Jazz and patriotic music don’t often go hand in hand but thanks to the folks at NPR I was able to find an interesting selection to start the week of the 4th. It is a medley of “America the Beautiful”, “Lift every voice and sing“, “Skies of America” by
Charlie Haden and The Liberation Orchestra
Open Letter: To my Trump-Supporting Family
Quite a read about the “two different countries”
Thank you Jack for the Sunday selection. I’ve always thought America The Beautiful should be our national anthem.
steph ain’t sarah for sure – seems she fights FOR the free press
the hill:
Newly appointed White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was reportedly bruised in a scuffle with North Korean guards as President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Tensions escalated after the guards tried to prevent U.S. reporters from entering a room inside the Freedom House in South Korea as Trump and Kim began their meeting, according to The Guardian.
White House and foreign affairs correspondents tweeted about the encounter, saying Grisham got into a struggle with North Korean guards to ensure that reporters had access to the meeting.
“New WH Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham got into a scuffle with the North Koreans to move members of the WH press pool into position to cover Trump and Kim, I’m told,” CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted. “Grisham was a bit bruised. Source called it ‘an all out brawl.'”
Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs shared a picture of Grisham’s scuffle with North Korean security, adding that the scuffle resulted in “body blows.”
CNN’s Allie Malloy added that Grisham was seen on camera shouting “go, go” as she opened a path for U.S. reporters to cover the meeting.
[several tweets by reporters here]
It remains unclear if Grisham received any significant injuries from the encounter. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Trump on Sunday made history by becoming the first U.S. president to step foot onto North Korean soil. The occasion came as Trump met with Kim to restart stalled nuclear talks.
The two met for nearly one hour at the Freedom House on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone.
Funny that Jazz isn’t associated with patriotism being that it is an American art form. But it originated in the black community in New Orleans, so… white America wouldn’t accept it like, say country music. Sad.
Pogo
Also, since it originated in the segregated African American community and in the Jim Crow south, cheer leading for a racist system……………..
Jack
I like American jazz; but, I didn’t like that h-minor desecration of America the Beautiful.
I’m not in favor of moving from the Star Spangled Banner (just don’t sing it, I don’t/can’t) to something else.
Now try this for a new national anthem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8va-5JL5U
Jack… very interesting… thanks!
America the Beautiful was written by a woman, Katharine Lee Bates, from Falmouth Massachusetts. That’s the town that Rick and I stay in whenever we go to Cape Cod. There’s a statue dedicated to her in front of the town library.
flatus, there were others too… none tho’ imho as nice as “America the beautiful”
Hail Columbia! with Lyrics; First American National Anthem – United States of America
After the French Revolution, conflict arose between France and England, and American relations with both countries became strained, because American leaders differed in their sympathies with these nations. As a result, France and the United States were on the verge of war in the spring of 1798. To try to unify the Nation, Joseph Hopkinson (son of Francis Hopkinson, composer and signer of the Declaration of Independence) wrote the words of Hail, Columbia! and set them to the tone of The President’s March, said to have been composed by Philip Phile as Washington’s inaugural march. The new song called for all Americans to support George Washington, who had been recalled from retirement by President John Adams to resume his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. The song did help to unify the Nation and avert war; and it was long regarded in Europe as our National Anthem.
-From the Album Cover
from amaranthpublishing: The Original
American National Anthem
As the American Revolutionary War soldiers marched to war, and as the patriots sang in pubs, meeting halls, and churches, when they sang what was then the unofficial anthem of the American colonies, they were singing a piece of music composed by an American composer, friend of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere…… William Billings. The piece of music was named “Chester“.
So, that being the case, then how did we end up with a piece of music composed in England for a British drinking club as our National Anthem, while we overlooked our own American composers? [goes on to tell about frances scott key version]
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that it should become the National Anthem played by the military and naval services, but it wasn’t until March 3rd, 1931 that it was officially designated as the National Anthem by act of Congress […]
So, we ended up with a Brit drinking tune as our National Anthem. Of course, many people think the darn tune is rather silly anyway and is difficult to sing as well as being somewhat more of a vocal singing exercise than a real song. But that’s another debate for another time.
The point here is that we had a real national anthem, actually sung by patriots and soldiers during the American Revolution, composed by a patriot himself who was a friend of some of the famous founding fathers! And we didn’t use the melody (or at least another Billings’ melody) as our national anthem, and to make matters worse, we didn’t even make the name and life of William Billings, our first real national composer a topic of music education in our schools! Most Americans do not even know who William Billings was, or about his musical accomplishments.
