Trump inaugural puts artists in quandary

To perform or not to perform?

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is one of the three confirmed acts for Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is one of the three confirmed acts for Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Several months ago, before the presidential election, San Francisco poet and author Dean Rader found himself engaged in a philosophical debate with some of his fellow poets: If Donald Trump were to win the presidency, and if he asked one of them to compose a poem to be read at the inauguration, would they do it?

photo

The New York Times

The Radio City Rockettes are one of the three confirmed acts for Donald Trump’s inauguration.

photo

Invision/AP file photo

Jackie Evancho is one of the three confirmed acts for Donald Trump’s inauguration.

On the one hand, none of them supported Trump for the presidency. Rader didn't know many politically conservative poets, in general, and his friends found the prospect of Trump's election to be "terrifying" and offensive. At the same time, poetry is rarely given a national platform in the United States.

So if a poet was presented with the opportunity to share his art form with the entire listening country, perhaps there would be an artistic responsibility to participate -- a sense of obligation.

Many of Rader's friends said an unequivocal "no" they wouldn't perform. Others wrestled with the question: "How could I work for a man and administration without becoming one of the 'fawning half-men'?" wrote Dana Levin, a lauded Santa Fe poet, in an email to Rader that he later published online. "Would I politely decline such an invite, or use it as a vehicle of public protest or slink into the wilderness without answer in hopes I can wait out the regime?"

The hypothetical question from August has now become a literal one for artists. Trump has been elected. His inaugural committee is planning an inauguration, an event that in President Barack Obama's terms included performers ranging from Kelly Clarkson to Yo-Yo Ma.

Now, less than a month before Trump's inauguration, Trump's program is filled with question marks. Currently, just three performers have been publicly confirmed: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; the Radio City Rockettes, which were announced Thursday; and Jackie Evancho, a 16-year-old classically trained singer who rose to national fame on America's Got Talent.

Beyond that there has been silence from official channels on which artists will take part in the Jan. 20 festivities, leading many to speculate that the planning committee is struggling to secure A-list names.

A recent Saturday Night Live sketch included a dig at the president's celebrity dearth: A campaign staff member tells Alec Baldwin's Trump that she has compiled a list of artists who are willing to perform on Jan. 20. She then hands him a minuscule Post-it.

Not all of the Rockettes were happy about the booking. One dancer took to Instagram to say she was "embarrassed and disappointed" by the gig, triggering calls for a boycott by some on social media. Critics have posted the phone numbers of the dancers' union and the Rockettes' employer to urge complaints.

And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acknowledged that the response to the announcement has been mixed, though church spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement that the appearance is a demonstration of support for the office rather than party affiliations or politics.

But Madison Square Garden Co., which employs the dancers, said Friday that no dancers are being compelled to attend the event.

Many artists have been connected. Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said Elton John would be performing; John's publicist quickly denied that. "I'm not a Republican in a million years," John told the Guardian newspaper months ago when asked about Trump using John's music in his campaign. "Why not ask Ted f*** Nugent? Or one of those f*** country stars. They'd do it for you."

Country star Garth Brooks implied that he might consider it -- "It's always about serving, it's what you do," he told TMZ when he was in Washington this month for the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony -- but his publicist has denied his participation.

Andrea Bocelli, a best-selling Italian tenor, had offered to perform, according to a television interview given by Thomas Barrack, the chairman of Trump's transition team. Barrack said the singer was told it wasn't necessary. Meanwhile, some of Bocelli's 226,000 Twitter followers turned on him, launching a #BoycottBocelli movement. "I love you Andrea," wrote one such fan. "But I will never listen to you again if you sing for Trump."

The tweet lays out the tension at hand. Would Bocelli be singing "for Trump"? Or would he be singing for the country? And if there's a difference, does it matter?

The history of performers at inaugurations is not as far-reaching as one might suspect. The concept of an inaugural poet, for example, wasn't introduced until John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. Robert Frost was an admirer of Kennedy, and it was thought that the presence of the stately octogenarian poet would lend gravitas to the inauguration of the baby-faced senator.

"If you can bear at your age the honor of being made president," Frost wrote in a telegram to Kennedy, "I ought to be able at my age to bear the honor of taking some part in your inauguration. I may not be equal to it but I can accept it for my cause -- the arts, poetry, now for the first time taken into the affairs of statesmen."

