Tyler Cowen: On the Sound of Patriotism - A Musical History

21:49Tyler Cowen:So it was one of the first songs I ever knew, in fact. Now, to go around the world, let's turn to Europe and the 19th century. So back then, of course, a lot of what are currently nations were not autonomous. They might have been ruled by Russia or the Ottoman Empire, or Scandinavia was all screwed up. You have Sweden controlling Norway, the Danes almost everywhere. So you start having all these independence movements. people see the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and they start thinking, say, in Hungary, why can't we be our own nation? So these are not yet war songs, but you could call them pleas for independence or celebrations of local heroes who historically had fought for independence, and that is a genre of its own.

22:38Tyler Cowen:So we could start with our list, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15. It's a very energetic song, and you will hear the military march element in it. And the forward propulsive movement List did a series of rhapsodies. He called them Hungarian rhapsodies, celebration of his homeland. And this one, there was Count Rakoczy, who was a Hungarian hero of times past, and List honored him. This became called the Rakoczy March. Let's try Roberto Szeiden. He's a great pianist.

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26:49The End

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28:54The End

29:10That was spectacular. Isn't it incredible? Unbelievable. And so confident in the vision, right? The performance is out of this world.

29:19Tyler Cowen:He's a great Liszt and Scriabin pianist, Szydhan. Who were Liszt's contemporaries? Well, he overlapped with so many people because he lives till 1886. So any important 19th century composer, he had some connection with, but Wagner would be the most obvious. They had a falling out over different visions. Liszt starts off as a playboy, a celebrity, maybe the first truly famous European celebrity when he'd fall at his feet. He can tour anywhere, big crowds, lots of money. and he ends up retreating to a Catholic abbey and being religious and composing religious music and also atonal music. He was arguably the first atonal composer by some measures.

30:03Tyler Cowen:He was very close to atonality. So he spanned so many styles. He did piano transcriptions of all the Beethoven symphonies. He played piano at a level that no one thought was possible. So that piece, when he wrote it, people just would have said, had they not heard it, oh, no one could ever play this. But of course, Liszt could play it, and people now today can play it. But it's very, very hard, and you have to be strong. And the strength of it, he's drawing from the motifs of the nationalists who are in charge, military marches, and turning it into some kind of very definite vision of liberation.

30:38Tyler Cowen:It has some things in common emotionally with the John Philip Sousa piece. The way in which it retreats and keeps on coming back stronger, Stars and Stripes Forever does that same thing. It seems like it has a narrative structure as well. It feels like it's telling a story. It's not structured like a song. And I believe it's supposed to be the story of Count Rakoksi, who is a Transylvanian noble who fought for Hungarian independence and failed at it. Liszt's followers are paying homage to Rakoksi. The dynamics are incredible. Wildly energetic. It's really a dramatic piece of music. Absolutely.

31:13Tyler Cowen:Very moving. Yeah. That's from the 1840s. Now, for contrast, there's another Hungarian set of independence pieces by Bartók, which I think we're about in the 1920s now. So your friend, Wikingor Olofsson, has by far the best recording of this, Bartók Hungarian folk songs. But by the time we get to the 1920s, the vision is far less definite. It's far less self-convinced. Bartók is pulling folk songs from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I don't think he's expecting anymore for Hungary to be independent. He's saying Hungary is part of this broader European order, so he's forward-looking in a way that you may or may not think is good.

31:56Tyler Cowen:But it's not narrowly Hungarian. It's Austro-Hungarian. The folk songs, again, are from many different places, not just Hungarian villages. And there's a tentativeness to the music, which is very alluring. But again, you'll notice immediately the emotional difference, that compared to the list. and Olafson is such a good player.

32:49Thank you.

33:15Thank you.

33:45Thank you.

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34:47Thank you.

35:24A really magnificent piece of music. The first movement sounds so intimate and personal, almost like it's not for us to be listening to, like it's private.

35:36Tyler Cowen:And it's sad. It's like a homage to a disappearing culture. The self-confidence of Liszt is not there. Mortak, you almost hear him thinking, well, what's coming in the future? He's not sure. Again, this is after World War I, before World War II. He's right to be uncertain. The third movement sounds like it's for public consumption. It puts on a more brave face than the first movement. Yeah. Really beautiful. Fantastic pieces. Never heard that before. No one plays them, I think, better than Olufsen. He's so good. Now, this idea of the confusion of what's really the unit, is it Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is it Europe, today the EU?

