s take Morgan Wallen out of it. This situation was a catalyst for a lot of conversations. The real question is: Has it changed things for the better — at this format, in the music industry, in this city, in this state and in the world — for the long haul? Eradicating racism and responding to what have been largely systemic prejudices and biases requires transformational work. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It has been said that what is measurable is sustainable. It’s too soon to tell what’s now right, or what’s still wrong. Not enough time nor action has passed. Only time will tell.
A recent profile of Mickey Guyton in The New Yorker quoted a professor from Simon Fraser University who said country music narrates the “ongoing siege of simple innocent white folks” and is a “f— you to anyone who celebrates the forces behind the siege.” What’s your response to that?
A lot of times when people hear the words “country music,” the next word they hear in their heads is “supremacy.” But here’s the thing: The experiences sung about in country are our experiences as well. Country music talks about family, faith, beer, liquor, heartbreak. These are American stories. This is not exclusive to one group of people. My son loves country music. He wears cowboy boots. He drives a pickup truck. So, it’s not the music or the lyrics. It’s the heart and the mindset behind the people who think that what has been created is only for them. And you can’t talk about country music, R&B, jazz or any genre of music without talking about how Black people are the foundation of these genres. The banjo was created by a Black person.