Subsequently, poets made sporadic appearances at inaugurations -- after Robert Frost, the next was Maya Angelou at Bill Clinton's ceremony -- while opera stars or pop singers became staples.

On a few occasions, the same singer has performed at multiple inaugurations: The contralto Marian Anderson performed at the inaugurations of Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, and Kennedy, a Democrat. Soprano Jessye Norman sang "Simple Gifts" at Ronald Reagan's inauguration followed 12 years later by "America the Beautiful" at Clinton's. "It's a uniquely American event," Norman said on the subject of presidential inaugurations in 1997. "There's a lot of good to be said for it."

One could argue that being an artist has become a more political act than it was in 1997. In this election, Hollywood and Broadway, with rare exception, heaved their public and full-throated support behind Hillary Clinton. Republican politicians generally are not known for attracting high wattage star power. At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump promised "showbiz," and then delivered only Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato Jr.

But even while the country becomes more divided, there is still a historic sense that the arts should unite people -- that the transformative power of words and music should transcend politics and be able to speak to something deeper and more universal in every human soul.

The question of whether an artist should agree to perform is not as simple as asking whether one agrees with the administration. It's a matter of asking, Richard Blanco says, "What role does the poem or the art serve?"

Blanco, a Cuban-American poet, was asked to compose and write a poem for Obama's second inauguration -- a work called "One Today" that was an ode to the country's diversity and unity.

"One of the important things that I learned in the whole process of writing the poem and delivering the poem was that America is still very much a work in progress," Blanco said. "It's pretty young for a country. Sometimes we take five steps forward and three steps back. And I see the rhetoric being proposed by the Trump narrative as a step back. It's not inclusive. So there's a lot of responsibility for all of us to add to that narrative -- a sentence or a paragraph -- what we think was right."

Perhaps an artist would decide that his best sentence would be the one he wrote declining to participate in an inauguration he didn't support. Perhaps he would always worry that he was being used as a puppet to lend civility to an uncivil regime. Or, perhaps he could find a way to make the performance into a subversive act. Or perhaps a performer could decide that the fractures in the nation could be healed by art. Or that it was a civic obligation to perform.

"The reason I'm doing this is for my country," said Evancho. At 16, she is too young to vote or participate in politics. But she has performed at the White House under the Obama administration, which she called an honor. "I think it's sad that we don't hear poets anymore or that we don't hear classical voices. Pop is a form of art, too, of course, but I think it's important to hear a variety of artists."

"My first, knee-jerk reaction is that I couldn't do it," said Blanco. "Because, to write a poem, you have to be so honest," he said, and he's not sure that a poem with that level of honesty would be approved by the inaugural committee. "I would wonder, can I do this? Can I have one's poem and eat it, too?"

In the months since Rader polled his friends, he has been considering his responsibility as an artist. He's recalled a poem by Pablo Neruda called The Poet's Obligation, which includes the line, "I must feel the crash of the hard water/and gather it up in a perpetual cup."

"I think we have an obligation as artists to insert our voice into the larger conversation about our country and our culture," Rader says. "At some level, the inauguration of a president is an affirmation of democracy. On a larger scale, it's not even about a particular person, but about an ideal -- a philosophical project."

For that reason, Rader has been thinking that he might, hypothetically, try to find a way to say yes. To write a poem that could honor democracy without necessarily honoring a man, that could provide an "alternate vision" of what America could or should look like. "A poet who is given the opportunity to align poetry with that larger democratic project," Rader said, "should probably think about participating in it."

It would be, he acknowledged, a difficult decision for any poet to make. A philosophical "crisis point" that gets to the heart of what poetry is and what it is meant to do.

Elizabeth Alexander, the poet at Obama's inauguration in 2009, offers the idea that participation in the democracy can occur in many different venues, not just a podium in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20.

"What I hope to see on Inauguration Day, and all around it," she said, "is for poets with varied backgrounds and aesthetics as Americans to raise their voices and offer us hope and vision and love -- in spaces all across the country."

Information for this article was contributed by Mark Kennedy of The Associated Press.

SundayMonday on 12/25/2016

Upcoming Events