36:15Tyler Cowen:This is a recurring theme in patriotic music. The people don't have this figured out, and very often they get it wrong. So an example of maybe them getting it wrong, we're going to listen to Dvorak, one of the Slavonic dances, number three. This is opus 46, number three, not opus 72. It's a few minutes long. Now, Dvorak was from what we today call Czechia, but it wasn't Czechia back then. This is the 1878 we're talking about. So Dvorak's vision, at least in these pieces of music, is that the future was for the Slavonic peoples to reassert themselves. Arguably, when the Soviet Union, mainly a Slavonic nation, came to rule over Czechoslovakia, that vision turned out to be a big mistake.

36:59Tyler Cowen:And Czechia has done better when it's connected to Europe further west, typically. But the Slavonic dances give one vision, arguably confused and mistaken, but beautiful and lovely, dance number three.

37:34Thank you.

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41:01That's the first piece of dance music we listen to.

41:03Tyler Cowen:That's right. Philip Sousa maybe learned something from that piece. I'm not used to hearing it played that quickly. Usually it's slower and a bit sadder, more plaintive, more autumnal. It sounds like Strauss. Absolutely, yeah. Are they similar time period? Strauss is later and probably drew from Dvorak. And they're both drawing from folk musics. You know, Dvorak came to America, spent a good bit of time here, and he drew a lot of themes from black spirituals and gospel songs. And that's in other parts of his music, not even his nation, of course. But he was a borrower. Slavonic dances are not mainly from folk songs, but they're his attempt to build this vision of some kind of Slavonic future musically.

41:50Tyler Cowen:Now, here's a very strange story. I'm sure you'll know the music. William Tell is a kind of Swiss national hero. It's not clear he ever even existed, but in medieval times he supposedly fought for Swiss independence or what was to become Swiss independence against what we later think of as the Habsburg Empire. And we had an Italian composer, Rossini, writing an opera in French and doing an overture for William Tell that everyone knows, but it's an example of how something that is connected to nationalism and patriotism ends up being known for something totally different.

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45:56Tyler Cowen:It's that 19th century self-confidence again. What's interesting about that is it's written by an Italian. I think he was living in Venice. And I associate it with The Lone Ranger. Of course. And it sounds like Western music. I think of Sergio Leone's movies. There seems to be this crossover between Italians and Americans as it relates to Westerns. That's right. Why is that? There's something about the theatrical flair of the American Western that is captured in this overture. So to borrow it for Lone Ranger, which is where I heard it first as a kid, it makes perfect sense, I think. It sounds so American to me.

46:40Tyler Cowen:And yet it's also so Italian. Yeah. You know, the main story of William Tell comes from Friedrich Schiller, a German. So just all the different nations are jumbled in there, and no one cares that it doesn't make sense, I think is one of the important points. No, and music sounds like a celebration. Yes. Now let's delve into the deeply weird Stockhausen, Circo 1966-67. This piece is called Hymnen, H-Y-M-N-E-N, the German plural for hymns. Stockhausen wrote a piece about two wrote is not exactly the word but constructed a piece about two hours long we'll only hear two or three minutes but he deconstructed 40 national anthems electronically and he turned them into electronic music this piece was one of the influences on Paul McCartney when he drew from Stockhausen so vaguely you might hear some things in there that the Beatles took from say on Sgt.

47:40Tyler Cowen:Pepper Oh, my God.

48:15United Nations.

48:55бел한 권리

49:23What do we know about it?

49:25Tyler Cowen:I think it's Stockhausen's utopian vision. He was a utopian. You still hear national anthems in the distance, right? But they're fading into the background. And I think he's imagining a future world where national anthems don't matter that much. Things are somehow global and electronic, and everything is processed. Sound familiar? And that's what he wrote the piece of music about. And at the time, people just thought it was lunacy. But as an artwork, it makes more sense today because we're living into something closer to that world. And periodically, a national anthem will emerge in the background and then fade away, and you keep on returning to the electronics.

50:05Tyler Cowen:The two hours of it, it doesn't change that much. It cycles through different anthems. but it keeps on going like the short excerpt you heard. Stockhausen put it out there. There's parts of like I Am the Walrus or the very beginning of Sgt. Pepper where the Beatles are using similar techniques toward more commercial ends, but it was a very influential piece of music and it's still relevant, but not much played or listened to, I think. It seems more dystopian than the Beatles. It's more dystopian, but I think Stockhausen viewed it as utopian. I view it as dystopian. Yeah, but he thought through music he would achieve a Wagnerian kind of transformation of first Germany and then the world through this grand vision, which I, for one, would not want to live under.

50:51Tyler Cowen:But there it is, one controversial thing about him, then there's a Nazi song, Horst Wessel lead, where he includes a very brief excerpt that was super controversial in Germany at the time. And Stockhausen said, I'm not a Nazi, but this is also part of the past, and it should be in the blend. One can agree or disagree, but that's what the piece is best known for is actually that controversy. Now here's a racial version of patriotism. There's an Australian composer, Percy Granger, and he's ethnically British by origin, but he idolized the Northern European cultures and thought they were racially superior and through his music tried to elevate them.

