From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in February when President Trump announced that he was installing himself as head of the board at the Kennedy Center.

The president didn't like the musical and theatrical offerings.

Kennedy.

He said, quote, we don't need woke at the Kennedy Center.

Some of the shows are a disgrace that they put on end.

Quote during a tour of the Kennedy Center.

He stopped to talk to reporters.

And this is some more of what he said.

I'm very disappointed when I look around.

The bottom line, it has tremendous potential and will work with Congress.

As you know, it's very public and very public facility and will do what has to be done, will be having a meeting with the speaker in the not too distant future.

I think it's important to save this structure in this building.

I think maybe we close up some of the work that's been done and built because it was done terribly.

It was done terribly.

The concept was very bad.

So some of what he's talking there is the physical structure that he says is outdated and like in some of it, is the actual programing that he says needs more control from the white House.

He was talking about problematic shows, and one of the first ones he namechecked was Hamilton, a show that notably features people of color playing lead historical roles.

But the themes of Hamilton are often praised by conservatives and disliked by many commentators on the far left.

Politically, the president seem to think that putting people of color in lead roles qualified Hamilton as a woke production that will be out of bounds going forward at the Kennedy Center.

Well, within days, the president's remarks had some artists canceling their scheduled shows at Kennedy this year.

At the top of the list was Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda said in a statement, quote, this latest action by Trump means it's not the Kennedy Center as we knew it.

The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we're not going to be a part of it.

While it is the Trump Kennedy Center.

End quote.

Meanwhile, a number of other performers also canceled.

The New York Times reports, quote, fellow travelers has decided to withdraw from the 2025 2026 season of the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center.

Creators Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce argued that the Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center conflicted with values of freedom and liberty for all people that are highlighted in the opera, which is based on Thomas Mallon's 2007 novel that features two gay government workers who fall in love during the 1950s.

We have made the impossible, difficult decision that the Kennedy Center is not the place our team feels comfortable having the work presented, Spears and Pierce wrote.

End quote.

The president has promised more musical acts like Lee Greenwood and Kid Rock, two performers who are big supporters of Trump.

He conceded he has more important things to worry about, but he says the arts have gotten so out of hand that he is forced to intervene.

This hour, I want to welcome my colleagues from classical 91 five, a couple of people who have a deep background in studying music, artistic history, some of the themes involved here, and it should be really interesting conversation.

I will welcome them now.

Mona salami, music director, host and producer for classical 91 five.

Thanks for coming in.

Hello, Evan.

Good to be here.

And welcome to Steve Johnson.

Doctor Johnson is midday host and announcer for classical 91 five.

Thank you for being here, Steve.

Yeah.

Glad to be back.

so let me just kind of start with the broad overview, and, and we're going to talk about not only what's happening now, some of the decisions artists are making, some of the decisions that the administration is making, but also throughout history, how different governments have tried to control what the arts are saying or not saying, what's on stage, what is banned from the stage, generally speaking here, Mona, what do you what do you see from that 30,000ft view of what's happened at Kennedy?

I think Steve definitely has more to speak to.

So the history and the way this has played out in different governments, different institutions.

But I definitely have, you know, there's a lot of conflict, I think, with artists thinking about, do we show up and make a difference there or do we make a statement?

You know, we're in a bind.

Like, how do we make our statement and what do you do?

And also what we gain a lot of when I see there's like multiple parts we gain.

Of course, the arts are an economic driver when a show like Hamilton cancels, as conductor Leonard Slatkin brought up, who worked there for years, that's a lot of jobs lost from stagehands to, you know, people going out to eat around it.

But of course, the main point of the arts is not all of that.

That's like a byproduct.

The other point is our connection, our community, the experiences we have, what we learn and what is to be gained by controlling that.

And you know, it just so it just it goes wrong on many levels, I guess, is my sort of view.

I think the investment I think I've said this before, our investment in the arts is a very good one, both in terms of how people benefit in terms of education and like the non tangible things, but then it also has that dollars and cents thing that makes sense to.

So I don't see it as very efficient.

We'll talk more about what conductor Leonard Cohen said later this hour.

Steve some opening remarks from you.

What are you seeing?

Yeah, I think, sort of bird's eye view.

I'm seeing, that this is a very reactive posture.

Actually, the the quotation that you had at the beginning was very, this is bad.

This is, what we're trying to get rid of.

We're getting rid of woke.

The building is in bad shape, things like that.

I'm not hearing much of a positive vision of the kind of art that he wants to see in the world.

It's it's very much restricting art that he thinks is not appropriate.

And I think that that puts us in a bit of an uncertain situation in a number of ways, because what it means is, you have to have the art ready first, really, to show to this administration and then hope that it's good enough to be staged.

If you do want to put something on, and that that puts a lot of people in a tough place, you know, deciding, trying to figure out for themselves without much guidance what is actually acceptable in the first place.

The president is posing as kind of a reluctant censor.

Well, you know, I'm too busy for this, but I had no choice.

It had just gotten out of hand.

