At Trump’s Rally, the contradictions are in the music

A once foul-mouthed white rapper was remade as an icon of the right-wing country rebellion. An iconic disco-pop outfit with a crossover hit is often about gay cruising that has become a global sports and bar mitzvah anthem.

These are the kinds of conflicting figures that have long animated and energized American pop music, the art form where competing interest groups and creative drives are closest and most likely to collide in unexpectedly productive ways. The pot of American pop is messy, the result of centuries of creative crossover, willing and forced and sometimes unpredictable.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that even on stage at President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena — a place apparently inhospitable to these tales of collaborative differences — those tug-of-wars persisted.

In the speeches – from Mr. Trump and many of his surrogates – there was nativism and isolationism and promises of record deportations.

And yet for a party and a movement built in part on exclusion and a campaign marked at times by race-baiting, there were conspicuous overtures to diversity and inclusion, and sly acknowledgments of the power of the multiracial stew of American pop.

There was Kid Rock, his voice punchy and powerful, singing “All Summer Long,” his winning rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama,” before donning a red Make America Great Again ball cap and taking a turn scratching his DJ’s record player. In a video message during the performance, Mr. Trump to Make America Rock Again, interspersed with recordings of Run-DMC songs.

Billy Ray Cyrus, who was listed as one of the performers at the convention but was not heard except for sound checks, would have fleshed out this curious tale, as a former pretty country boy was saved at the end of his career by working with a queer hip-hop newcomer, Lil Nas X, on “Old Town Road.”

And of course there were the Village People, who performed “YMCA” at the rally’s conclusion with Mr. Trump behind them as they flickered and occasionally sang along.

Did the song’s origin story matter? It didn’t. (Victor Willis, the group’s frontman and only remaining original member, made headlines last month as he wrote on social media that the song “isn’t really a gay anthem.”)

But of course it is, Mr. Trump sees music: as theme songs, fight songs, soundtracks to memories more than works of art. He leans toward anthems that have been washed clean of meaning, as long as they are memorably durable. He took the stage to Lee Greenwood and serenaded him with “God Bless the USA” as if accepting the crowning of the homecoming king at the prom.

The pre-rally soundtrack, aside from the occasional modern interloper — Bruno Mars’ “Versace on the Floor,” the Weeknd’s “Starboy” — was skewed four to five decades old. It was very much the sound of Studio 54 and its offshoots, twisted through layers of history and irony and post-history until nothing is left but the beat.

Most of the speakers were introduced with flickers of hard rock guitar, as if to calm (and energize) the largely white crowd. But the messages they delivered were in some places more nuanced. Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, reminded the crowd of Mr. Trump’s success with non-white voters, as did Mr. Trump himself in his speech, eager to paint MAGA as a multiracial movement.

But the contradictions were never far from the surface. Puerto Rican superstar Anuel AA embraced Mr. Trumpand said he was on stage to speak “on behalf of the entire Spanish community” and described the backlash he received for supporting Mr. Trump. Just minutes later, Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser, condemned President Biden’s border policy, and Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor, proclaimed that Facebook and McDonald’s would do away with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

It was the ultimate in having it both ways — stealthily embracing the spoils of American diversity while forcefully arguing against DEI. Using the optics and sound of integration as a soft weapon against their own advancement. The purpose of the rally was meant to be clear, but the music hinted at a far messier – and still unresolved – truth underneath.