John Phillip Sousa
Stars and Stripes Forever
Programming note: With the holiday here, I went a little off menu. Our weekly playlist discussion thread will be back next week!
Happy 4th of July! I know it doesn’t feel like America deserves a birthday party this year.
If you’re feeling disillusioned, worried, or a furnace-like fury, trust your gut—I’m there with you.
But I also believe that there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed with what’s right about America. Everyone has their own idea of that recipe. For me, its: Community Ingenuity, Imagination, and Aspiration.
That’s what this song represents to me. It’s the romantic notion of things like small-town America, hard work, looking out for one another, and coming together for a common cause.
August traditions and new horizons. It’s a hagiography of the grand experiment that is the United States.
I wrote the piece below on this day last year. And while I’d like to think my writing style has changed, the feeling I tried to articulate has not.
Have a fun/safe 4th of July, and spare a thought for those working today (I’ll be at lunch when this hits your inbox). I’ll see you back here on Wednesday!
Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever.
The gem of the land and the sea, The banner of the right!
Let tyrants remember the day When our fathers, with mighty endeavor, Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever!
Americans love traditions. Name a holiday, and we have a bazillion for each. The 4th of July is no exception. Some people like to go to parades, some people grill out, and some spend the weekend living as if they’re in a beer commercial.
There are fireworks displays large & small. And of course, year after year people manage to either set their yard on fire or blow off one of their fingers.
It happens every year, like clockwork. You can set your watch to it.
As for me? I have one tradition; I play this song. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night. Doesn’t matter when so much as long as it happens.
The march came together in Sousa’s head as he sailed home from Europe
“I was in Europe and I got a cablegram that my manager was dead. I was in Italy and I wished to get home as soon as possible. I rushed to Genoa, then to Paris and to England, and sailed for America. Onboard the steamer as I walked miles up and down the deck, back and forth, a mental band was playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Day after day as I walked it persisted in crashing into my very soul. I wrote it on Christmas Day, 1896.”
In his 1993 inauguration speech Bill Clinton said:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
That’s what this song represents to me. It’s the romantic notion of things like small-town America, hard work, looking out for one another, and coming together for a common cause.
August traditions and new horizons. It’s a hagiography of the grand experiment that is the United States.
Sousa noted that the three parts of the final trio were meant to signify three sections of the country; the main theme represents the North, the piccolos the South, and the trombones the West.
To be sure, 2021 America is a fractured nation recovering from the pandemic, the last administration, and working through our tortured past. We have a lot of work to do.
That’s where we’re at.
To me, Stars and Stripes Forever represents where we can go.
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
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P.P.S. This article originally appeared here.