We're going to have to have a say in what's on stage.

A reluctant censor and and throughout history, you need again, we'll get into this a little bit more coming up here.

But the idea of a reluctant center, most governments who have engaged in censorship are not very reluctant.

They're usually eager to have control.

I think, Steve, that's true.

And also, I think, it's people don't understand enough that a lot of these governments also don't understand the art that they are trying to censor.

For the most part, this was true, in the Soviet Union, the, the artists unions actually had a lot of community support for each other because of the way that they were.

The way that they needed to survive was by, you know, choosing assignments for specific people based on how that would go politically.

For them.

It was about how you could use your connections and your community, in order to just sort of keep yourself afloat.

So if they knew that, for instance, one city had, higher incidence of anti-Semitism, they would make sure that composers with Jewish heritage were assigned to another place as a way to sort of professionally protect them from that kind of censorship.

But again, the censorship that we're talking about tends to be more reactive and based in a sort of, partizan political understanding of art rather than the sort of substance or taste of the art itself.

Mona.

Yeah.

That prompts them in the thought, the ways that different regimes are, institutions of thought, about how they feel, about the art itself, what they think the art is saying and who they think is saying it.

There was something with, you know, in 1930s Germany that's like, well, this is 12 tone, but it's a nice, wholesome 12 tone.

So it didn't really have to do with any of the sounds it had to do.

Whether or not the person creating the music was Jewish, it really was about personal.

So when they say we want to honor Dolly Parton, who's already been honored and been on stage, is it about the music or is it about the perceived who the person is?

And so it's not actually at all about the experience, but about the, I guess, identity of the person?

Well, to the point about the decision that artists are now having to make were booked at Kennedy.

Do we do it?

Do we pull the show?

I want to listen to, some, some of the remarks from the Kennedy stage.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the band Guster was recently booked for two nights at Kennedy, and lead singer Ryan Miller wrote a piece about their decision to go on with the show.

but before the performances, a little bit of background, the Kennedy Center canceled the touring children's musical fin, and in a post on Instagram, show creators Chris Nee, Michael Cushman, and Christopher Diamond said that quote while not a surprise given the events of the last week, it is a heartbreak, but we will not be silenced and we will not abandon the kids we wrote the show for.

They are already under attack from every side.

We didn't ask for this joy bomb of a show to be part of the resistance, but here we are.

End quote.

So when Guster was getting ready to perform, Miller says they considered canceling, but instead they did things a little differently.

And I want to listen to a clip from their performance a few weeks ago, my friend Michael, who wrote the songs for a musical called Finn in the Before Times they were booked to play here.

But as you all know, things happen in the show.

No one was being presented by the Kennedy Center, as the new administration has made abundantly clear, Finn's themes of inclusive inclusivity, love and self-acceptance are going to be welcome in this building while they are in control.

So tonight, our band is here to say our stage is your stage.

We are your allies.

We stand with the LGBTQ community and.

They.

Established community.

And we want you to sing this.

Please welcome the cast family.

Please.

Michael, welcome.

And regarding that experience, Miller wrote a piece titled why I Played the Kennedy Center and how our band made the decision to perform and why we probably won't be welcomed back.

He elaborates on this.

He says, quote, though we all had our individual opinions, we agreed that our voice as a band would be loudest from the Kennedy Center stage.

That space was given to us by the venue's previous curators, and we were united in our desire to own it.

We wanted to support the staff at the Kennedy Center who were caught in this political crossfire.

The fans who had bought tickets and flights and hotel rooms and the musicians we would be performing with.

Our challenge was to find a way to make our dissension clear with dignity and creativity.

No one in the band was interested in hosting a rally on F Street, but neither could we just shut up and dribble.

This time we had been given a microphone and we intended to use it and quote.

What do you make of that money?

I mean, I guess it's that I hear you're going to hand it right off to Steve.

Steve, I think, you know, I totally sympathize with having to thread this needle that, you don't want to, harm the, the money making aspect of it.

For many people who built their careers in the arts, you know, it is not an easy career to be in.

You don't want to lose a contract because that can mean, you know, a month or more of income that you're you're now without, to make a political stand and at the same time as artists in a sort of value driven industry, you do want to make sure that you're true to yourself.

And, I think that they demonstrated in this way, sort of one way to thread that needle.

And I think we do see, again, historically, there's when the edicts are inconsistent and confusing, we're going to cancel Hamilton.

But actually Hamilton canceled on them.

And Kennedy Center loses out on revenue and jobs.

What is this guessing?

What does it mean to be truly American in the arts?

To be truly Soviet in the arts, to be truly German and rooted in this wholesomeness, but also experimental?

There's this guessing of and like trying to keep yourself and others safe while also, again, as you said, staying true to yourself.

Can you thread this or is there only can you opt in or out?

I, I think this is really exemplary to of the way that nationalist politics work in general.

there's always a sort of contradiction.

nationalist histories always involve glossing over the sort of darker parts of your history and, in order to privilege certain classes of people, you have to, create myths or, subdue other histories in order to make this happen.

