Opinion/Harold: Is music a part of the political center that is holding?

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

We're often hearing this quote from a Yeats poem of another time — 1919 — when the world was coming apart at the seams. It seems to capture the essence of what's wrong with the world these days, especially in the U.S. so divided that it threatens to end in some sort of civil war. (Actually, you can say that some sort of civil war has been going on for some time.)

Is there, some ask, with increasing desperation, a center, an unpoliticized and unable to be politicized common ground that can hold us together? Such traditional elements of the center as a set of common beliefs — democracy itself chief among them — or the common ground of the nation's Capitol, our democratic government and a president pledged to represent all the people, a Supreme Court supremely presiding over and above the fray — all seem to be doing the opposite of holding us together.

Of the beleaguered center, there are the underappreciated elements of government such as national parks, the system of roads, Social Security and other safety nets.

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There's Super Bowl Sunday.

Here in Wellfleet, the center is still holding (even if somebody did something recently to mess up our town finances), as embodied in a recent event at Wellfleet Harbor Actors' Theater.

One thing you can say about Wellfleet: this town knows how to put on a self-love fest. The event, an evening of music to benefit local affordable housing, featured the Narrowland String Band, reunited for their 40th anniversary, and other local groups. The musicians and audience, many of them longtime groupies, formed a spirited mutual appreciation society.

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The feel-good evening got me thinking: Isn't music a part of life — a big part — that unites us, that's universal, right? Part of the center that in fact is holding, even as we fall apart in so many ways?

After all, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.” Or so a character in a 17th-century play claimed. It's a very popular idea. The audience of Wellfleetians that evening — most over 60, like most crowds here — didn't seem especially savage but the music sure got everybody in a good mood.

When Joni Mitchell performed at the Newport Folk Festival recently, wasn't that universally moving? Was there anybody for whom Joni and her songs are “fake news?”

Surely not.

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If you've got a pulse and a booty to shake, music is deeply — universally — appealing, right? It can't be just liberals and other Democrats who flock to concerts. Surely Republicans too can shake that thing.

Or so one might conjecture.

On the other hand, a lot of the most popular music seems progressive, aligned with the values of the progressive, idealist (anti-war, anti-capitalist) of the 1960s and '70s, which produced so much of it. I don't recall any photos of Woodstock attendees in business suits or holding “Love it or Leave It” signs.

“Live Aid” in 1985 was a worldwide rock concert to raise money for the relief of famine. Have there been worldwide concerts against banning assault weapons?

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It has been a great era for singer-songwriters but I can't recall the names of any conservative singer-songwriters.

Does music, of any sort lend itself to declaring the 2020 election stolen? Or extolling the virtues of a 30-foot wall to keep out Mexicans as rapists and murderers?

The Wellfleet concert was for a progressive cause, arguably a class struggle of people to find a way of living in this overpriced piece of real estate. Did the 500 Wellfleetians who voted for Trump in 2016 boycott the concert for political reasons?

Does “folk music” not appeal to Republicans as music of the people, of poor people, of the down-and-out — think of fellow travelers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Do Trump supporters restrict themselves to country music for its romanticizing of the South? There's Merle Haggard's anti-hippie anthem, “Okie from Muskogee.” But I would claim “Take This Job and Shove It” for the party of working people, which I take traditionally to be Democrats.

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Has that great American musical innovation, the blues, been declared for one side or another of the political spectrum?

How is the “Star Spangled Banner,” that anthem of the center when it was holding, faring in the culture wars? How about Woody Guthrie's “This Land is Your Land?”

Which side of the divide gets to claim classical music? Are there those who claim, say, Beethoven, while dismissing Bach or Chopin as fake news?

Brent Harold, a Cape Cod Times columnist and former English professor, lives in Wellfleet. Email him at kinnacum@gmail.com.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod: Music is the universal language. Is it holding the center?