51:35Tyler Cowen:I think he makes them end up looking quite brutal. But there's a short song he did called Father and Daughter, which is him representing something from the Faroe Islands, now territory of Denmark. And this is Granger doing some kind of racial version of patriotism. And it turns out to be quite bloody. It's hard to follow the lyrics, but it is about a woman going off with a man. presumably they're having sex and the father disapproves does the man in and then the daughter burns down the house of the father while the father is sleeping in it so let's hear that

52:32The night were awake, but last night Alone in the forest he's sleeping That was never a night so fair And nobody but my page boy there Alone in the forest he's sleeping Tell me who's with the golden spear Listening in the moonshine clear Alone in the forest he's sleeping That was never a spear of bone Nothing but the rays and the moonshine core Alone in the forest he's sleeping Tell me who's with the valiant high Stool at the foot of your bed last night

53:29CHOIR SINGS Thank you.

54:10The End

54:54How did you come across that?

54:56Tyler Cowen:I've been interested in Granger lately. He occupies a weird niche corner as a composer, and he's politically unacceptable, but he's interesting. And he did a lot for brass band. He does a lot from Nordic sources. Some of it I don't like at all, but it's just another corner of the repertoire. That's from 1912, by the way. It's really interesting. Isn't it? It starts more like an opera and turns into more of a choral piece. And ends in murder, a dual murder. So pretty brutal. Yeah. Now, we're going to get back to cheery things in a moment, but to close out our European section, we have something truly grim.

55:33Tyler Cowen:Let's see if you can find The Sacred War from 1941. It's not a famous piece of classical music, but it's very, very famous in Russia and formerly in the Soviet Union. This was composed in June 1941. As we will all recall, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. and within a week this piece is written by a guy named alexandrov who is not otherwise i think a very well-known composer but he wrote this piece and it's not triumphalist at all as i understand it i think it's saying to people like hey we could lose this one which is not what any of the other pieces have done at all so i thought this contrasting perspective we should hear i find it truly grim he knows what's coming which and it was truly awful let's hear what the song has to tell us.

56:53The war is a national war, a national war. The war is a national war, a national war. blessed recordings these yourkick pragmatic

57:48pragmatic . Mass Marilyn Hip R oil

58:01is oh

58:28PYM JBZ

58:35warku i

58:51i We have cette core and learn

59:12Tyler Cowen:It's scary, isn't it? Yeah, what are the lyrics? It's exhorting the nation to fight and mobilize. Very cliché, but at the time, what you would expect. and later it got turned into a tool of Soviet propaganda to legitimatize the communist regime, like, hey, we beat the Nazis for you and we're going to remind you of how grim it was. So again, very famous song in the Soviet Union. It's got a tremendous amount of energy. Absolutely. It really works for what it was intended to do. Now we're allowed to return to the matters of good cheer, which of course brings us to the Caribbean and Trinidad. So circa early 1960s, The Mighty Sparrow, and the song is Our Model Nation.

59:56Tyler Cowen:This, of course, is Calypso. And Trinidad had just severed from a union with Jamaica. Independence, I think, dates from 1960. There's a brief union with Jamaica. I'm guessing 1961. The dates could be off by a little. Trinidad is on its own by 1962. This song comes out basically as an advertisement for Trinidad. it's patriotic about a nation that in a sense is only beginning to exist and it's funny when he sings he runs through all the exports trinidad has what a great place it is for tourists to visit you know the ethnic diversity there it's just fun and celebratory for what we then called the third world the early 1960s were an incredibly optimistic time because so many nations were just achieving their independence.

1:00:43Tyler Cowen:They had high hopes. The hopes were, in many cases, dashed on the rocks. But today, after you get independence, everything seems great. The British, French, Portuguese, whoever, they're gone, and you have your own country. And there's a lot of patriotic music from that period. And here's a good example, our model nation.

1:01:12The whole population of our little nation is not a lot. But oh, what a mixture of races and culture, that's what we've got. Still no major indifference of race, color, religion of violence. It's amazing to you, I'm sure, we didn't get independence before. Which means Trinidad and Tobago will always be born. Colonialism, our nation is for everybody We will follow our leaders They always do their best Oh yes, we want to achieve We're going to aspire We want to clear success

1:02:07It is a miracle All these different people can dwell so well You see, we are educated to love and forget hatred You know, you know it's so You people who are foreign I've got a message to give you when you go in Spread the word any way you pass Tell the world there's a modern nation at last Which means Trinidad and Tobago Will always live on Colonialism gone Our nation is one We go follow our leaders They always do their best We want to achieve I miss help our spire We want to be best of service Bam, bam, bam, bam Bam, bam, bam, bam Bam, bam, bam, bam

1:03:01The revenue we make From oil and the pitch lake

1:03:05Tyler Cowen:Dance song, clearly. What's the status of Trinidad today? I made a mistake before. He says Trinidad and Tobago. It's actually the correct name of the country is Trinidad and Tobago. It's fully independent. I would say it's done better than most of the Caribbean. There's some real economy there. There's a pretty good educational system, fantastic music and the arts, but a lot of inequality, a lot of crime, a mixed bag, but one of the more successful countries of its region. What was the first one in that period to become free? I think in 1960, there were 17 countries that became independent in that year.