And so it's full of these sort of contradictions that make it so that if you are a person of conscious trying to be true to your conscience, you you really don't have good decisions kind of ever.

One other note here.

before I bring in a guest on the phone for a bit, is this notion of the intention of censorship and then the product of censorship, and often I'm not always this is not fully my expertise, but my understanding is that often the act of censoring actually draws more attention to what you are trying to snuff out.

And, a recent example I'm not waiting in on whatever side.

I have not read the children's book that ignited all that controversy in Penfield recently, so I'm not talking about my opinion of the book.

I haven't seen the book.

What I know is, a couple months ago, this controversy erupts in Penfield and it erupts at school board meetings, and people are yelling in there.

Then they're not letting the board speak and things get shut down.

And, and it turns out that all of the anger that some people have in the community about this book, no one had even checked the book out ever.

It was on the shelves, the library, and it was sort of fished out by people who were looking for things to be outraged about, but no students were checking it out.

They might not even really known it was there.

Now everybody's talking about this book and everybody knows about this book.

And sometimes, if your goal as a censor is to control and to snuff out, you create a little bit of a fire that spreads.

I mean, that historically.

Is there some basis there, Steve?

yeah, I, I it kind of goes either way, like people, the example that's coming to mind is kind of an opposite example from, Germany in the 1930s.

Carl Orff writes this giant cantata, Carmina Burana, which people still know nowadays.

It's a classic.

it is incredibly inappropriate.

It is full of very dirty poetry written by medieval monks, or people pretending to be medieval monks.

And, so here we are in 1930s Germany, trying to get people to live these moral lives and crowds adore this piece that has all of these awful morals for it, for the country.

And the leadership is sitting there going, well, we can't get rid of this.

It's popular.

People will hate us if we censor it, but we also can't endorse it because it goes against our political project.

so so there's some of that too.

Like you, it's it's not easy to control the flow of art and information.

And there is also just a fascination with how I think when people disagree, whether it's based on their actual ideologies.

And I think we see that as Trump and Musk start to split, what do we actually mean with our project?

Are we organized about our project, whether or not it's good or bad?

And then the idea is, or does it relate our personal preferences?

This is against our project, but I personally like this guy or dislike this guy, even though his art lines up with my stated ideals.

Absolutely.

And I think some of some of the early discussions of this have kind of gone in that direction, because we have, people have heard audio of the first meeting of the board, and apparently President Trump was sitting there saying, do you all remember cats?

Do you remember Phantom of the opera?

if I had said if I'd put out a stated mission of trying to make, you know, patriotic, good American art, I would not start with 1980s British mega musicals.

Cats might not have top right?

Probably not.

I want to bring in Sarah Gazzara, who is associate professor of jazz voice at the Eastman School of Music, who is on the line with us and and has just a little limited time.

And I want to get Sarah's perspective on some of this.

So, first of all, Sarah, just some general ideas on what we are seeing in this debate about Kennedy and the control of of art and who has a voice.

So what do you make of it?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, happy to be here.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here, listening in on the conversation and just be a fly on the wall.

you know, I mean, to me, it just feels like par for the course in just the, the mass, you know, inundation of of chaos, you know, just sort of feels like another, another thing to add to the litany of, of, things that have been thrown at the American public and things that just feel somewhat egregious.

And so you just feel overwhelmed by what, what to keep track of and how to sort of like, keep your brain and your feet on the ground.

and to know what really is like, what you have to fight for.

one thing that I think we can hold on to is that artists, you know, true artists, will always speak to the human experience and will always do their best to try to highlight things that need to be highlighted and give voice to, you know, communities that need to be given voice.

and when you think back on, you know, like, creators even years ago, people have always found a subversive way to communicate what they need to communicate.

Like if you think about Mozart's DS album Flow to The Magic Flute, it's like the the Masonic implications and all of the different like hidden symbolism in that really was just to give light to something that had been banned at the time.

So I, I feel very strongly as a jazz musician and as a creator, that I don't think the idea of amplification of, of complex concepts and the amplification of the human experience is something that's going to go away anytime soon, with or without the Kennedy Center.

But I also think it's, you know, there's a lot of a lot of eyes on them right now, especially in wake of the Yasmin Williams emails that have come out with, you know, her, her exchange that she had with the new Kennedy Center, Representative Richard Grenell, just in how he's responding to artists questions about what's going on and the implications of, of of this.

And, you know, it's pretty unhinged.

It's like borderline reality television, level interactions.

But, yeah, I mean, it's interesting to watch, but I but I have all, all the faith in the world that artists will prevail.

Oh, can you tell me a little bit about the recording Academy's, the annual three day Grammys on the Hill and what went on there?

Yeah.

So, you know, the Recording Academy, fortunately, you know, is has has wide reach all over the world beyond just the awards show.

I am fortunate to have, served as a governor in the LA chapter and now serve as a national trustee of the Recording Academy, which is like a board of of the trustee, elect elected, highly elected official, position.

