America’s 250th birthday deserves some spectacular celebrations. (It doesn’t have to come out of Washington.) Here are videos or some of the country’s greatest hits: classic patriot songs and patriotic protest songs: The patriotic protest songs recall the original spirit of the Fourth of July, when 250 years ago Americans engaged in an act of protest against tyranny. (There is some overlap)
Also check out my Women’s Declaration of Independence: 10 Songs for the 4th of July.
10 Patriotic Songs for the Fourth of July
Ten classic patriotic songs by some of America’s great composers, from Irving Berlin to John Philip Sousa to Woody Guthrie, performed by Leonard Bernstein, James Cagney, Ray Charles, Rosemary Clooney, Judy Collins, Aretha Franklin, Judy Garland, Woody Guthrie, Harlem Boys Choir, New York Philharmonic, Whitney Houston, Paul Robeson and a lone acoustical guitarist who calls himself “Old White Man,” who does a unique rendition of “Hail to the Chief.”
God Bless America by Irving Berlin, sung by Rosemary Clooney
This Land Is Your Land, written and sung by Woody Guthrie
The Star Spangled Banner, the American National Anthem music by John Stafford Smith, lyrics by Francis Scott Key, sung by Whitney Houston. (starts at 1:15)
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My Country tis of Thee, music by Henry Carey, lyrics by Samuel F. Smith, sung by Aretha Franklin
America The Beautiful, music by Samuel Ward, lyrics by Katharine Lee Bates, sung by Ray Charles
Stars and Stripes Forever, by John Philip Sousa, performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe (using the music from the song “John Brown’s Body”), performed by Judy Collins and the Boys Choir of Harlem
Hail to the Chief by James Sanderson, played by lone acoustical guitarist “oldwhtman”
Ballad for Americans lyrics by John La Touche and music by Earl Robinson, sung by Paul Robeson
Yankee Doodle Dandy by George M. Cohan, sung by James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland
Patriotic Protest Songs
Some of the songs have become such popular anthems that people forget their origins, just as some forget the original meaning of the Fourth of July. That includes two above — “This Land Is Your Land” and “Ballad for Americans” — and several below
Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land in 1940 in response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”
“…In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?…”
Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA, 1984
“…Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go…”
The Freedom Singers: We Shall Not Be Moved, at the 1963 March on WashingtonB
Billie Holiday
Strange Fruit
“Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees…”
Pete Seeger: Which Side Are You On
“My daddy was a miner
And I’m a miner’s son
And I’ll stick with the union
‘Til every battle’s won”
Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam
Joan Baez: Birmingham Sunday
“On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine
And the choir kept singing of freedom….”
Tracy Chapman: Talkin’ Bout A Revolution,
A Tribe Called Quest: We The People, 2016
“…All you Black folks, you must go
All you Mexicans, you must go
And all you poor folks, you must go
Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways
So all you bad folks, you must go…”
Sam Cooke: A Change Is Gonna Come, 1964
Aretha Franklin: Never Gonna Break My Faith
the audio was rediscovered two years after her death in 2018, and released as a music video in June 2020
K’naan · Snow Tha Product · Riz MC · Residente: Immigrants We Get The Job Done
from the Hamilton Mixtape,
Woody Guthrie again, Deportees
A group called The Last Internationale revive a Woody Guthrie song about an enraging moment in the history of U.S. treatment of migrants — suddenly and shockingly timely.
