Caffeinated Politics

The Watertown School Board has achieved something truly remarkable, something they had not intended. They tried to undermine a dignified instrumental piece about LGBTQ+ history, but instead turned it into the most talked‑about spring cultural event in much of Wisconsin.

By “remarkable,” I mean the kind of strategic brilliance that belongs in a museum exhibit titled How Not To Handle Things. Their decision to block the high school band from performing A Mother of A Revolution!, a composition with no lyrics, no political speeches or rainbow pyrotechnics, has turned into everything they did not want. Due to overt bigotry from a few pople in Watertown and the spineless behavior of the Watertown School Board, which made a dreadful spectacle of thinking that sheet music was subversion, this musical selection is gaining notoriety. The board wanted to bury the music, but in doing so, created such a public fiasco that Omar Thomas, the composer, is coming to Watertown to conduct the high school band in the piece he wrote.

Thomas, an associate professor at the University of Texas-Austin Butler School of Music, composed the piece for contemporary wind ensembles in 2019.

He dedicated the work to transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, a key figure in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising against police raids in New York City. The uprising is considered a milestone in the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement and its site is recognized with a national monument.

In an interview with WTMJ-4, Thomas said he chose to write about Marsha P. Johnson as a Black trans woman to “honor the bravery and the strength of the trans people in my life.”

He said he is proud of the Watertown students for handling themselves “beautifully.”

I want to add that these high school musicians have been rehearsing the music all school year. It was imperative that they not be cheated out of the public performance.

If the school board had simply let the students play the piece at the spring concert, it would have been a lovely moment, appreciated by people seated in the auditorium. Then everyone would’ve gone home to complain about property taxes like normal Wisconsinites. But no! The bigots decided to turn a band concert into a conservative culture‑war battlefield, the kind of move that transformed a simple performance into a referendum on inclusion.

Their attempt to suppress the music only amplified it. Now the piece will be performed anyway. Not in the school gym, but in a church with much media attention. Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church is the location for the Wednesday night performance at 7 P.M.

I truly applaud the students in seeking to honor history through music. It was clear from interviews with them in news reports this past week that the instrumental work meant something to them. But the cultural warriors decided they wanted to make it all about themselves. From news reports, it was also clear that the student body, along with the majority of school parents, was not amused by the board’s behavior.

The board clearly had no ear for the public’s mood in Watertown because the piece about LGBTQ+ history is now going to be performed in a church. That’s not just irony; that is a sharp rebuke to the board that Watertown won’t be dragged backward by the insecurities of a few daft conservatives. I am laughing as I type this column at how spectacularly the Board’s plan unraveled.

And welcome to Wisconsin, Omar Thomas.