But they, have a lot of different sects in the world.

and like, professional development and outreach and fundraising and, MusiCares and the Grammy Museum.

And there's this one element of of pretty empowering advocacy where musicians and leaders, come together for a few days in the Capitol and celebrate artists who have sort of dedicated their career to advocacy work.

And, there's like an awards show and a gala where, different lawmakers, congresspeople and senators, and musicians can come together and, like, share a meal and, you know, hear about some of these initiatives.

And then the next day, different groups of musicians and, and advocates go into, meetings, one on one meetings with congresspeople and senators and just discuss different bills that are on the table.

and, you know, it's my second time participating, but it's quite thrilling to, you know, not only be able to create music, but also to continue to advocate for the rights of music creators and just the music industry in general.

and maybe before I let you go, sorry, I can get you to respond to an email from a listener who says, that they consider themselves pretty progressive politically, but they don't really see what the fuss is about.

They said it's not like Lin-Manuel Miranda or Hamilton isn't going to perform.

It's just not going to be at Kennedy.

It isn't like these certain bands or performers are not gonna be able to perform.

It's just not going to be on the taxpayer dime.

And so we're not fully losing their voice.

So this listener saying help them understand what you see the issue to be here.

Yeah, I mean I think again, I said it before and I'll say it again, I think the issue is chaos.

I think that it's meant to be a demonstration that the president wants to take control over and have the ability to say, this will have a platform and this will not based on who has align themselves with my agenda.

And that's never been seen before.

And it's it's that's a very dangerous precedent.

And I don't think that it's an indication of what's to come necessarily.

I hope it's not.

but I think it's really it's demands creative.

I think it really is meant to be, a symbol of, of, sort of a stretch of, of his reach and what he wants to kind of show people he's capable of.

so it feels more symbolic than anything.

but again, I just I feel entirely confident that, you know, symbolism aside, there's just not it's not something that one could ever impose on a creator level.

You know, the art the art will prevail.

And I think that the the listener makes a good point that, you know, Hamilton will happen somewhere.

But I don't think that's the point of the symbolism of the act.

Yeah.

And so and Sarah, you know, what comes to mind for me is the president installed himself as head of the Kennedy Center board.

He's got like like Steve mentioned, he's a big fan of cats, I guess, and Phantom, but he doesn't have any background or expertise in the matter.

I mean, his expertise is business, which is by the tariffs have gone so well.

But the arts world is where, you know, he really hasn't spent a lot of time and I don't know that people feel like this is anything other than I don't like some of the politics of some of the music and shows on stage.

Therefore, I want to force my my preferred artists, which doesn't have a great history in in politics here or around the world, as our guests are saying.

Well, I wouldn't even say preferred artists.

I would say people who are in line with agenda, you know, loyal, exact same sycophancy.

Okay.

last minute or so before I let you go.

Sarah, I know you got to get back to work here, and I'm grateful for your perspective.

are you, you know, optimistic that some of the pushback will be successful?

You think it's going to be a difficult time for Kennedy or for artists in general in these next three, four years?

How do you see that?

I mean, I can't speak for the Kennedy Center just based on the email exchange that, again, Yasmin Williams, who's like a beautiful bluegrass musician, she just spent like a a very respectful, engaging email asking a few questions.

And the responses were just like, bizarre, totally unhinged, really bizarre, shocking responses.

that never didn't, didn't address any of the questions that were asked.

I think in that regard, I'm concerned because if that's the way that someone is engaging, with, with booking agents and artists and just kind of generally it's, it's so deeply and like profoundly offensive and, and just in terms of the longevity of the Kennedy Center is concerning.

But, you know, the music industry wouldn't be able to sustain someone who that, like, questionably, incompetent in that position.

just in, just in people skills.

so I, I guess I'm concerned in that regard.

I think that, you know, again, my hope is that this is just, a power play and a symbolic gesture.

I can't I can't imagine that they have the time to be able to vet people for that agenda.

I can't imagine that New Yorkers would want to only see art that's in line with that agenda.

Somehow.

That's not how art works.

so, you know, it'll be interesting to see in the same way that I guess you could say with anything in this, in this times that we're in, it'll be interesting to see what kind of how the chips fall.

I want to thank you for making that time, Sarah.

And, let's continue talking about these issues.

Good luck to you.

Thanks for coming on the program.

Thank you.

You got it.

Sarah Cusack is an associate professor of jazz voice at the Eastman School of Music.

How would our guests in studio.

I'm joined in studio by my colleagues from down the hall.

Classical 91 five, Mona secreto salami, doctor Steve Johnson.

you know, Steve, what would you say to the listener who said, look, I mean, Hamilton still going to perform?

Yasmin Williams will perform.

Just won't be at Kennedy.

So what's the big deal?

I think well, a couple things.

One, as far as I understand it, the taxpayer dollars actually only go to the building itself.

so this idea that this woke art is happening on the taxpayer dollar, as far as I know, is not true.

yeah.

I mean, tickets aren't free when you go to the Kennedy Center, right?

Right.

