One biographer of the famed British composer and ethnomusicologist Ralph Vaughan Williams posted a question \u2013 how could Vaughan Williams be both a socialist and a nationalist at the same time?\u00a0 One tended towards trying to eliminate boundaries and differences while the other tended toward glorying in boundaries and difference.\u00a0 He answered through two different quotes from the composer himself:<\/p>\n
I believe that the love of one\u2019s country, one\u2019s language, one\u2019s customs, one\u2019s religion, are essential to our spiritual health.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n
Art, like charity, should begin at home.\u00a0 If it is to be of any value it must grow out of the very life of himself [the artist], the community in which he lives, the nation to which he belongs. \u2026 Have we not all about us forms of musical expression which we can purify and raise to the level of great art? \u2026 The composer must not shut himself up and think about great art, he must live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the whole life of the community.[2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
His approach was a melding of aspects of both sides \u2013 embracing and loving your own culture and community, but not at the expense of respect for other people\u2019s culture and making room for them to do the same.<\/p>\n
As a teenager, I spent a lot of time reading about the history and composers of European art music. \u00a0(I know, I\u2019m weird.)\u00a0 One trend of the late Romantic and early modern era was nationalism in music, with composers like Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k in Hungary, Carlos Ch\u00e1vez in Mexico, and Aaron Copland in the United States of America producing music that represented their country and incorporated folk music in ways that made them unique to their culture and nation.\u00a0 I found the idea inspiring and embraced it to the extent that it became engrained in my mentality \u2013 specifically regional pride in all things Utah. \u00a0I\u2019ve worked to collect books about Utah history and folklore.\u00a0 When I arrange music, I tend to favor arranging hymns and folk music from Utah.\u00a0 Even in classical music, I have gone out of my way to collect recordings of everything I can by Leroy Robertson and other Utah composers. \u00a0I take pride in many aspects of my Mormon heritage.\u00a0 For that reason, celebrating Pioneer Day is a big deal to me.\u00a0 In fact, for a long time, I thought of myself as a term I thought that I coined based on what I had learned about the nationalist composers\u2014a Deseret Nationalist.<\/p>\n
Partially, this was based on aspirations based on an idealized version of Deseret history and ideals.\u00a0 Some of that aligns with what President M. Russell Ballard said in explaining the choice of honeybees (deseret) as a symbol of the community: \u201cBrigham Young chose the beehive as a symbol to encourage and inspire the cooperative energy necessary among the pioneers to transform the barren desert wasteland surrounding the Great Salt Lake into the fertile valleys we have today. We are the beneficiaries of their collective vision and industry.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 I found the faith and cooperative effort of the Latter-day Saint colonists to established an independent community of God\u2019s people in in the Great Basin inspiring.\u00a0 That was what Deseret meant to me.<\/p>\n
Yet, as I\u2019m sure most readers are aware, the term Deseret Nationalist isn\u2019t a term that shines favorably on people who use it these days.\u00a0 In 2018, Logan Smith employed the hashtag #DezNat as a shortened version of Deseret Nation to describe a right-wing movement with a strong dose of alt-right and white nationalist ideals blended with Mormonism.\u00a0 They oppose progressive Latter-day Saints and are known for applying a variety of bullying tactics towards them.\u00a0 In one example of their ilk, Matthias Cicotte was known for posting racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and misogynistic Deseret Nationalist content on Twitter under a pseudonym. \u00a0When he was outed, he was condemned for his venomous and hateful messages against a variety of vulnerable groups by the deans of J. Reuben Clark Law School.\u00a0 While perhaps an extreme example from a loose coalition, harsh and forceful language against marginalized groups or liberals while hiding behind a pseudonym is commonly associated with the hashtag.\u00a0 All of this is done in the name of supporting and defending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and reviving a vision of what the community of Deseret was.<\/p>\n
I find their vision of how to create Deseret through harsh rhetoric and occasional violence as being abhorrent.\u00a0 I am far more aligned with progressive ideologies than I am with the alt-right.\u00a0 Yet, I recognize that, unfortunately, they do represent aspects of the history of Utah Territory and the Latter-day Saint colonists who developed the region. \u00a0I also recognize that we ultimately share the same goal of supporting the Church and building a community of faithful and that we each do so in ways that seem justifiable to ourselves.\u00a0 But, just as many of the DezNat group chose to reject polygamy today, I choose to reject racism, sexism, and the other -isms as well as Danite tactics in view of a community in line with how I understand Zion and heaven will look like\u2014a community based around being \u201cof one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n
So, do I still apply the term Deseret Nationalist to myself?\u00a0 Not really.\u00a0 In the sense that Ralph Vaughan Williams felt that \u201cthe love of one\u2019s country, one\u2019s language, one\u2019s customs, one\u2019s religion, are essential to our spiritual health,\u201d I do have a deep love of Utah\u2014with its history and customs\u2014along with my religion.\u00a0 In that way, sure, I still am nationalist in the sense that Vaughan Williams was.\u00a0 I still aspire to the collective vision and industry of the community that the symbol of the honeybee represented to the early Latter-day Saints as they settled Deseret. That being said, I do not wish to be associated with the #DezNat group in any way.\u00a0 Their public appearance as religious extremists and bullies has poisoned the term for me.\u00a0 And frankly, that makes me sad – both for how it tarnishes the ideal of Deseret and Zion and for the negative impact that it has had on the people that have been targeted by Deseret Nationalists in recent years.<\/p>\n
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Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> Ralph Vaughan Williams, National Music<\/em>, 2nd<\/sup> edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 154.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> Ralph Vaughan Williams, \u201cWho Wants the English Composer?\u201d The R.C.M. Magazine<\/em>, 9\/1 [Christmas Term 1912], pp. 11-14.<\/p>\n