With Trump’s tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and combat-fatigued foot soldiers guarding masked ICE agents in Los Angeles, who’s listening to “Appalachian Spring”? How does Aaron Copland’s World War II-era patriotic evocation of the American pastoral strike our ears in an era of xenophobic, gun-toting vigilantism, when small towns are propagandized as the last stand of the real, white American, under siege by dog- and cat-eating immigrants? Can we hear “Appalachian Spring” without picturing J.D. Vance’s smug round face—a darling of the global far right who has made his career trashing Appalachia’s people?
Unlimited access to our
