Music for the 4th

My church in Delray Beach FL celebrated Independence Day this morning with joyous music. Neil Nelson, a new baritone in the choir, gave a spirited rendition of The House I Live In. I liked its focus on people and neighborhoods. Why had I not heard this wonderful song before? Was it really blacklisted as Communist propaganda in the 1950s? Here it is sung by Paul Robeson in 1946; the text by Lewis Allen follows.

THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, Lewis Allen

What is America to me?A name, a map, a flag I see
A certain word, democracy  What is America to me?

The house I live in. A plot of earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher, And the people that I meet
The children in the playground. The faces that I see
All races and religions. That’s America to me

A place I work in, A worker by my side
A little town or city. Where my people lived and died
The howdy and the handshake, The air of feeling free
And the right to speak my mind out, That’s America to me.

The things I see about me, The big things and the small
The little corner newsstand, And the house a mile tall
The wedding and the churchyard, the laughter and the tears
And the dream that’s been a growing, For a hundred and eighty years

The town I live in, The street, the house, the room
Pavement of the city, Or a garden all in bloom
The church, the school, the clubhouse, The millions lights I see
But especially the people, That’s America to me!

The choir went on to sing more of my favorites: the African American Spiritual I’ve Got Peace Like a River; Irving Berlin’s setting of Emma Lazarus’s poem on the Statue of Liberty, Give Me Your Tired , Your Poor; Katherine Lee Bates’ America the Beautiful, and the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts: 

Dance , then, wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the dance, said he, And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

Greg Rapier’s sermon on “Living Joyfully” was a great message for the trip to Europe I begin tomorrow. It will surely be a joyous get-together in Paris with Steve, Lilli, Violet and friends we have known for many decades. I’m really looking forward to getting away from America’s difficulties and divisions and gaining new perspectives. The hearings on the January 6 Insurrection and the recent Supreme Court Decisions have made me shiver with fear for our democracy.

Still, on the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we Americans have much to be proud of. Uncharacteristically this evening, I watched television. I looked for A Capitol Fourth on PBS, which Steve and I have always enjoyed, but it’s not until tomorrow. On an NBC-sponsored fund-raising special I was glad to see artists like Alicia Keys Answering the Call to help Ukrainians in their fight against Putin. The pictures from Ukraine were heart-wrenching.

Next on the local CBS station, I watched The Sounds of Freedom by the Palm Beach Symphony. Under the direction of Gerard Schwarz, the orchestra presented symphonic music by American composers that complemented the morning’s choral music. Variations on America by Charles Ives was appropriately dissonant, as it gave the familiar melody new twists. Lincoln Portrait by Aaron Copland was narrated by actress Avery Sommers and accompanied by images of Washington memorials dear to me. Here is a 1976 presentation conducted by Leonard Bernstein and narrated by William Warfield.

I especially enjoyed hearing two marches by John Philip Sousa that I used to play in high school, Semper Fidelis and The Stars and Stripes Forever.  The Trio of Stars and Stripes provided the tune for my Phillips High School fight song; I played the piccolo part. The Palm Beach Symphony had three piccolos! Musically fortified, I am now ready to fly away and do my best to represent The House I Live In. Stay tuned for posts from Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Dornoch.