But even then, like with most arts organizations, ticket sales are not actually the primary source of income.

Okay.

so, there's there's a chance that this money could be coming from other where, other places, donors, grants, things like that.

Okay.

but as far as what Congress has actually set aside for the Kennedy Center, that goes toward building and maintenance.

It's the edifice.

Okay.

Okay.

And then just the principle that this list.

But then.

Yeah.

So when it comes to, it doesn't matter.

Hamilton is going to go on.

that's true.

and I think that's one of the things that makes this situation kind of unique to America.

we do not have the same central government control of art that other nations, even democratic nations, have.

We don't have a Berlin Philharmonic here.

We don't have a Bolshoi Theater.

the Kennedy Center is not the sort of central, pristine, theater of our country.

It is a very good one that people have a lot of respect for.

But as they said, Hamilton is successful because it was successful in New York City on Broadway, which is more of an artistic hub in our country, and more business focused than the Kennedy Center tends to be.

but it is still, as Sarah said, symbolically, a problem.

we're saying we want to have patriotic art.

And Hamilton is kind of a puff piece about one of the founding fathers.

It does not go very hard at Alexander Hamilton concert.

Conservatives tend to really like it.

Yeah.

And people like David Sirota and many others who are sort of in the Bernie Sanders movement, really don't like it.

It's just very interesting to Namecheck Hamilton as some sort of deeply woke.

And I think this this is showing what woke is, right?

The, the things that they are, prohibiting are tend to be things by people of color.

You know, Yasmin Williams is black, and had a very tense email exchange with Richard Grinnell.

Grinnell is the director and the new director of Kennedy.

And, I have to say, Richard Grinnell is, as far as I know, the only gay person in the administration and has been made president of the Kennedy Center.

And most of the new people who have been appointed are the wives of, billionaire donors.

So, there is a sort of, it does feel a little bit like this is all in activity and no, your place, that, they're putting certain people in charge of the arts and making sure that that art only reflects, the demographics that they approve of.

Yeah.

Yasmin Williams, the guitarist, wrote to Grinnell complaining about some of the decisions to cancel some of the choices that were being made.

Grinnell finally answered and said that the center is broke and the programs are woke.

And he went on to say he he cut the quote B.S.

he used the full word because he says that, it's the woke B.S.

that the public won't support.

and we're not going to be doing that anymore.

I mean, that's a snippet of some of what he wrote, to the point where he asked me.

Williams thought it was a joke at first, the coarseness and directness of the language.

But, you know, I mean, that is in many ways how the president speaks so and the assumptions too, right?

You know, would you ever perform for Republicans or would you not?

You know, I never brought that up, right?

Yeah.

Grinnell asked.

We're starting to have these arguments before we've even really had the conversation.

We're not responding to what each other says, but to what we assume the other is saying.

Yeah.

To that point, Mona, I mean, we're at this age now.

If listeners remember, we were talking about the courts recently and a couple of retired judges said how strange it is that so many conversations about court rulings now have name the the president who installed a judge.

Well, that's a Reagan appointee.

You said this and this is an Obama appointee.

And they said that we didn't used to do that and everything.

It's like we have got to we've just got to bifurcate everything.

And it feels that way with art.

Well, that's a Republican artist.

That's a Democrat or that's a progressive artist and that's a conservative arts.

That's a that's a red state artist.

That's a blue state artist.

I don't know that that's a healthy development, but I guess it seems part and parcel to the way that everything feels politicized these days.

Well, and again, how do you politicize it?

Because you can go either way with it.

Classical music, is it the elite art that nobody's buying into?

Not the common person, or is it?

Oh, yes.

This is the wholesome art of, you know, like you can construe classical music to mean different things.

It can be your perfect anti-woke ness or it could be not of the people you.

Yeah, yeah.

And this is actually to your point about the history of, artistic censorship.

This was a huge argument in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

There were two competing composers unions, one who took the idea that socialism is about innovation, and put on these incredibly modernist, pieces, incredibly modernist operas.

and then there were people who thought, no socialism is about doing things for, the, the people, and we should do things that appeal to them, and we should make music that sounds good, music that is approachable, music that is of the people.

And they actually lived side by side for about a decade.

And it wasn't until the government said, we have limited funds, we have to pick one that they started to fight each other.

And eventually, the, the more populist side won out.

And that is actually why Shostakovich got that first terrible review of Lady Macbeth of the 10th district, which was an incredibly modernist opera.

it was a shot across the bow at these more modernist composers, not because they actually necessarily had anything politically wrong with what was happening, though.

There was an element of that.

a big part of it was fighting over resources.

And I think that that that is part of what we're seeing is this idea that, like this, the the Kennedy Center is quote unquote, broke, who do we give money to?

That's their excuse at least.

and so there is a lot going on.

I guess this is what I'm saying.

Lady Macbeth, Beth of the MIT sense MIT sense is, it's pretty sexy.

I mean, like, it involves some boundaries.

Sexual violence.

Yeah, yeah.

So it is a lot to take in, for sure.

