The rise of Trumpism is a genuine existential threat to many people, and also to many abstract ideas, and to a great number of physical objects too: Americans of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, Greenland, liberal European democracy, architecture, museums, penguins, objective truths and also windmills.
But when I see ordinary Americans gunned down in the street, sovereign democratic nations threatened with invasion, and racist propaganda pushed worldwide by Trump’s loyal tech barons, the real question for me, as a multi-award winning creative talent historically operating across many different disciplines, is how should artists respond, and with which materials, and using which imaginative processes?
And do the times require cross-disciplinary strategies, or is the focus of artists working their responses out in the mediums with which they are already most adept the correct way to formulate an artistic dialogue with the current moment; a moment which probably requires an urgency of impulse at odds with the kind of multi-medium formulations artists might collaborate on, if events were not accelerating at a pace which meant that tapestry or basket weaving, for example, were processes too ponderous to pursue as frameworks for political comment at this point? I don’t know.
The first artists to show the way forward under Trump Mark II were fiery 60s jazzheads the Cookers, who pulled out of their New Year’s Eve show at the newly Trump-appended Kennedy Center for the Arts. Trump clearly didn’t understand how the group “embody the serious-as-death commitment that it took to thrive on the New York scene some four decades ago” (Andrew Gilbert, the Boston Globe) if he thought these veterans of jazz’s entertainment/art standoff were going to roll over.
The next big name dropout for the centre was the composer Philip Glass, his absence a terrible loss to the many fans of American serial minimalism in Trump’s Maga base. The real worry for Trump fans, as far as the arts are concerned, will be when all those fat men who eat dozens of burgers against the clock while wearing blue vests grow a protesting pair and pull out of the Trump Kennedy Center’s proposed Thanksgiving competitive eating event.
But the Trump Kennedy Center’s new president, Richard Grenell, who is also on the board of the lovely Latitude Festival’s promoters Live Nation, had this to say to the jazz musician Chuck Redd, another refusenik who dropped out of his annual Christmas Eve Jazz Jam: “Your decision to withdraw … surrenders to the sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that attendance for your Jazz Jam had been lagging. Your dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support has cost us considerably. This is your official notice that we will seek $1m in damages from you for this political stunt. True artists perform for everyone regardless of the political affiliation of audience members.”
Grenell’s statement, saying Redd has cost him millions but that no one was buying tickets (to a gig that was free anyway), is classic Billy Bunter bullshit – “I didn’t steal your cake, Jenkins, and anyway it was horrible” – but also misunderstands what subsidised public art is for. Jazz musicians’ invaluable contribution to American culture has earned them the right to run at a loss. Consider it a form of reparations.
I said that as Trump had now essentially declared war on Europe, maybe it was time for Dolly Parton to shit or get off the pot
And we don’t assess art’s value on how many people like it anyway. Some of the best things I ever saw played to single figures sometimes – the Irish comedian Kevin McAleer, the Malian bluesman Ali Farka Touré; while one of the worst – the Queen musical We Will Rock You – got a standing ovation from a sold-out theatre full of twats. Which is why I am nevertheless going to see the new documentary on Melania Trump, the rights of which business genius Jeff Bezos of Amazon paid the Trumps $75m for. The fact that it’s playing to empty cinemas might just mean it’s a brilliant piece of experimental art.
I was backstage at a gig in December where a thoughtful American promoter was saying she admired Dolly Parton because she managed to satisfy audiences containing both LGBTQ+ fans who love her, and ordinary Maga folk who see the struggles of her early years in theirs. She said Dolly’s decision to keep her politics quietly personal (she declined the Presidential Medal of Freedom three times) enabled her to bring these disparate groups together. I understood this idea and sympathised, but said that as Trump had now essentially declared war on Europe maybe it was time for Dolly Parton to shit or get off the pot. This brought to mind a shocking image I instantly wished I hadn’t conjured up, and one which has doubtless already been generated countless times by AI software freely available to all on Elon Musk’s Twitter (currently X).
But the other day I heard a record playing in some hipster Hackney boutique, loved it, and bought it there and then, old skool! It was the third album, 1975’s Black Saint, by a jazz saxophonist I hadn’t heard of before, Billy Harper, and it was both beautiful and brutal, like the times that bore it. I went home and looked Harper up. A former member of Trump-dropouts the Cookers no less, and now 83 years old, Harper had just commented on the New Year’s Eve cancellation, saying he “would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name (and being controlled by the kind of board) that represents overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture”, adding that Max Roach and the musicians that inspired him “would be turning in their graves to see me stand on a stage under such circumstances and betray all we fought for, and sacrificed for”.
It’s unequivocal. But when I started writing this column on Tuesday, most major American artists’ voices were still muted. When I was a kid in the 80s, every American hardcore punk album was called something like Stuff Jellybeans Down Reagan’s Pee-Pee Hole, and Millions of Dead Cops sang No War! No KKK!! No Fascist USA!!! Then I woke up on Wednesday and Bruce Springsteen had dropped his rush-recorded Streets of Minneapolis, and that afternoon I heard World’s Gone Wrong, the new album by the grande dame of country rock, Lucinda Williams, whose position couldn’t be clearer, placing her and Springsteen a million miles from Parton’s indecisive pot-occupation. Both artists risk the loss of casual listeners in their millions and the ire of a demonstrably vengeful Trumpstablishment. And both are over 70. Come on, kids!
Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf tours everywhere in the UK and Ireland until the end of this year, with a further 96 dates including two weeks at London’s Alexandra Palace in February