A folk music duo plays the Musical Instrument Museum on Friday night. Earlier this year, they found themselves with a difficult creative decision to make.
Back in February, President Donald Trump was made chairman of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He announced he'd be taking control of programming at the venue, and that there would be changes. For too long, he said, Kennedy Center shows have been “woke.”
In response, a wave of influential artists canceled their scheduled performances at the Kennedy Center, including Issa Rae, Rhiannon Giddens and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But some artists who disagree with Trump are taking a different approach.
“Morally, it was the right thing to do to cancel, you know, like it felt very comfortable, very secure,” Nora Brown said.
Brown is a banjo and guitar player. She tours nationally with fiddle player Stephanie Coleman, performing old-time bluegrass and American folk music. Both Brown and Coleman disapprove of the president's policies — and they too had a show scheduled at the Kennedy Center. But something about canceling it felt too easy.
“When I go to a protest or, when I have some sort of strategic disobedience that I'm participating in, there should be some sort of feeling of nervousness and excitement and like there's a sort of fear, like, that you're breaking some rules or something. And I think that, like, the idea of canceling didn't really give me that feeling,” Brow said.
On Instagram, Brown and Coleman wrote, “We believe the most effective form of protest for us will be expressing disapproval loudly inside the institution where the voices of artists are actively being silenced.”
So, before their performance, they made two big poster board signs and a banner, and they smuggled them into the show. Or at least that's what they thought they were doing.
“We came into the Kennedy Center, like, hiding the banners. Like we were behind our instrument cases. We were like so nervous,” Brown said.
And these were not small posters.
"Yeah, we were, I mean, these, the posters were so big, they're like 5 feet tall. And they were, like, there were those like science, science exhibit posters that are like trifold they fold in. And so, and we're like sneaking them, sneaking them in onto the stage and like thinking the stage manager didn't see what we were doing, you know. We just like, they totally saw that we were doing that,” Coleman said.
When the show began, Brown and Coleman set up the signs on either side of the stage. One said, “Reinstate queer programming,” and the other said, "Rreativity at the Kennedy Center must not be suppressed.”
Then, they played for about an hour, and before their last number, Brown addressed the audience.
“This is a song that I picked up from our friends at Foghorn Stringband. It's called 'Reap What You Sow,' and I think it would be a good sing-along if people are — anybody wanna sing a little bit?” Brown said during the performance.
As a group of audience members jumped on stage, Brown made one more request.
“We also have a little, we have a banner here that if you wanna help us hold it while we sing, we'd appreciate that,” Brown said.
The audience members unfurled the banner which read, “Art will not submit to your authority, Trump.”
Once everyone was in position, Brown and Coleman started singing a song called “Sow ‘Em on the Mountain.”
Little by little, the crowd started clapping. And on the last chorus, everybody on stage and plenty of people in the crowd sang along.
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman will be performing at the Musical Instrument Museum on Friday night.