But it's also what I'm saying is it's not out of line with other modernist operas that were being put out at the time.

Okay?

I mean, and I appreciate that bit of history because I wouldn't have been able to contextualize it.

Certainly the state was exerting some serious control, and Shostakovich then felt tremendous pressure.

Eventually having to debut a symphony that was designed to signal one thing to the leader and another thing to the to the public.

Well, this is the other thing is that we have this story about Symphony number five, restoring his reputation.

Before that, he actually put out a cantata called song of the forests that was just like a cord cutting ceremony for a reforestation project that they were doing.

and it ends with this giant chorus of, you know, praise Lenin over and over and over again.

So, even this idea that the symphony is the important thing that saved him is kind of a romantic myth created over here.

yeah.

More of the history that I've read about the symphony is that he knew the leadership would be in attendance, and it was expected to be a very patriotic symphony, and he was able to create something that, to the ears of the leadership was grand and patriotic and to the ears of a more discerning public was ironic and, a signal of the way that chest beating patriotism had led to oppression and death.

Absolutely.

And we do see some of that here.

You know, there's that example that keeps going around is every every time the president has a rally, he likes to play fortunate son, fortunate son, or just like about people just like him.

It's an indictment of people just like him.

But he likes it because it sounds cool in the same way that born in the USA confused George Will, conservative columnist in the 1980s who had gone to a Springsteen concert and seen people standing on their chairs.

And he said, here is a working class American from new Jersey, grew up understanding what it meant to be a hard worker.

And now he's singing about born in the USA, which actually was a song about imperialism and the failure of the Vietnam War and the poor treatment of veterans.

It wasn't.

It was an ironic born in the USA was a it was.

I'm feeling ashamed of my country song, but leadership thought it was great.

And this is kind of what I'm saying about how, the your artistic success can hang a certain amount on how good you are at politicking your way through it.

So I think I would not be surprised to start seeing some artists kissing the ring a little bit with that sort of wink and a nod.

Oh, that's that we that we've been talking about.

That's interesting.

The one other thing that comes to mind before we get to our break.

And then I'll get some of your emails, listeners, when Steve talks about the fact that, yes, we have Kennedy Center, but it's not Bolshoi, it is not the same as some of these really nationally controlled and centralized artistic endeavors elsewhere.

I mean, this administration, or at least this president, is very sensitive about art to the point where listeners, I don't know if you saw the story about the portrait of President Trump in Colorado in the statehouse in which somebody alerted him.

I don't know why he would have known this, but it was in the Colorado State House.

And, you know, an artist in Colorado had done presidential portraits in the past.

So she did one of Trump.

And yes, to my eye, the portrait looks like he just maybe had his molars out.

I mean, it's puffy.

you know, it's not phantasmagorical, so it's just a little puffy, and but he finds out, somebody alerts him and he makes this a national thing.

And.

Are you looking at it back there?

Have you guys seen this portrait of Trump from Colorado?

You got to look it up.

And he's calling the governor and he's like, get that thing down.

Like that's insulting to the leader of this country.

It's in a state House and in Colorado.

And he's very sensitive about it.

So I'm not surprised that he's going to analyze the art at Kennedy.

Go ahead.

And as we're talking about strong national control or what the Kennedy Center isn't isn't this does bring me to some of my conversation a month ago with Leonard Slatkin, the conductor who was music director of the National Symphony Orchestra for a dozen years and has gone back to guest conductor, housed along with the National Opera at the Kennedy Center.

And we talked to him last month when he's in Rochester, to guest conduct an orchestra at the Eastman School.

And when asked about the news of the Kennedy Center, he was working with the Las Vegas Philharmonic when he heard about the changes with Kind of Colored.

His response.

And I was wondering if we could share some of his perspective from Vegas on what was happening in D.C. and when this news came.

That's where I was.

And I got so upset, I really didn't know what to do.

I was all alone, and I just went out and I walked for three miles down the strip, and then my eyes opened and I looked around and I said, wow, look at all these people.

Every language in the world is being spoken on the street.

Oh, there's the trans people.

Oh, look at this.

There's the gay people.

Here's the people from whatever.

And everybody's just fine.

There is no problem here in Las Vegas.

So why aren't people going after Vegas?

It's an ideal place.

It's pretty simple.

Provides financial security for the city.

If the money's there, you don't touch it.

So here we have the Kennedy Center, which has an unusual history, of course, but as well-intentioned as it was to be the nation's artistic capital, it can't be because it's not New York.

But over the years, they've expanded their programs.

They've developed wonderful outreach.

They have more than 2.5 million visitors between the tourists and the people who come in.

They have to figure out at the center how to balance the budget.

We understand that what people don't realize, or many don't, is that your tax dollars only go to preserve a national memorial.

It's for the maintenance of the building.

None of your money is going to the programing.

So to have a political influence that is now going to dictate what they feel are are the proper ethics for our time is simply wrong.

Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra.

You want to elaborate on that?

