President Donald Trump has a long history of clashing with musicians, usually for using their recordings at his events without their permission. Bruce Springsteen, AKA The Boss, opposed the 2016 Trump campaign's use of "Born in the USA" that year and supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. And in 2024, Beyoncé's representatives sent Trump a cease-and-desist letter for using her song "Freedom." Beyoncé and Springsteen both supported Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Now, Trump is clashing with musicians over Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, which was renamed the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And the most recent artists to cancel appearances at the venue, according to Washington Post reporters Fritz Hahn and Kelly Kasulis Cho, include hard bop group The Cookers (who are well-known in the jazz world) and the dance group Doug Varone and Dancers.
The Cookers were scheduled to perform at a New Year's Eve event being billed as "A Jazz New Year's Eve," and Varone's outfit canceled two performances scheduled for April 2026.
In an official statement posted on Instagram on Monday, December 29, Doug Varone and Dancers stated, "While we totally disagreed with the takeover by the Trump Administration at the Kennedy Center, we still believed it was important to honor our engagement out of respect for both Jane Raleigh and Alicia Adams, who curated a first-rate dance season, as well as for the dance audiences in DC. However, with the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself, we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution."
On the Facebook page Jazz Stage, Cookers saxophonist Billy Harper — known for his work with hard bop icons like drummers Max Roach and Art Blakey — is quoted as saying, "I would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name (and being controlled by the kind of board) that represents overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture. After all the years I spent working with some of the greatest heroes of the anti-racism fight like Max Roach and Randy Weston and Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Stanley Cowell, I know they would be turning in their graves to see me stand on a stage under such circumstances and betray all we fought for, and sacrificed for."
