MELISMA | SPRING 2020 | 5
THE MUSICAL DREAM OF THE SANDERS CAMPAIGN BY ADAM KRASNOFF
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ernie Sanders’s February 10th rally in New Hampshire marked a strange point in his campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential race. Accompanying the Vermont Senator’s usual speechifying about taking on corporate interests and fighting for the working class, a living wage, and universal health care was a performance from New York City indie-rock veterans The Strokes. For Bernie to put on a rally with a musical accompaniment has not been unusual during this campaign cycle—he has organized events alongside neo-folk and electronic tinkerer Bon Iver, banjoist Béla Fleck, and alt-rock guitar hero Jack White, among others—but this collaboration felt more pointed. Take, for example, the poster designed for the event, which redesigned the sparkling, chromatic Strokes logo to feature the Brooklyn-born politician’s name, the silhouette of his head contrasted against the poster’s black background. This was no mere partnership, but rather an adoption by one of the other’s image; this is politician as rockstar, as indie hero. More than that, too, it is an embrace by one of the indie scene’s most slacker-esque figures of a mainstream political figure—no matter how far left of any “establishment” Bernie may be, it’s hard to imagine the shaggy-haired, cigarette-smoking Julian Casablancas in the 2001 music video for the Strokes’ “Someday” wanting to have anything to do with a campaign for presi-
THIS WAS NO MERE PARTNERSHIP, BUT RATHER AN ADOPTION BY ONE OF THE OTHER’S IMAGE; THIS IS POLITICIAN AS ROCKSTAR, AS INDIE HERO.
dent, or vice versa. But these conceptions of what exists in or outside of the realms of politics and music have for the past several years begun to shift and blur, and Bernie’s recent embrace of this phenomenon perfectly exemplifies its spread. But why is it that the borders between these two seemingly disparate worlds have begun to come crashing down? In a moment when social media and Internet culture as a whole have totally invaded the public consciousness, it’s no surprise that politicians have tried to become savvier about the ways in which they interact with their base online—part of that transition being to enter into the world of online music communities. Of course, the intersection between music and politics is not a new phenomenon. For almost as long as pop music has existed, politicians have appropriated it for use on the campaign trail. In 1960, Frank Sinatra even rewrote the lyrics to his hit “High Hopes” from the previous year to make the song explicitly about and in support of John F. Kennedy’s bid for the presidency. But for the most part, relations have not always been so amicable—in 1984, Ronald Reagan became the first in a string of conservative politicians to be taken to court over the use of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at campaign rallies, a particularly ironic case given the song’s critical examination of American patriotism. (After Reagan would follow Bob Dole in 1996 and Pat Buchanan in