Let's just start thinking about, you know, New York City is artistic hub, Kennedy Center is artistic hub or Las Vegas that the arts exists in so many different ways across our country.

And in a way, it is just one artistic center.

And but perhaps the children of Washington, D.C. lose out on educational programing that comes from this.

But then again, it also sends a message so that can have a chilling effect.

I think as people plan their theaters, think about their national grants and everything else that makes it tick.

So it's yes and no.

I guess, you know, what does it affect?

It affects something, but perhaps not as strongly as some of these other examples.

I'm grateful for the time that my colleagues are sharing with me this hour.

Mona Salami and Steve Johnson from classical 91 five are here.

We're talking about what's going on at the Kennedy Center and this administration's approach to, in their own words, trying to make sure that they have control what is on stage, what is being performed, what musicians are there, who is not, what shows, what theatrical performances, what opera.

So we're talking about the Kennedy Center and the implications.

And let's get your email feedback after this only break of the hour.

I'm Evan Dawson.

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We'll talk about the measles outbreak in the American South, their concerns about children's health, and some of the messaging they're seeing coming from the administration.

What the doctors want you to know.

Talking about Kids Health Tuesday on Connections.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, some email.

Gary says, why is this important?

Well, art is a form of speech.

As with censorship in any media, it's the chilling effect.

While other venues be chilled from showing certain performances in fear of being targeted.

That's a really good point from Gary, and it's one that I probably should have explored earlier when we were talking about the previous email, when somebody said, well, it's just the Kennedy Center, so let's set Hamilton aside.

Hamilton's gonna be fine, but there are a number of performances.

Finn is not one that I knew well until the whole Kennedy flare up, but there's a lot of musicians, some I know very well, some I do not, who are scheduled to play Kennedy and there some have decided not to play.

Some have been told you can't play, some are still playing.

Gary's point is, when the Trump administration says, here's who's not allowed to play Kennedy, is that a signal to the rest of the world that on your stages to do not put this artist do not put this show?

Steve?

I think, yes and no.

I wouldn't be surprised, honestly, if because of the way that, the arts work based on, you know, publicity and sales as well, that if someone can say that they were canceled from the, Kennedy Center, that could be a selling point in certain markets, and also in places that are more, fearful, more dependent on government funding, more, more sympathetic to his positions.

It would certainly have a chilling effect.

So it, it, it, you know, the universe or the the country is vast.

and there are a lot of different communities that will be affected differently by something like this for sure.

Okay.

And then you want to add there.

Yeah.

Just think of people I've known who've even say turned to public broadcasting here.

And when I lived in West Virginia, that things that they saw in the arts showed them that the world was bigger than what was around them and allowed them to feel it's okay to be different.

That's why I'm afraid the audience that will be affected most by the cuts rural audiences, smaller communities.

And so this, vision of the world outside your home, as well as seeing yourself in art, is something that I hope that people don't lose out on gradually, in bits and bits.

A couple of emails with different points of view about whether artists should keep their bookings to play at least this year, Charlie says Trump, deciding who can and cannot perform at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center, takes history back to 1939, when the daughters of the American Revolution refused to have Marian Anderson perform at Constitution Hall, eventually being the first person to perform at the Lincoln Memorial.

You know what I say?

Let's take our ball and find another place to play.

Artists who refused to perform at the Kennedy should organize and play another theater.

The alternative Kennedy Honors, they can call it.

It's not quitting.

It's sticking it to the man that is from Charlie, where Leah writes to say, any time you take your ball and go home because you are being bullied, the bully wins because you don't get to play.

By which I mean, I think the shows that are booked should go on.

We all know what Trump stands for.

We all know that artists expressing ideas he doesn't stand for don't support him.

I like that he's stuck with these shows for now, so they should go on until he gives, oh boy, till he gives us white cats, Leah says.

She says, I think the symbolism of leaving is not as effective as actually putting the show on.

Slatkin talked about this as well.

Let's listen to some of that.

If we could.

There's not much we can do as artists.

I'm a little more than a little upset with some of my colleagues who've decided that they will simply not go to the Kennedy Center.

That deprives their audience of their talent and their art.

And it's a chance for those people to make a statement.

So just running away from it doesn't solve an issue, and it doesn't help anyone.

So I would encourage people who are artists, support the Kennedy Center, support the arts that are going on inside the building, because if something happens and the center goes away, no more National Symphony Orchestra, no more national opera, so forth and so on.

That is the signal of the collapse of society.

The destruction of the arts is the first thing to go, and I just fear for the worst.

But I like to think surprisingly, in a positive way, that somehow we'll come up with a way to make the arts vibrant enough for everybody.

Okay, Steve, some people may hear Slatkin saying, you know, this is could be a signal of the collapse of society and feel that that is hyperbolic.

When you look at history, what do you make of this point?

There?

I, I sympathize to a certain extent.

And also I am a reflexive optimist, to be honest.

It's just in my nature and I look to people who have lost a lot, and are still able to make art.

You know, I look to, urban black communities who, invented rap because, you know, they lost music education in the schools.

