Songs of America

I’ve been thinking about songs that focus on the meaning of America. I decided to do some modest research into the history of five compositions that reflect particular themes in our history as well as our collective aspirations. I then asked myself a question: If you look at them together, what do they tell us about who we are?

As we are often reminded, the words to the ‘Star Spangled Banner” were written by an amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after seeing an American flag over Fort McHenry survive a night of bombardment by the British navy in 1814. It’s a difficult tune for an average person to sing. At every baseball game I’ve attended over the years, everyone listens closely to the brave soul who will perform it – will they stay within the melody as it is written, or will they do something surprising and amazing when they get to “O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave, O’er the Land of the free and the home of the brave?” The best performance I ever heard was a 12-year-old girl at a spring training game in Arizona…she hit every note with a beautiful tone and powerful volume, but didn’t overdo it; when she finished she smiled as if to say, ‘Yea, I could do this all day long.” The crowd went nuts.

“America the Beautiful” began as a poem written by an English professor, Katharine Lee Bates, in 1882. She had made a train trip from the East Coast through Chicago, across the Great Plains, and up to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Thinking of all she had seen, she penned a poem describing the “alabaster cities,” “amber waves of grain,” and “purple mountain majesties” and blended those with themes from American history. I appreciate the way this song both celebrates America and also recognizes we are always going to be a work in progress: “America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.”

Not long after Ms. Bates was inspired at Pike’s Peak, a lawyer and poet, James Weldon Johnson, was serving as Chair of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida and began to compose a poem to honor Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. But then he felt drawn to commemorate the long struggle for equality by African-Americans. Drawing on the Exodus story, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was set to music by his brother. It soon gained popularity and became known as the Black National Anthem. I find it particularly stirring and inspiring. If you don’t know it, here’s the second stanza:

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place For which our fathers died.
We have come, over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
’Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

I did not know this song when I was growing up, but I became familiar with it as it began appearing in many church hymnals. More than once I thought about including it in a worship service. But my congregations consisted entirely of white folk; we had not traveled the same “stony road” or experienced how “bitter” the “chastening rod” had been, and it felt inappropriate to sing of that experience. But what a powerful testimony it always is.

In 1918, a musically gifted Jewish Russian immigrant was stationed at an army base in New York and felt inspired to write a song he called “God Bless America.” Twenty years later, as the second world war was drawing close in Europe, Irving Berlin revised it and had it sung by the powerhouse entertainer, Kate Smith. “God Bless America” took on new meaning when members of both parties of Congress gathered on the steps of the capital on the evening after the 9/11 attacks and spontaneously sang it together. After that, it was sung during the seventh-inning stretch at baseball games across the country. In those early days following 9/11, it was often sung by a NY Fire Department member or police officer, and it became a way to honor all those who died in the terrorist attacks.

But not everyone took a liking to Kate Smith’s “God Bless America.” Woody Guthrie felt it was too easily used to venerate the status quo of American life, which, especially during the depression, included glaring inequalities. In 1944, he recorded his own American anthem: “This Land Is Your Land, This Land is My Land.” The message and the spirit of “This Land Is Your Land” affirms that the vision of America is a nation for all people, not just those in power. “This Land Is Your Land” found new popularity in the Sixties and has remained popular ever since.

This is my list of five “patriotic” songs. If you consider them as a group, a certain composite image of our country emerges. America is a nation that celebrates bravery and freedom. It’s a country of great natural beauty that has been blessed by the sacrifice of many people but will always be in the process of improving itself. It’s a society in which formerly enslaved people have endured generations of severe hardship yet are resolutely moving toward a better future. This is a much-loved land that needs divine blessing to fulfill its promises. And it’s that rare place where people of all backgrounds and identities are meant to share in its bounty and its possibilities.

Here’s a sampling of performances of three of the songs:

Kate Smith, “God Bless America”

Woodie Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land”

Kirk Franklin, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”

And one loyal reader suggested I add these to the list: