Recalling Kanye’s Christmas Opera (12 Songs for Christmas)
- mhulseth
- Dec 30, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Oct 19, 2023
A year ago, Kanye West premiered a high-concept and well-hyped Christmas “opera” at Lincoln Center. Today I bring back this earlier reflection about it, so that people have a second chance to find it.
This syncs up with my reflection three days ago, when I pondered what makes a satisfying song about the birth of Jesus—one that neither abstracts from difficult social issues when taking about angels proclaiming peace on earth, nor propounds fake hope when taking about joy.
In the case of Kanye's opera, these questions largely ramify as how to handle King Herod slaughtering the children-- in the context of a nativity pageant with a black cast-- and how to present Kanye's new faith in the gospel of “I’ve got mine, Jack.”
Kanye addresses both of these things in ways that are fascinating— which is not to say satisfying-- in light of his growing alliance with Donald Trump. By extension this links to my reflections since this first appeared on how our gangster/grifter/president can wish COVID away with positive thinking and/or try to cure COVID (that is, other people’s COVID, not his own which cost taxpayers a million dollars) by drinking bleach.
MBE standard notice: The time I spend on this blog is not in addition to a Twitter and FaceBook presence, but an alternative to it. If you think anything here merits wider circulation, this will probably only happen if you circulate it.