Lost in Austin: 48 hours in a city that lives and breathes music

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By now we’re used to that part of the American disposition that loves giving its own trumpet a good old blow. Few, if any, countries show such hubris, and the ones that do, or have reason to, are never quite as bumptious. Which is why when I heard Austin fancied itself as ‘The Live Music Capital of the World’, I didn’t pay much heed. No doubt just more Yankee bombast. In the hallway at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, an official-looking sign read ‘Keep Austin Weird’. A moment earlier I’d spotted a pistol-shaped fridge magnet in the airport gift shop with ‘Texas: We don’t call 911’, etched on the barrel. And so I was struggling to align these various notions. Yet people speak very highly of Austin – a liberal island in the Texan sea of stupidity, enormously multicultural, with a tech hub hot on the heels of Silicon Valley – just not usually on account of its music (…maybe South by Southwest comes up now and again).

They should. Austin is a city that lives and breathes music. It might not have the rich history of some of the world’s more renowned music destinations – Havana, Berlin, Ibiza, New Orleans, etc. – but for what it lacks in heritage it makes up for in sheer enthusiasm and output. Bands, singers, orchestras, choirs, and DJs perform in bars and clubs on every corner from Downtown to Congress, East Cesar Chavez to South Lamar. There are over 250 live music venues to choose from, punctuated at every opportunity by grubby Stetson-wearing buskers on trumpets, guitars and spoons, usually playing with Proms-level virtuosity.

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