Independence Music

This great weekend has been filled with the aroma of barbeques and fireworks. The sound waves have been filled with the overplaying of pathetic renditions of patriotic music, which led me to do a little research on this music.

First of all, our national anthem has really caught my attention. Our original national anthem was “My Country, ‘tis of Thee”. The lyrics represented the new nation, but the national anthem of the independent country was dependent on the melody of the national anthem of the oppressor.

During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key, a POW, witnessed an attack on Baltimore that inspired his poem “Defense of Fort McHenry”, which would later become the lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner”. “The Star-Spangled Banner” would later become the official national anthem of the United States in 1916, almost 150 years after its so-called independence from England.

The irony of all this is mind numbing. The lyrics had nothing to do with the war for independence, so it makes sense why this song would be associated with Independence Day. The lyrics came from a war that the United States ultimately conceded. That brings out the pride in American patriotism. The tune for this song came from, of all countries, Britain, but the best part of it was that it was a British drinking song.

What better way is there to represent the United States? Singing the lyrics of a lost war to a pub song. That’s called drinking your sorrows away.

The Independence Day tune that raised the first red flag for me came while I was watching a commercial on Discovery Channel. The advertisement for the Greatest Catch featured a crab from several camera angles to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

My initial thought was that the song was a Civil War song, more specifically, the anthem of the abolitionists. Separated by almost a century, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War represented two completely different purposes. The Revolutionary War was to separate the United States, the Civil War was to keep it together. I suppose you could argue that they were both civil wars. The suppressed just happened to win the first one.

If they were both civil wars, then it would make sense to play civil war music on Civil War of 1776 with Favorable Results Day. When is the last time you heard “Dixie” played on Civil War Day though? I guess that effectively eliminates the Civil War Day theory.

If I were to pick a song that would make the most sense for July 4th, it would be “America the Beautiful”. It has nothing to do with 1776. It has nothing to do with war. It doesn’t even have anything to do with independence. It was however, first published as a poem on July 4th, 1895. Entitled Pikes Peak, the poem was set to music in 1910.

The lyrics support the title perfectly. The song talks about The beauty that is found in the United States. That was more than 100 years ago though. George Carlin described America like this:

Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, insecticided grain
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea!

Next year, on July 4th, listen to the music. Don’t be surprised when you hear “O, Canada”.