Pat, now we know why those 2 songs didn’t make the list.
Flatus, It is jazz so people scat around the edges and play with inner workings. But I thought the whole piece interesting. You could make a good case for the piece representing the modern Democratic party. With each song in the medley representing a different branch of the party.
BTW, I thought there would be plenty of time to do the stirring renditions of patriotic music and marches the rest of the week. Today was a reminder that not everybody sings in the same key nor marches to the same beat After all we are America.
Jack
thought that added some new dimensions to the song. as a national anthem star-spangled suits me, it tells a neat story for one thing
The Star Spangled Banner is a good flag waiving, nationalistic, 19th century cheering anthem good for rousing crowds to support the nation no matter what. There is a place for that and the national anthem is probably that place. As to singing the song in public, I’m all for it. When I was young I had the vocal range and could belt it out. Now a days not so much but I tackle it with the same enthusiasm. But it is a challenging song and separates the vocalists from the mere singers.
America the Beautiful is our national hymn, It is about who we are as a people and what we aspire to. I like that it acknowledges that We are already blessed by God and it is up to us to live up to that blessing.
Jack
responding to new “birther” ploy
the guardian: Julián Castro calls Trump Jr a ‘coward’ over racist attack on Kamala Harris
[…]
During the debate on Thursday, Donald Trump’s oldest son reposted a message from Ali Alexander, an alt-right personality, which said: “Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves. She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”
“Is this true?” Trump Jr asked. “Wow.”
Harris’s father is Jamaican and her mother was from India. Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and US housing secretary who would be the first Hispanic president, performed strongly in the first debate on Wednesday. On Sunday he appeared on CNN’s State of the Union.
“It’s disgusting,” he said of Trump Jr’s tweet. “It has no place in our politics. This is the game that these folks play. They put something out there. You notice what he did. He tweeted it out and then he deleted it like a coward, so he can say, ‘Oh, that was a mistake.’
“But he knows what he’s doing. He’s giving voice to these racist utterances about Senator Harris. We need to dispel them immediately and condemn them and then not give them any more life, because they’re disgusting.”
Castro was not alone in defending the senator and criticising Trump Jr. Most of the Democratic candidates did so. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, for example, tweeted: “Donald Trump Jr is a racist too. Shocker.”
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, wrote: “Kamala Harris has been powerfully voicing her Black American experience. Her first-generation story embodies the American dream. It’s long past time to end these racist, birther-style attacks.”
That was a reference to “birther” conspiracy theorists who claim Barack Obama, born to an American mother and a Kenyan father, was not born in the US and was thus not qualified to be president. Donald Trump rose to political prominence by championing such attacks, before admitting Obama was born in the US.
Some rightwing social media accounts have accused Harris of being an “anchor baby” – a derogatory term used to describe children born in the US to immigrant parents.
Also on CNN on Sunday, Amy Klobuchar was asked if she believed attacks on Harris were being generated by Russians, as she seemed to imply in her first response to Trump Jr’s tweet.
“I have no idea who’s responsible for it,” she said. “I just know that [Russia has] messed around on the internet many times with bots and other things and there has been some connection to them way past the 2016 presidential election.
“I think the bigger point I was making in light of President Trump hanging out with Vladimir Putin again is that we as a country are supposed to be about the truth.”
The current version as aired over VOA melded nicely with the sounds of exploding ordnance regularly punctuating the darkness surrounding my well-sandbagged tent in times past. I empathize with veterans of ‘1812’.
Those of us who can access this weekend’s WSJ, there’s a topical and extremely interesting book review by Ken Emerson of Songs of America by Ken Burns & Tim McGraw. Don’t purchase the book without reading the review.
One of my favorite groups doing historical music does music of the civil war era.
97th Regimental String Band
Ah, the day is finally beginning for me. This last week has been a bit of a loss, for me and my co-workers, because someone travelling overseas returned with a summer “cold”. Not totally horrible, just tired, achy, wobbly and just down. I had a bit of a temp, which as gone away now.
The worse part was a bit of confustion this morning. Spent about four hours getting the latest YouTube video created only to destroy it accidently. I just finished recreating it and getting it up on YouTube. A real thriller about changing a circuit breaker on a thirty-six year old boat. So I spent another five hours editing video and audio tracks. I do not understand why it was faster the first time.
Jose Feliciano cranked out a rendition of our Anthem that blew away Detroit.
This land is your land,
This land is my land….
NEW THREAD thanks to jack