Chapter 6 reveals how Bernstein used the blues to parse intertwined issues of race, faith, and national identity in the developmental process of Mass and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As the opening rite for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mass questioned the notion of faith in the face of persistent violence and social injustice, from the Vietnam War to the ongoing civil rights struggle. As another politically charged work, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue drew heavily on the blues as a part of its historical pastiche. In the year of the bicentennial, Lerner and Bernstein wanted to call America to account for its ongoing failure to truly address the question of civil rights, but they were depending on a frayed black-Jewish relation for their rhetorical authority.