They lost access to spaces where they could make music.

So they're, you know, dancing in the streets with boomboxes that they have, like, and I, I think of, you know, with my own research, I was studying North Korea, but, that spent, I spent a certain amount of time learning about the Chinese cultural revolution, too.

And it was like rural communities who were able to do sort of experimental theater that really undercut the messages of the Cultural Revolution, because they were kind of out of sight, out of mind for the government.

So, marginalization in this sense can offer opportunity.

and also, I think, I take a lot of inspiration from people who are able to make do like, we're humans.

We're going to find ways to, fill our time in ways that entertain us.

and, and I trust human nature to be creative.

Briefly.

Can you tell me a little bit more about North Korea?

well, there's a lot more control exerted there, in every way.

And the stuff that I have access to is, of course, the stuff that the government is willing to put out.

Most of my research documents were actually from North Korean government websites or, TV broadcast that they had uploaded to YouTube.

so, so I was dealing with like what the government was creating, which is also why I'm kind of at a loss to figure out what they might do with the Kennedy Center, because it doesn't seem like they have a well thought out, like multi-year strategy the way that you see during the Cultural Revolution.

And, and North Korea around the same time, doing things inspired by the Cultural Revolution, there's not the same like multimedia campaign to produce governmental art.

So I, I don't know what's going to happen.

Okay.

No, no.

Well, to quote Taylor Swift, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

I feel like we're all going to lose because they're not going to accomplish what they're setting out to do.

But people will lose jobs, will these opportunities will lose livelihoods along the way.

And so that is a very frustrating thing, the death of professionalism.

I mean, we had so much loss in the arts with Covid, and that was in a way unavoidable.

And people had to think about doing tours because it could be unsafe.

But I'm also putting my entire crew out of work, so that's frustrating.

And I think perhaps what anyone does is people are intentional about it and realize that if you are safe.

Rhiannon Giddens, who did cancel and put on her show somewhere else and she's with Silk Road Ensemble, if you're a bluegrass musician, if you're a classical symphonic musician, you have a lot in common in your, again, that centering of humanity and the arts.

Like Sarah said about what she's doing as a jazz voice professor, this amazing new program at Eastman.

So if artists work together, if people lean on each other, if we continue to value that humanity and creativity, I think, yeah, I guess I share some of that optimism, but there's definitely going to be pain along the way.

But I think we have to be more caring and smarter about how we work together.

Let me, grab a phone call from Jack in Clifton Springs who's been waiting.

Hey, Jack.

Go ahead.

Hi.

Yeah, when I came to this conversation late, but I think the, the thread through all of this is federal funds or funds that come from outside, the venues.

And unfortunately, I think that's going to play a huge part throughout the country, with this administration.

I'll take my answer off the phone.

Thank you.

Okay.

Jack.

Steve.

Mona, I guess I just again, that's often with public broadcasting, with theaters, with various things, a small amount of federal funds leverage so much else.

And it's that starter engine.

I mean, we can go back to talking about the bills stadium or not, but, you know, both the tangible you make more money when you put some money in, but then the intangible can't put a price on that child's educational experience.

But we value it as a society, which is why we invest in it.

And federal funds is one of the way we do that actually efficiently, I think.

Yeah, I also think to the the history of federal funding for the arts has always been kind of a series of sideshow Bob stepping on rakes there.

The the NEA was created and then ten years later, we got all this modern art, that was irreverent, that was, very sexual, that was, all sorts of things that conservatives did not approve of.

And it became a real talking point for them.

so as far as, federal funding, it's always been just like a hot potato.

and, and that doesn't mean that it's not important, but it does mean that we're, we're kind of in the moment where federal funding may I don't know, it may be more of, more trouble than it's worth for some organizations.

Let me squeeze in an email that says, I currently work at the Kennedy Center, and I'd like to remain anonymous.

They are intentionally creating an atmosphere of fear in the programing department.

We have been told anything drag or drag related will not be tolerated.

And if you produce something that qualifies you and everyone up, the chain of command will be fired.

None of this is in writing.

None of it is official.

It trickled down from supervisor to supervisor.

They get to decide what qualifies.

So everyone is walking on eggshells with programing for fear of losing their jobs.

It's bad.

Also, Trump's board meeting with with us on the opera House stage cost the center $80,000.

yeah.

That last point is interesting.

Everyone's outraged at the president.

You don't like when they golf?

And I heard a lot about it when Obama was golfing.

There's a lot of golf.

It's a lot of money.

I want to thank our our guests, I mean, guests, they're my colleagues popping down in the studio, sharing their expertise and their time with us.

Mona Secreto Salami, music director, host and producer for classical 91 five.

And I just encourage everyone to soak up the expertise and the wonderful work that they do.

When do they hear you, Mona?

I'm on from 4 to 7 on weekdays.

All right.

Classical 91 five Steve Johnson.

Doctor Johnson is midday host and announcer for classical on when noon to four every weekday.

I just love talking to both of you.

Thank you for sharing your thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much.

Great crew here and for all of us.

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