1:03:49Tyler Cowen:There were a few, I think, like 56 through 58, and then a whole wave in 1960. If you're looking at the whole everything, United States and then Haiti, the Haitian Revolution were much earlier, but that post-World War II wave was pretty concentrated. What started the wave? Well, for the British colonies, the British ran out of money, and they just couldn't hold them anymore. And India is 1948. I guess that would be the first. And Gandhi, the independence movement, preceded that by quite a while. And by the time the war is over, the British just are not close to being able to re-exert control. And then other territories, then Burma, now Myanmar, the Japanese actually took over.

1:04:34Tyler Cowen:Much of Indonesia, the Japanese took over. Other parts of Southeast Asia. In Singapore, the Japanese withdraw. And the colonial powers now, it's just over. And the people don't want them back. And the troops, the ruling structures were all gone. And for Africa, 1960, Grand Cayet, there's a song called Independence Cha-Cha. It's again a dance song, quite cheery. Thank you.

1:05:31The Asoreko Nabako Bayokani Motomoko Tako Nakat Nakartel Balikani Afrocoman Bolikango Kazavuko Elumumba Nakalondi From here, if he ketah, From here, he contacts This independence is Down handy From here, he knows his Look old Вы unstable If it does, he knows his But Yahisha, it does my Think the peace of yours Thank you.

1:07:10I love you, I love you Abazi, I love you I love you, Africa

1:07:29Thank you.

1:08:03Tyler Cowen:Cuban rumba rhythms, right? Even though that's Democratic Republic of the Congo. Wow. The Cuban music was super influential in East Africa, mostly brought over by radio and somewhat by touring musicians. I would never have guessed that. And it sounds Cuban in part. But it's still a little different. The guitar parts are different. The guitar is uniquely Congolese. That's what they added to it. I love it. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. The Great Tragedy. So that's an independent song from 1960. But the country was richer in 1960 than it is today and safer. And do we know why? Well, you could say mismanagement, but that's begging the question.

1:08:44Tyler Cowen:I've never been there. There's been a lot of war, millions of people killed in war. That's also begging the question. War with who? with each other, but currently war with Rwanda. But civil wars that killed several million people over the last 20 years, which hardly gets any publicity, and now Rwanda is involved. And Rwanda's a tiny country, and Democratic Republic of Congo's a huge country, but Rwanda's kicking their butt. And it's all a very nasty situation. And the economy to begin with was based on resource extraction, which is maybe a bad place to start for a former colony. And it was a Belgian colony, and the Belgians treated their colonies worse than just about anyone.

1:09:24Tyler Cowen:King Leopold in particular did terrible things there. And they just had all these negatives in their background, super dependent on the price of copper, and everything went wrong. Parts of it are safe and I'd like to go someday, but going is somewhat tricky and the power always goes out. But when I was in Rwanda, I heard a Congolese band play one evening and they were phenomenal, very much the same style as what we just heard. Beautiful music. Yeah. Such a positive view and such a tragic place as it's turned out. We cannot neglect South America entirely. This song, I strongly suspect you know.

1:10:01Tyler Cowen:It's become a kind of national anthem of Brazil. You hear it on Brazilian buses even all the time. Gal Costa, Aquarela do Brasil. And this is quite important because she is basically fair-skinned, but the lyrics of the song are glorifying Afro-Brazilian culture. So you can take this, yes, as a patriotic song, but kind of a marker of white Brazil recognizing how much of the cultural dynamism in Brazil comes from the blacks. And that's what's going on in the song, though through the Portuguese, you know, we don't hear it. But it's taken from a much earlier song from, I think, the 20s or 30s, which no one listens to.

1:10:45Tyler Cowen:It's not very good. And she just broosed it up and made it fun. Gal Costa, 1980.

