At Trump’s Rally, the contrast is in the music

A former dirty white rapper has been recast as the icon of right-wing national rebellion. The famous disco-pop outfit with extremes is often understood to be about gay tourism that has become a worldwide sports and bar-mitzvah anthem.

These are the kinds of conflicting figures that have long animated and energized American pop music, the art form in which competing interest groups and creative impulses collide in the immediate vicinity, and can collide in productive ways. unexpected. America’s pop soup is a mess, the product of centuries of crossover creativity, ready and forced and sometimes unpredictable.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that even though he was on stage at President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally on Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena — it seems like an inaccessible place for stories about these associations — these struggles. continued.

In the speech – from Mr Trump and many of his representatives – there was nativism, isolationism and written promises of deportation.

However, for parties and movements built in part on exclusionary and sometimes race-marked campaigns, there have been contributions of diversity and inclusion, and implicit acceptance. the power of American pop food.

Kid Rock was there, his voice deep and powerful, singing “All Summer Long,” his triumphant rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama,” before donning a red Make America Great Again ball cap and taking turns hitting his DJ turntables. In a video message during the concert, Mr. Trump promised to make America Rock Again, to the tune of a Run-DMC song.

Billy Ray Cyrus, who was named as one of the performers at the rally but was only heard on sound control, may have studied this interesting narrative because there was a beautiful country boy. previously saved from his career by collaborating with strange hip-hop. new, Lil Nas X, on “Old Town Road.”

And of course there was the Village People, who performed a “YMCA” at the end of the rally with Mr. Trump behind them, singing and chanting from time to time.

Was the song’s origin story important? It didn’t happen. (Victor Willis, the band’s frontman and original single remaining, made headlines last month when he posted on social media that the song was “not really a friendship song.”)

But it’s clear that this is how Mr. Trump sees music: as a theme song, a fight song, a soundtrack to a memory more than a work of art. He relies on hymns washed clean of meaning, as long as they last unforgettably. He walked on stage to Lee Greenwood and serenaded him with “God Bless the USA,” as if accepting the nomination of homecoming king.

The pre-rally soundtrack, aside from the occasional disruptor — Bruno Mars’ “Versace on the Floor,” The Weeknd’s “Starboy” — spanned four to five decades. Much of Studio 54’s sound and its roots, stripped down to layers of story and irony and story after story until nothing was left but the beat.

Most of the speakers were introduced to the flash of hard-rock guitar, as if reassuring (and empowering) the majority of white people. But the message they were conveying was in a different place. Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, reminded the crowd of Mr. Trump’s success with non-white voters, as Mr. Trump himself did in his speech, wanting to paint MAGA as many different activities.

But the conflict is not far from the surface. Puerto Rican superstar Anuel AA embraced Mr Trump, saying he was on stage to speak “on behalf of the entire Spanish community” and described the overwhelming response he had received in support of Mr Trump. Minutes later, Trump adviser Stephen Miller criticized President Biden’s border policy and former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly praised Facebook and McDonald’s for eliminating diversity, equality and the introduction.

It was the culmination of having it both ways – secretly embracing the plundering of American diversity and fighting hard against DEI using optical and sonic integration as soft weapons against its advances. the special ones. The purpose of the rally was made clear, but the music suggested a far-off – and still unresolved – truth beneath.