Who We Are…….

The City of Memphis has an untapped natural resource. While it has maintained its mid-tier global status on the strength of its rich music history and heritage, it has not capitalized on the current talent in a meaningful way to establish music as an economic driver for the city and region. The pages that follow introduce and outline a unique and innovative approach to building a music industry in the City of Memphis. The Consortium MMT (Memphis Music Town) is an effort designed to serve the City of Memphis by facilitating and coordinating a strategy to leverage the music resources and assets of the community in an intentional way to have a highly qualified and informed pool of talent that is poised for careers in the music industry. Further, we believe that success in this effort will attract significant investment in the Memphis music community by major music industry assets.

This organization began in 2012 as the manifestation of a longtime thought and concept of National Songwriters Hall of Fame member and Stax Records legend, David Porter. The native Memphian was a major participant during the days when Stax Records, Hi Records and Sun Studio produced music that spoke to the world. In reflecting on the success of Memphis music during that era, Mr. Porter’s grateful attitude toward the City of Memphis and the music industry instilled in him the desire to give back to the city and the next generation of music creators. His passion for the City of Memphis and the preservation of music that transcends culture and time was shared by other music icons who contributed to the creation of the flagship program of The Consortium MMT – The SoulRight Music Mentorship Program.

The mentorship program afforded David and the other program facilitators the opportunity to identify additional needs to be addressed for the talent community. The development of talent remained an integral focus of The Consortium MMT; nevertheless, the Talent Development Complex (TDC) was established to provide resources, education, additional development and opportunities to the talent community of the city. They further learned and embraced the fact that there must be a concerted effort to make this thoughtful concept a reality.

We acknowledge and applaud the efforts of several organizations that are established to address the challenges of our music community. Without the presence of credible music creators, technologically sound recording studios and venues for live performances the vision of a thriving music industry would be far from realization. Nevertheless, we see an opportunity for an agency to serve these talented individuals and other music-themed entities along with the broader community by promoting a concept of collaboration and partnership that utilizes one of the city’s most valuable and untapped natural resources – Memphis music.

Our hope is to continue to learn and gain perspective of the city and the region from a macro level in order to see the moving parts of our economic and social engine. This perspective, along with remaining connected to our local talent community should allow us to see how all the moving parts can work together in order to operate at a higher level of efficiency. As the stakeholders of the music community work in concert in a meaningful way, we believe that it will attract the attention of major music industry leaders and encourage investment in the Memphis market as a viable option to recruit and promote talent.