Washington City Paper Nagoya Guitars: A Piece of D.C. Music History Fifty years later, the Nagoya guitars sold by Veneman Music are still prized, sought after, and played.
Credit: Darrow Montgomery
Three months into quarantine, I got my father’s old guitar down from the attic. After I cleaned and polished it and put on new strings, I was impressed: The dusty wood transformed into a sleek brown and tan instrument that looked very similar to Martin’s classic acoustic dreadnought guitars. When I strummed, it had a full, rich, melodic tone. But the guitar manufacturer’s name stamped on the inside of the body the Nagoya Guitar Company was unfamiliar.
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The reconfigured 2021 NAMM Show will go on make that, go online this week. It will do so with a temporary new name, Believe in Music, and some of the most dramatic changes in the history of the world’s biggest annual trade show for the music, sound and event technology industries.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, NAMM announced last August it was canceling its 2021 show as an in-person event and would instead pivot online. Believe in Music, which runs Monday through Friday, will serve as an interactive community center and marketplace for musical instrument and technology creators and manufacturers to connect with each other, buyers, sellers, musicians, and fans.