free speech

With the inauguration of a new president just six weeks away, many in country music’s creative community recognize they have a role to play.
In his first administration, Donald Trump was frighteningly comfortable making life difficult for people who exercised their First Amendment freedom of speech rights — threatening, for example, to revoke TV licenses over negative coverage and calling for a federal investigationof Saturday Night Live over a skit.

For his second administration, Trump and some of his cabinet nominees have vowed to exact revenge on his perceived enemies, including journalists whose coverage he deems unflattering. Some former White House staff and advisers say Trump aspires to rule as an autocrat.

Songwriters, artists and musicians — like reporters — make their living transmitting messages, and many are aware that on certain days, they may be led to create music that might seem contrary to a thin-skinned ruler. Do they self-edit and slink to the next subject? Or do they stand up and speak their piece?

Songwriter Dan Wilson, who co-wrote Chris Stapleton’s  “White Horse,” which won the Country Music Association’s single and song of the year, is familiar with the issue. He worked with The Chicks, co-writing the Grammy-winning “Not Ready To Make Nice” after they were booted out of country’s mainstream for criticizing then-President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. 

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“As I’ve learned firsthand in the past, critiquing the president can be a fraught and dangerous thing to do,” Wilson said on the red carpet before the CMA Awards. “Generally, doing what artists do anyway, which is pointing things out that no one else will talk about, that could be a dangerous thing to do, but I don’t think that’s going to stop.”

Most songwriters, particularly in country music, don’t address political topics in their work on a regular basis. And plenty of those creators — when pressed in recent weeks on how Trump’s return to the White House might influence their art — shrugged off the subject, saying they were apolitical or didn’t feel comfortable talking about it publicly.

But others were particularly sensitive about the subject. In the past, Trump has incited his followers to intimidate his detractors, and many see his return to office as a threat to their personal freedoms and, possibly, to their safety. Artists are already acutely aware of the potential reaction of the audience and media gatekeepers.

“You always think about that stuff,” Phil Vassar noted at the ASCAP Country Awards red carpet. “You’re writing songs — ‘Can I say that in a song?’ ”

Under normal conditions, songwriters ask that question to avoid commercial and/or artistic repercussions. But in authoritarian regimes, expression is tightly guarded, creating additional emotional hurdles. In Russia, the population is famously loath to speak ill of top government officials. Vladimir Putin has jailed artists whose music opposes his rule. In Afghanistan, music has been outlawed in its entirety.

“The arts are frightening because the arts reveal people to themselves,” Rosanne Cash said at a Dec. 4 party for her new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit, “Rosanne Cash: Time Is a Mirror.” “The arts are inherently political in that bigger sense, that it changes people and wakes them up.”

Not everyone sees the incoming administration as a threat. Jason Aldean, Chris Janson and Brian Kelley all participated in the Republican Convention in July, and Big Loud artist Lauren Watkins is hopeful that “we are going to have more freedom of speech.” 

Meanwhile, Julie Williams, a mixed-race, queer artist, is already concerned about being canceled by emboldened conservatives under a Trump administration. The day after the election, she wasn’t convinced she had the strength to play a Nov. 7 show celebrating her new EP, Tennessee Moon. But the audience response helped her recognize that her songs might be even more important over the next four years.

“For me, when I get a chance to be onstage and sing songs about growing up in the South or my queer journey, it makes me feel like I have a little bit of control, a little bit of power, over what’s happening in the world,” she said on the CMA Awards carpet. “While I can’t change what’s happening at the national level at the moment, at my shows, I can help create an environment that people feel like they belong, that they feel like there’s somebody that loves them, and just to share my stories and hope that the audience hears themselves in it.”

It’s not only the songwriters and artists who sense they have a mission. Found Sound Media founder Becky Parsons, who specializes in management and PR for women and minority artists, is encouraging her acts — including Sarahbeth Taite and Fimone — to present themselves authentically through their art. And she intends to do that herself.

“I’m not going to be silent,” Parsons said on the CMA Awards carpet. “I’m not going to sit down and play by your rules. I’m going to break your rules. I’m going to create the world that I want to see. Not everybody has the luxury to do that, but thankfully, I do, and that’s the kind of future in country music and the world that I want to see.”

For many artists, the mission headed into the new administration is less about confrontation than about bringing disparate people together. Willie Nelson famously did that by attracting an audience of cowboys, college students and hippies with country music in the mid-1970s. Today, The War and Treaty, Charlie Worsham, Home Free, Frank Ray and Niko Moon aim to act as a bridge between communities.

“I’m kind of over being on any one team, and I’m ready to talk to people — especially people that I don’t agree with — and better understand what their plight is,” Worsham said on the CMA carpet. “And I think country music is uniquely poised to speak to this moment.” 

Moon is similarly dedicated to putting “love and positivity out there into the world.”

“We’re living in strange times,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we have to be strangers. We’re more similar than we are different.”

That said, if Trump follows the Project 2025 agenda, as many fear he may, it is likely to embolden his most ardent supporters, who have at times resorted to violence — in Charlottesville, Va., in 2016 or in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, to name two examples. It would be easy, in such an atmosphere, for cultural groups under siege to withdraw from the public space. But that’s all the more reason, openly gay country artist Chris Housman said, for creatives to speak out. He concedes that he went into a mini-depression after the election and admits that he’s among the faction of Americans who considered leaving the country. But he’s not going anywhere.

“I get so much inspiration and motivation out of challenging stuff and uncertainty and being uncomfortable,” Housman said on the CMA carpet. “It kind of feels like it’s ground zero here in the South, and in America in general, right now. If everybody leaves, if all the queer people leave, then it’s not going to change anything. So I’m just trying to dig in for that motivation and inspiration.”

Digging in against an autocrat is not comfortable. But staying quiet has consequences, too. As Thomas Jefferson noted, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for men of good conscience to remain silent.” Creatives who self-censor to avoid controversy might make their lives a little easier for the short-term, but they also won’t make much of a long-term difference. Artists who stood up in the past — such as Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Bob Marley and Johnny Cash — influenced the eras in which they made their music, but they also helped to improve future generations’ understanding of their times.

“A lot of the reason that we are able to remember fascists and dictators is because of the work of creatives, because of the work that we’ve done in documenting things from our authentic perspective,” said Supreme Republic Entertainment founder Brittney Boston, whose clients include rapper DAX and country singer Carmen Dianne. “I think it’s really important as an artist right now to be honest, to write from your heart, because a lot of people are going to be too scared to do that, and people are going to be craving that authenticity.”

If nothing else, the creative class has an opportunity as Trump moves into office threatening retribution. On those occasions when artists or songwriters have something to say, but hold back to avoid scrutiny, they chip away at their own freedoms. Those who decline to self-censor their work often discover a greater sense of empowerment, even as they continue a free-speech tradition that was etched into the Constitution.

“You find the limits of your courage, don’t you?” Rosanne Cash said rhetorically. “Let’s just go for it.” 

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