1:11:07Brasil Meu Brasil brasileiro My mula pinzoneiro I'll sing you in my verses The Brazil samba that gives a bambolay That makes a jingar The Brazil of my love The world of our Lord Brazil For me For me For me Ah, abre a cortina do passado Tira a mãe preta do cerrado Bota o rei Congo no congado Brasil pra mim Deixa cantar de novo o trovador A mera história, a luz da lua Toda canção do meu amor Quero ver essa dona caminhando Pelos salões arrastando O seu vestido rendado Brasil, pra mim Pra mim Pra mim Brazil, terra boa e gostosa da morena sestrosa de olhar indiscreto o Brasil samba que dá bambolê e o que faz gingar o Brasil do meu amor terra de nosso senhor Oh, Brasil, pra mim, pra mim, pra mim Oh, esse coqueiro que dá coco Onde eu amarro a minha rede Nas noites claras de lua Brasil, pra mim Ah, houve essas fontes murmurantes Onde eu mato a minha sede E onde a lua vem brincar Ah, esse Brasil lindo e trigueiro É o meu Brasil brasileiro Terra de samba e pandeiro Brazil, pra mim, pra mim.

1:13:56Brazil, Brazil, pra mim, pra mim. Brazil, Brazil, Brazil, Pra mim.

1:14:18Tyler Cowen:What she's singing repeatedly is my Brazilian Brazil. Like, oh, Brazil is so Brazilian, which it is. And, you know, there's talk of samba, coconuts, palm trees. It's just such an intoxicating vision of Brazil. And somewhat true. And really popular now. Yeah, people will listen to that song forever, I think. It just captured something. Here is the English version of that song that I'm more familiar with.

1:14:51Tyler Cowen:Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly murmured someday soon We kissed and clung together Then tomorrow was another day The morning found me miles away With still a million things to say

1:15:35Now, when twilight dims the sky above Recalling thrills of our love There's one thing I'm certain of Return Great song.

1:15:55Tyler Cowen:We now return to the somber, but only for one cut. This is William Byrd, Renaissance music, written sometime maybe the 1560s, 1570s, and its homage to Queen Elizabeth. But the interesting thing is, much of Europe is coming off of religious wars. England has had significant problems with its own religious conflicts, and Byrd is a Catholic. And he stayed openly a Catholic, and he's writing a hymn praising Queen Elizabeth's reign over England. He was a kind of court composer. Yet according to his own Catholicism, she was an abomination, a kind of antichrist who had no legitimacy because they claimed independence and superiority over the Pope as the Anglican Church.

1:16:40Tyler Cowen:So was William Burd a sellout? Was he just a pragmatist? He could have converted away from Catholicism, but he didn't, so he was brave. And yet here he is writing this pen to the Protestant Queen of England, who, according to all the other Catholics, is quite illegitimate. So the background is interesting, but when you listen to the piece, to me, it just sounds honorific. So it's patriotism of a strange sort where one has to suppose for Byrd, the nation, and perhaps his livelihood, meant more than religion, that we still preferred to remain a Catholic. How popular was the Catholic Church in England prior to the idea of the Anglican Church?

1:17:22Tyler Cowen:Well, before Henry VIII and the Reformation, the country, the whole country, was the Catholic Church. And Henry VIII and some others decide they don't want to have anything to do with this. He wanted to get a divorce. He could not receive a papal dispensation. But more generally, they wanted to seize and redistribute the resources of the church, the monasteries, an old and familiar story in history. So they kicked out the church, set up their own operation, internalized the rents. The Anglican Church and the Catholic Church are almost identical except for the Pope. And that's right. King of England is head of the Anglican Church, king or queen.

1:18:01That's the only difference.

1:18:02Tyler Cowen:So you could think of this as the first Brexit. And the Protestants, over time, they changed how the churches looked. They were more sparse, more bare. They changed how the music sounded, less jubilant. And Byrd was part of that too. So here is Bird's piece in honor of Queen Elizabeth. Technically, it is called, O Lord, Make Thy Servant Elizabeth Our Queen. Quite subservient, right? O Lord, make thy step until he is the breath of God.

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1:21:08Very beautiful.

1:21:10Tyler Cowen:He's a great composer and very consistent. He delivered, right? Absolutely. Yeah, no wonder they kept him around the court, because it was an embarrassment to them to have this Catholic as the main composer for the Queen. People are like, what's this? It's still devotional to God. Absolutely. And to his country, which presumably he did love. Now we fast forward to another song about British Queen, 1977. If you can guess this one, it's Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen, which has been interpreted in a number of ways. I actually view it as a pro-Queen song and a pro-Britain song, but that is contestable, to say the least.

1:21:50Tyler Cowen:The BBC refused to play it. There was a conspiracy theory at the time. It got to number two on the charts. Rod Stewart was number one. The claim was they'll never let it get to number one. Malcolm McLaurin played it from a boat near Parliament on the Thames River. He was arrested. You remember all these controversies, right? So at the time, it was considered totally outrageous. But when you get to 2012, when the Olympics are held in London, this song is trotted out as like a pro-British song. We're going to play it for the tourists. It's part of who we are. It's just embraced as part of the United Kingdom.

