Single Song Sunday: Paul Simon’s American Tune
(on being an American on Independence Day)
July 4th, 2010 — 11:28 am
We live in complicated times, in a complicated country. Oil gushes into our waters, and each day, I watch the hurricane news, waiting for the perfect storm that will lead to the destruction of the East Coast beaches in whose warm waves and on whose clinging sand I have spent so many summers. The New Orleans project which won our hearts in the months following Katrina is out of money, though it shimmers with hope on the new series from the folks who brought you The Wire. My inner city students dwell in poverty, living lives of hardship with no obvious way out, and so do many of my neighbors, in our tiny rural town where next year, due to budget cuts, there will be no more music in the schools.
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be America without all this trouble and strife. Though as a teacher, a school board member, a community hellraiser, a Unitarian Universalist, and a parent, I work for a better day with every minute of my being, I recognize that the Constitution is far from a utopian document; rather, the independent spirit on which we were founded contains the tensions of our continued successes and frustrations.
Still, I am dismayed by the way we have learned to think of ourselves as King George III, with our own politics and politicians as the enemy. Trust in government “of the people” is gone, as is trust in the citizenry, if the news is to be believed. On forums and facebook, through picket lines and protests and policymaking, my fellow Americans act as if they have abdicated their ownership of the dream, coming out in proud and unlistening opposition to a nation that is supposed to be their own. Thinking about the future here can be bleak, sometimes, and though I put on a happy face and promise them love eternal, I struggle to answer my children’s questions about what will be, when they are grown.
But yesterday we spent the morning in the bearded crowds at the Brattleboro Farmer’s Market, munching lumpen sugar donuts made in some hippie kitchen, marveling at the freshest of uberlocal basil and lamb and flowers, and the easy mix of tourists and organic farmfolk with which we shared the open air. After lunch we took to the Connecticut River, sharing the tiny midriver island with comfortable strangers, picking raspberries and watching as my father-in-law at the helm pulled a series of children – ours, and our new friends – gleefully shrieking through the water behind him. As night fell, we drove home through the green hills of Vermont and Massachusetts, and the girls exclaimed with sleepy delight as through the interstate treelines came flashes of light and sparks from a dozen or more fireworks shows and backyard barbecues, their temporary light fading into stars.
And though I had planned another post for this morning, my mind turned to this country, unbidden. And in my breast stirred hope.
You don’t need to go looking for America, as Paul Simon wrote in some other, earlier American tune. It’s all around us, its best and its worst. And though it’s hard to be bright and bon vivant when we are so weary from this American life, it’s all right, what with tomorrow ever another day.
I’ve spent several long car rides steeped in various versions of Simon’s American Tune, most especially Eva Cassidy’s posthumous release; it’s a masterful soundtrack for sorrow, with an undercurrent of hope that lifts the spirit. And certainly, though Cassidy brings the beauty and pain for which she has become famous, much of the success of this song can be found in 1973 original: the soaring melodies, the lyrical back-and-forth between the deeply personal and the despairingly political, which have attracted so many to it, both as fans and cover artists.
But the way the song becomes grounded in the various folkstyles of American music holds special interest to us today, as America celebrates itself. In the space among and between Darrell Scott‘s gentle fiddle-and-mandolin driven bluegrass take, Storyhill‘s ragged SXSW backstage singer-songwriter campfire duo, the rise and fall of Glen Phillips‘ live and unreleased electrified solo performance, Mark Erelli‘s chunky, slippery, deceptively optimistic home demo recording, Willie Nelson‘s typically cowboy tenor, Charlie Wood‘s majestic piano blues, Mae Robertson‘s sea chanty-inspired, gospel-voiced plainsong, the broken harmonies of the Indigo Girls live at the Newport Folk Festival, and more, these visions of America capture all the mystery and madness, the love and longing, the frustration and the uplifting determination, the quintessential spirit of the American love for country, in all its bittersweet forms.
Want to support the continued production and performance of American tunes? Then remember: though the sharing ways of folk and the political change that it so often embodies are embedded in the form, downloading is just the beginning of a lifelong process. Click on artist names above to pursue and purchase the works of the icons and icons-to-be that we celebrate here.
Coverfans interested in more tributes to America The Beautiful, including Willie Nelson’s take on our “other” national anthem and a decidedly odd cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s America from UK progrockers Yes, will enjoy this morning’s five-song set from Cover Freak. I’m also particularly proud of America The Beautiful: Coverfolk For A Thoughtful Fourth, a post we put up for Independence Day 2008 whose sentiment is worth revisiting, though the songs are no longer live.
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