![]() While there may be value in forging an arrangement from themes played in conflicting keys, one might also recall a question posed in a 1930s union anthem: which side are you on? Perhaps musical metaphors for political divisions can only reveal so much. To turn Sabol’s performance into an aesthetic object, even if only for the sake of mocking it, may merely distract attention from the very real stakes of the debates between CPAC and its detractors. Deep down, though, I think it was all just ugly-sour sendups of a bad performance at an event dripping with pandering contempt. I could try to redeem the whole CPAC episode through lofty meditations on dissonance and harmony. If we cannot always achieve harmony, we can at least raise our voices together as we strive toward a more perfect union.Īt least, that could be the hook of this review. ![]() Perhaps, for those of us willing to listen, this sonic dissonance renders audible the political debates and social turmoil that have always been central to the messy workings of American democracy. Take, for example, “CPAC 2021 NATIONAL ANTHEM YouTube Orchestra,” a mashup of Sabol and accompanists including a guitarist, an a cappella quartet, and two pianists, one of whom yells sarcastic encouragement to the singer throughout.⁶ The whole tangle abounds with crunchy, theoretically “wrong” sonorities that defamiliarize the melody in a way that American modernist composer Charles Ives, known for incorporating patriotic airs into his uncompromisingly thorny scores, would have appreciated. ![]() Perhaps their mockery lent an air of plausibility to Trump’s CPAC claim that “Democrats are vicious” (Republicans, in contrast, are “becoming a party of love”).⁵Īs a music professor with a penchant for the avant-garde, however, what struck me at first is that I unironically liked a lot of the newly harmonized versions. Many viewers surely laughed, but others felt that the joke was mean-spirited and perhaps insinuatingly sexist, as these musicians, mostly men, devoted considerable chops to humiliating a young woman who was trying her best and who probably was not responsible for CPAC’s most inflammatory rhetoric. News outlets and social media posters, spotting a musical metaphor for CPAC’s unearned self-regard and uncritical jingoism, accused Sabol of singing “in the key of Q” or demonstrating that “all keys matter.”⁴ Musicians on YouTube added their own accompaniments to the performance, following the unpredictable twists and turns of Sabol’s melody with complex harmonies and bracing modulations. Nineteen-year-old Sailor Sabol’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was, to put it charitably, out of tune-more accurately, she seemed to change key frequently and unpredictably, sometimes in the middle of a line. Yet the performer who attracted the most attention, at least in left-of-CPAC circles, was a singer. If we cannot always achieve harmony, we can at least raise our voices together as we strive toward a more perfect union. As an intensifying standoff over the debt ceiling roils the capital, President. Biden Hits the Road to Pressure GOP Amid Imperiled Debt Ceiling Talks I am liking the tough take it to the GOP stance that we are seeing in the budget standoff, let us all hope that it's not just show.The river is the Chippewa just south of Eau Claire. Spring Afternoon Just a few things from the local area.David Brower's biggest regret in his life as an environmental activist was the flooding of Glen Canyon in order to save Dinosaur National Monument upriver (it was saved, at the expense of Glen Canyon). ![]()
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