1:22:28Tyler Cowen:So these songs have multiple sides. I think it was always pro-Queen, but it's very critical of Britain. And the line that keeps on getting repeated is, no future. I view the message of the song as we're all being lied to. So 1977, the IMF bailout has come to Britain. The country's close to bankruptcy. Young people feel they don't have futures. It's a bit like Britain today. They're angry, and they feel they've been lied to, and the nation's not living up to its ideals, but they still actually honor the Queen. Now, my interpretation might be wrong. You can tell me what you think. But it's also interesting, you know, Johnny Rotten, who's still around, He's become a populist patriot.

1:23:10Tyler Cowen:I don't know if the word become is even correct. Maybe he was that all along. I think of punk rock as a populist movement. Yeah. That's what it's about. It's like back to the streets. But it's not totally attacking the culture it's from. And when they sing, God save the queen, I really mean it, I think they really mean it. They're like, God, please intervene. This isn't going well. We want you to save our queen. our nation i never heard it that way before listen to it and tell me what you think not everyone hears it that way i assure you Need you to play blISH Yeah, yeah.

1:24:02Stop. I Especiallyassung the Queen practical English oneagpug on American bitches It is God save the queen She ain't no human being There's no future In England's dreamin' Don't be told I don't want you wanted Don't be told I don't want you need There's no future No future No future for you God save the queen We mean it man We're all about queen God saves God save the queen Cause tourists are money And our figurehead Is not what she seems I've got to save the queen Cause I've got to save my pride I'm not going to proceed All crimes are paid When there's no future There can't be seen Where the power's in the dust Where the poison in the human machine Where the future Your future God's like a queen We mean it man We have a queen God saves God saves God saves the queen We mean it man There is no future In England's dreamin' Love gives up Love gives up Love gives up for you Love gives up Love gives up Love gives up for me

1:26:41Love you, John. Love you, John. Love you, John. Love you, John. Love you, John. Love you, John. Love you, John. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure what it's about.

1:27:04Tyler Cowen:Yeah. It's full of energy. It's still a great song, I think. And it's clearly patriotic. Yeah. but in a very funny, different way. Yeah. And I love the fact that it was brought back for the Olympics and embraced. Yes. But it speaks to the power of the music. Even if it was viewed as anti, it's so great that we celebrate it anyway. And it speaks to the flexibility of Britain. There's another comparison we can play that also speaks to the flexibility of Britain. And these are two excerpts from Elgar, who was unofficially the official state composer for Britain in the early 20th century. So there's something called the Pomp and Circumstance March, which most people will recognize.

1:27:50Tyler Cowen:This is the March number one. And this we actually want to start at around 1.40 and the timing on it. So there's the new reign of Edward VI that was seen as an era of great promise. 1901, things are going great for Britain. And Algar writes this march that just becomes very famous. We'll hear a brief excerpt from it.

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1:29:16Tyler Cowen:We can do the comparison now with the other piece, but that just radiates promise, doesn't it? It's beautiful. It's so airy, so memorable. It just sticks with you. And you hear it, you cannot help but think of England in particular. It's like Maldiv-Kantyre, you think of Scotland, Pomp and Circumst, you think of England. Now, 1911, it's only 10 years later, there's a new king, George V, and the global situation, European situation, it's much dicier. Everyone is feeling fear and angst, and Algar writes another piece, it's a coronation march in G minor, and to write a coronation march in a minor key, is a courageous decision.

1:29:58Tyler Cowen:And the piece, to me, radiates stress. Love of country, and there's some hope for the new king, but a fear that we're not living in the world of 1901 anymore. But see what you think. Let's hear a bit.

1:30:38ORCHESTRA PLAYS

1:31:13ORCHESTRA PLAYS

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1:32:11¶¶

1:32:34ORCHESTRA PLAYS

1:33:09It's pretty introspective for a coronation.

1:33:12Tyler Cowen:Very. It's not anti-king. It's a strong piece of music. The king seems serious, but it's telling you these are serious times. And how well he pulled that off is testament to Elgar as a great composer. Yeah, it's not celebratory at all. And compared to a mere 10 years ago. Yes. Really fascinating. Yeah. We return to America for our final segment. This is from 1917. It's a World War I song. It's by Charles Ives, more or less a contemporary of Elgar. And the song is called Tom Sails Away. Ives often could be dissonant, but when the war came along, he supported it. This is American involvement in World War I, which starts in 1917.

1:33:57Tyler Cowen:But it's about Tom, a boy, being sent away to fight. And I think the title of the song in the lyrics, Tom Sails Away, you're wondering, did Tom just get on the boat? Or has Tom sailed away to heaven? Or he's passed on. And there's a deliberate ambiguity. So it's a patriotic song, but it's very sad. And it's a recognition of loss from fighting, which not all of our other war songs gave us. certainly not John Philip Sousa. So let's hear Charles Ives worrying about American casualties. Tom sails away.

