Songs of America summary

Some songs are forged in the fires of battle. In 1814, American colonists were still fighting with the British Crown to have their Declaration of Independence validated. And at Fort McHenry, Baltimore, on August 13, British Naval Forces were treating the colonists to a relentless cannon and mortar attack. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer from Washington, watched as the events unfolded. As night fell, he dreaded the destruction he might see in the morning. Had all been lost overnight? 

When dawn came, however, Key saw through the smoke and fog, something profoundly moving. 

The American dream hasn’t always lived up to reality. In 1852, Frederick Douglass, a former enslaved person, gave an Independence Day speech in New York and spoke some hard truths to his fellow Americans. What did July 4 mean to black people in America? Douglass asked. What could African Americans divine from the celebrations, other than the vanity and hypocrisy of white Americans, who refused to acknowledge black peoples’ humanity? With stirring orations like this, Douglass and others like him were pushing hard for the abolition of slavery. Here too, the fight for freedom was accompanied by powerful music.

British abolitionists Julia and T. Powis Griffith composed this music for Douglass. “Farewell Song” was written to coincide with Douglass’s return to the United States in 1847, after he had toured England with his anti-slavery message. In response to descriptions of America as the land of the free, the song laments, “Alas! That my country should be America! Land of the slave.” 

In October 1915, tens of thousands of women took to the streets of New York. Walking arm in arm, they headed down Fifth Avenue to Central Park. This was a march of celebration. Finally, after decades of struggle, women would vote in the next presidential election. Once again, music had propelled the fight for women’s suffrage forward. 

One of the most famous songs of the suffrage movement was entitled “Daughters of Freedom, the Ballot Be Yours.” First appearing in 1871, this stirring protest anthem included lyrics imploring women to “sunder the fetters custom hath made” and to “yield not the battle, till ye have won!” A year after it’s release, one American woman fulfilled the song’s message. 

In the early 1930s, America was down on its luck. Caught in the middle of the Great Depression, much of the country was without work and hopeless. Into this mood of despair stepped Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), who was inaugurated as President in 1933. Determined to keep his country together, FDR seemed to many to be a walking promise of better things to come. Notably, his march toward hope was accompanied by song. 

In the cash-strapped 1930s, that song was “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It came to national attention when it was played during an FDR rally in 1932. This upbeat tune initially seemed out of step with depressed America. Nonetheless, it perfectly captured the infectious optimism of FDR himself, who always expressed confidence that the nation would lift itself out of its present hardship. 

In the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was raging, and America was bitterly divided. On one side stood millions of young people who demanded that the troops come home. These were the children of the counterculture, a population championing pacifism and progressive values. On the other side was Middle America. These were social conservatives who thought the dissenting youths were disrespectful and shamefully unpatriotic. On both sides, music fed their strong opinions. 

During this era, anti-war songs like Edwin Starr’s 1970 hit, “War” and The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” boomed from loudspeakers at protest marches. And Middle America, the group that President Nixon would call the ‘silent majority’ who quietly agreed with the Vietnam War, had their own anthem. While not exactly a pro-war song, Merle Haggard’s country song “Okie from Muskogee” explicitly denounced those young hippies who wore their hair long, destroyed their draft cards and questioned their country’s foreign policy. 

In 1954, at an open-air music performance in a Memphis park, something incredible was happening on stage. A white kid was singing the blues. Furthermore, with his incredibly versatile voice, electrifying good looks and outrageous dance moves, he was making them his own. That kid was Elvis Presley, and he would go on to become one of the most powerful cultural forces in twentieth-century America.

In many ways, Presley’s enormous success – and his terrible demise just two decades later – mirrors the fortune of America itself.