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In Focus: Independence Day

Fourth of July Music Reflects U.S. History and Diversity

The Empire State building is dwarfed by a burst of fireworks during Independence Day along New York's East River. (© AP Images)

The significance of Fourth of July has inspired speeches, literary works, and musical compositions. These patriotic songs have become staples of U.S. Independence Day celebrations. They reflect the nation’s history and the contributions of immigrants to the country’s diverse culture.  On the Fourth of July, outdoor evening concerts usually are followed by fireworks.  For Americans, strains of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” or George M. Cohan’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy” evoke memories of the 4th of July.

Sometimes called the first American song, “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” was written by Francis Hopkinson, an early American composer and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” written in 1814 by lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key and declared the national anthem in 1931, is invariably played on Independence Day.  The song’s refrain recalls the early struggles of a nation. 

Until “The Star-Spangled Banner” was designated the official national anthem in 1931, the United States had a second national anthem called “Hail Columbia.” The music for “Hail Columbia” came from The President's March, written by Philip Pfeil (or Phile) to commemorate Washington's inauguration. The words were written by Joseph Hopkinson, the son of Frances Hopkinson, mentioned above.

Less than two decades after the debut of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the Reverend Samuel Francis Smith wrote the lyrics to “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (adapted from the British national anthem “God Save the Queen”), which became a patriotic staple.

“America the Beautiful” appeared as a poem in 1895, written by Katharine Lee Bates, a professor at Wellesley College.  In the early 1900s, it was set to music by Samuel A. Ward and achieved national popularity.

National Music with International Roots

According to John Edward Hasse, curator of American music at the Smithsonian Institution, the nation’s stock of patriotic music grew significantly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hasse said that Sousa (1854-1932), an American composer and son of a Bavarian mother and Portuguese father who immigrated to the United States, authored the most famous marches in the U.S. musical canon.  Sousa’s marches include “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis” which takes its title from the Latin motto of the U.S. Marine Corps (“always faithful”).

Sheet music cover for the 1898 March "Stars and Stripes Forever," by bandmaster and composer John Philip Sousa. (© AP Images)

The Sousa marches are reliable crowd-pleasers. There’s no one piece that captures the 4th of July spirit better than ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ – which is very dramatic and exciting at the finale. Listen to "The Stars and Stripes Forever March," by J. P. Sousa, Imperial Marimba Band, 1918.

Cohan (1878-1942) was another songwriter who left a major imprint on the nation’s musical heritage.  Of Irish descent, he was the son of vaudeville performers who taught him to dance and sing.  He authored a Broadway hit in 1904: the show Little Johnny Jones, which included his song “Yankee Doodle Boy” (better known as “Yankee Doodle Dandy”).  Other Cohan hits include “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” “I Want to Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune,” and the popular World War I song “Over There.”

Irving Berlin (1888-1989), an immigrant from what now is Belarus, expanded the nation’s musical repertoire with “God Bless America.”  The song achieved “instant classic” status when sung by Kate Smith during a 1938 Armistice Day (commemorating the end of World War I) radio broadcast.

“God Bless America” is standard fare on July 4th, but it is not without competitors.  Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” (1940) was “written as a response to ‘God Bless America,’ which Guthrie disliked,” said Hasse. Guthrie considered “God Bless America” too complacent, so he wrote a folk song with overtly political verses that are sometimes omitted in performances.

“The [musical] canon evolves slowly,” Hasse said. Big-band swing music of the 1940s, popularized by the Glenn Miller Band, is played at many Independence Day concerts.  So too are Neil Diamond’s 1980 hit “Coming to America,” which celebrates immigration to the United States, and Lee Greenwood’s 1983 country-western hit “God Bless the USA.”

Popular Contemporary Hymns

In the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen was lauded as the bard of working-class America. His patriotic hymn “Born in the USA” (1984) is an often misunderstood indictment of the indifference shown returning Vietnam veterans. In the 1970s Bruce Springsteen framed two songs as July Fourth narratives. The first “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” was followed four years later by “Independence Day.” (Please see Independence Day, Apart from the Fireworks, an article on how American writers and artists have often seen a deeper meaning in what is for most Americans a celebratory occasion.)

In 2000, Madonna recorded a cover version of Don McLean’s relentlessly popular ballad about “the day the music died” – “American Pie.” Thirty years after its overwhelming success in 1971, “American Pie” was voted number five in a poll of the 365 “Songs of the Century” compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Among the top five was another song mentioned above: "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie.

This Article is based on a text by the State Department’s International Information Programs: Fourth of July Music Reflects U.S. History, Diversity. For more information about U.S. patriotic music please see the music, theater and dance section of the U.S. Library of Congress Web site.