1:34:55I'm in the lads behind our house, upon the hill, Earth's clean day, sunny setting. Mother with time in her arms is coming from the garden, the lettuce rolls are so ingrained. We are grown slow, warm and tired, Stronger comes the breeze on the lake. Disaster siege, the winds of the sea have blown, The big chains come, come, come, and be. The days coming up the hill from the field, We'll not go the way to be a tree.

1:35:50But today, today's tongue sailed away home. Oh

1:36:50Well, it sounds distinctly European to me, other than the perversion of it.

1:36:55Tyler Cowen:Yeah. Ives was like that. He was mischievous. He never quite delivers what you're expecting. It's a very sad song for me. Yeah, it's different than everything else we listen to. To harken back to Country Joe and the Fish, be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box. That's the 1917 way people made that point, and it's the exact same point. Yeah, it's much more dissonant and disconnected. Country Joe was really having fun with the idea. That's right, and not covering up the rebellious part of it. For a final few songs, some of these are well-known, or at least they're well-known to boomers, But if you were to ask me, feel free to make your own nomination, by the way, after I do mine.

1:37:39Tyler Cowen:Like, Tyler, what song to you makes you feel patriotic? And it's quite subjective, but it's an interesting test to run on yourself. And I have a definite nomination. And it's the Chuck Berry song, Sweet Little Sixteen, which is not normally thought of as a patriotic song. But the vision it portrays of an America united across all these fantastic cities, listening to rock and roll and enjoying it. Makes me feel really good about my country. And that to me is like my patriotic song. They're really rockin' in Boston And Pittsburgh, PA Deep in the heart of Texas And round the Frisco Bay All over St.

1:38:24Louis And down in New Orleans All the cats gonna dance with Sweet little 16 Sweet little 16 She just got to have About a half a million A famed autograph Her wallet filled with pictures She gets them one by one Becomes so excited Watch her look at her run, boy Oh, mommy, mommy Please may I go It's such a sight to see Somebody steal the show Oh, Daddy, Daddy I beg of you Whisper to Mommy It's all right with you Cause they'll be rockin' on bandstand In Philadelphia, PA Deep in the heart of Texas Around the Frisco Bay All over St. Louis Way down in New Orleans All the cats wanna dance with Sweet little 16

1:40:00Cause they'll be rocking on bandstands Philadelphia, PA Deep in the heart of Texas And around the Prisco Bay All over St. Louis Way down in New Orleans All the cats wanna dance with Sweet little 16 Sweet little 16 She's got the grown-up blues Tight dresses and lipstick She's sporting high-heeled shoes Oh, but tomorrow morning She'll have to change her trend And be sweet 16 And back in class again But they'll be rocking in Boston A pitchfork PA Deep in the heart of Texas And round the Frisco Bay Way out of St. Louis Way down in New Orleans All the cats wanna dance with Sweet little big teeth

1:41:10Great song.

1:41:11Tyler Cowen:The rhythm section, the piano, it all fits together. Yeah. And I love how he sings Pittsburgh, PA, as if there was some other Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, PA. The excess literalism of it. and back then those were much more important places than they are now but is there a song you have where you hear it you think of it and that for you is a patriotic song okay here's mine

1:41:44all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray And the sky is gray I've been for a while On a winter's day I'd be safe and warm If I was in L.A.

1:42:10California, California Dreamin' On such a winter's day Stopped into a church I passed along the way Well, I got down on my knees And I pretend to pray He was a preacher like the cold He knows I'm gonna stay knows I'm gonna stay. California, California, dreaming of such a winter's day.

1:43:26I believe you're proud, but leads the ground And the sky is grey And the sky is grey And baby, I've been for a while On a winter day On a winter's day If I didn't tell her I could leave today

1:43:54California dreamin' On such a winter's day California dreamin' On such a winter's day California dreamin' On such a winter's day

1:44:13Tyler Cowen:So why'd you pick that one? I remember living in New York before I'd ever been to California and hearing this song. It made me dream of California. And I would see people driving up and down Sunset Strip on television and driving Pacific Coast Highway. And it just looked like a dream place. and I hope that someday I would get to go there, even one time, just to get to see that. So the song has a powerful resonance about going somewhere else, but both where I'm coming from and where I'm going are all part of America. For me, the song's great for evoking a mood, but let me ask you a more general question, thinking about what your song will be and just hearing all these songs and cuts from different genres, different countries.

