When Muhammad Ali died in 2016, I was surprised by how deeply his death affected me. My sense of loss seemed to come out of nowhere.
Boxing was of little interest to me. I didn’t follow Ali’s fights with the devotion of those who could recall every opponent and every round. But I had followed Ali in another sense. Ali was inescapable in the tapestry of my early adulthood, an unmistakable human presence during a socially and politically turbulent time. His death felt like the disappearance of something larger than a great athlete.
As I explored my emotional reaction to his death, the source of my admiration became clear: Ali possessed personal integrity and genuine individuality.
News of Dolly Parton’s death affected me in much the same way.
Again, my reaction surprised me. I admired her music and certainly knew some of her extraordinary story, but I wasn’t a devoted follower. Why, then, should losing her also feel so personal?
I think the answer is the same: Integrity and genuine individuality. Dolly Parton was Dolly. Muhammad Ali was Ali. Neither tried to be anyone else.
I have been a student musician for most of my life. “Student” is an important part of the description. I still practice. I still struggle. I still try to produce what I think of as a competent melody.
Music has taught me an apparent contradiction: Discipline can be the pathway to freedom.
You practice scales so that eventually you don’t have to think about scales. You learn rhythm so you can play with rhythm. You listen carefully to other musicians so you can play with them.
But ultimately, you hope to sound like yourself.
Muhammad Ali certainly did.
He didn’t simply become a remarkable boxer. He created a public identity unlike anyone else’s. He changed his name. He spoke about race and religion when athletes were generally expected to remain safely within the boundaries of sport. Most consequentially, he refused induction into the military during the Vietnam War, a decision that cost him his heavyweight title, his boxing licenses and years of his career.
One need not agree with every position Ali took to recognize something remarkable about him: He was prepared to accept the consequences of deciding for himself who Muhammad Ali would be.
Dolly Parton found her individuality in an entirely different way, but just as authentically.
She emerged from poverty in rural Tennessee and entered a music industry in which other people had plenty of ideas about what a young female country singer should look like, how she should sound and who she should become.
Parton listened to her own voice.
The hair became bigger. The clothes became brighter. The Appalachian accent wasn’t discarded on the road to success. She could make jokes about her appearance before anyone else could because she was in command of the joke.
Behind the rhinestones was extraordinary discipline: Songwriting, musicianship, performing, business judgment and decades of work.
The flamboyance worked because the competence beneath it was real.
Ali and Parton could hardly have been more different. Ali often confronted. Parton generally charmed. Ali stepped directly into some of the most divisive political controversies of his time. Parton usually resisted being pulled into partisan politics.
Yet both never sacrificed their individuality in a culture constantly demanding conformity.
Individualism isn’t the refusal to belong. It is the refusal to surrender your judgment as the price of belonging.
Look across today’s political landscape. How many people demonstrate the individuality, courage and integrity of Muhammad Ali or Dolly Parton? Who is willing to disappoint the crowd, defy the expectations of their own side or pay a personal price for remaining true to deeply held convictions? Is there anyone committed to doing the right thing, damn the consequences?
Those questions seem especially important during an election season.
Candidates spend enormous amounts of time telling us which team they are on. They repeat the team’s language, embrace its positions and attack its designated opponents. Political success increasingly seems to depend upon demonstrating loyalty to a tribal identity.
Perhaps we should ask candidates a different question:
When has being “on your side” required you to stand apart from it?
When has your judgment prevailed over the demands of your political tribe? When have you been willing to risk an endorsement, a donor, a committee assignment or perhaps even an election because you believed doing otherwise would be wrong?
These questions apply equally to Republicans and Democrats. This isn’t an argument against political parties. Parties are necessary for governing, just as ensembles are necessary for much of music.
But there is a difference between playing with others and merely playing your assigned part.
Journalism has taught me something similar.
Its disciplines, verification, evidence, fairness and independence, exist partly to prevent journalists from simply repeating what their tribe already believes. A reporter’s obligation isn’t to make one side’s story come out right. It is to follow the reporting wherever it leads.
Sometimes the facts confirm what we expected. Sometimes they don’t.
The second possibility is where independence matters.
The same should be true of public service.
We shouldn’t expect elected officials to abandon their principles or their political parties. We should expect them to know what their parties believe, work with colleagues and compromise when compromise is necessary to govern.
But beneath the party label, there must remain an individual capable of independent judgment.
That may be what I recognized in Ali and Parton, even though I never met either of them and wasn’t among their most devoted fans.
They sounded like themselves.
There is something reassuring about encountering people like that. They remind us that it is possible to participate fully in the world without surrendering authorship of who we are.
Perhaps that is also why their deaths feel like more than the passing of two famous people. Something distinctive has gone silent.
I will never possess Muhammad Ali’s physical gifts or Dolly Parton’s musical ones. But the quality I admired most in them doesn’t require fame.
It requires practice.
As a student musician, I know how difficult it can be to find your own voice. You spend years learning what others have done. You master rules. You listen. You practice your part. And, if you’re fortunate, somewhere along the way all that discipline gives you enough confidence and freedom to make the music your own.
Democracy requires something similar.
We need people capable of belonging to an ensemble without surrendering their own voices.
So perhaps during this election season, amid all the rehearsed talking points and declarations of party loyalty, we should listen for something else.
Not whether candidates know how to play their assigned parts. We already know they can.
We should listen for the moments when conscience and tribe play different notes.
And then ask which one they will follow.