1:45:02Tyler Cowen:What do you think we do learn about patriotism? For me, it's we learn how complex patriotism is, how multifaceted it is, how easily it can be repurposed toward other ends, how slippery it is. You think you understand it, you have your hands around it, it's the simple thing, but it turns out it's not the simple thing. And maybe music and the history of music shows us all that better than mere discourse. But what's your impression? anytime you bring a poetic interpretation to something you start seeing different angles that are not there on the face and i think with respect to my own patriotism i'm most pleased by the subtle takes on patriotism so say the andrew sisters boogie woogie bugle boy of company b i like that song more now in relative terms than when we started this all exercised because I see it compared to the others, and it doesn't have the same durable reputation in every way, but it has something else that's real.

1:46:03I would say it's one of the most patriotic songs we listen to. Absolutely. And I don't know that I would have framed it that way before, but when you're collecting songs with a filter, you start understanding them in new ways.

1:46:15Tyler Cowen:The Sex Pistols went up in my eyes. Most of the music, in fact. The Eastern European musics, Maybe they strike me as a little repetitive, not musically, but ideologically. Well, they all want national independence. Russia, the Ottoman rulers, they're bad. I very much side with them. But somehow it seems a little less interesting to me than it might have 30 years ago. I think that John Philip Sousa and the Elgar are the most what I expect when I think about patriotic music. You mean the pomp and circumstance Elgar, not the coronation mass in G minor. Correct. The first one we listened to. I love the coronation mass.

1:46:56Tyler Cowen:I vaguely heard that in the past, but to really sit down and listen to it, that's one of his best achievements, I think, though it's not usually thought of as such. We are talking about patriotic songs, and no country music came up. I figured that was a bottomless pit of sorts, and I would just rule it out. Same with Bollywood, which can be very good, and there's plenty, plenty there. There's a lot of things where you just have to cut corners to have any finished product at all. But there's plenty, plenty in country music. But I know country music much less well than these other areas also. Now, this is a real classic.

1:47:35Tyler Cowen:Jimi Hendrix, Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock, 1969. One of my favorites, the song's flat out, but it's raucous and dissonant. Jimi went on the Dick Cavett show, and Dick Cavett asked him, Jimmy, why'd you do this? And he said, well, I'm an American. And then he said that he found it beautiful, as do I. But he takes a sledgehammer to the song. And then in the middle, there's the melody where he plays taps on his electric guitar, which of course is Song of Mourning. So there's a sad part of it. And it's referring almost certainly to the Vietnam War in 1969. But I think it's just amazing what he does with the guitar and with the song.

1:48:16Tyler Cowen:Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston had good and interesting versions of Star Spangled Banner but I think Jimmy is the best

1:48:55¶¶

1:49:31¶¶

1:49:52Thank you.

1:50:23Oh, my God.

1:50:50Thank you.

1:51:20The End

1:52:09It's beautiful. He's playing the song and doing the sound effects for the movie at the same time.

1:52:17Tyler Cowen:With such an economy of means. And knowing that he played as the sun was rising, it must have been quite a feeling in the space. To have been there, yeah. Muddy, grounds, it had been raining, everything. A mess, people strung out, some people sick. I wonder if he'd ever played that song before. He had, he played it quite a bit. He did? Yeah, it was a common thing. That was in the mid-period of his playing that song. I don't know of any other recording of it, though. Yeah, I was just wondering if it was more of a commentary on Woodstock, the place bringing all these people together, was a symbol of America for him, so he wanted to play it.

1:52:55Tyler Cowen:Yeah. For our very last song, we just need to let off steam after that one, right? So this one is actually based on a Bach chorale and turned based on an earlier secular song from Europe, but Paul Simon, an American tune, which I find quite lovely. The version from the album, There Goes Raymond Simon, I think it's 1974. But around then, the Bach Chorale is from St. Matthew's Passion. And this to me was Paul Simon at his peak maybe. The phrasing of the vocal line I enjoy so much and how he did this.

1:53:33Many's the time I've been mistaken And many times confused Yes, and I've often felt forsaken And certainly misused Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right You're just weary to my bones Still you don't expect to be bright and born vivant So far away from home So far away from home I don't know a soul who's not been battered I don't have a friend who feels at ease I don't know a dream that's not been shattered Or driven to its knees Oh, but it's alright, it's alright For we lived so well so long Still when I think of the road we're traveling on I wonder what's gone wrong I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

1:55:21And I dreamed I was dying I dreamed that my soul grows unexpectedly Looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly And I dreamed I was flying And high up above my eyes could clearly see Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea And our dream dies flying For we come on the ship they call the Mayflower We come on the ship that sail the moon We come in the ages most uncertain hours And sing an American tune Oh, and it's alright It's alright, it's alright You can be forever blessed Still tomorrow's gonna be another working day And I'm trying to get some rest That's all I've tried To get so missed

1:57:27Thank you.

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