America’s celebration of its 250th anniversary takes as many forms as there are customs and cultures across the 50 states. Parades, fireworks and music are givens for a Semi-quincentennial celebration, a rare anniversary in our relatively young nation. Add local foods and customs that reflect the diversity of Americans everywhere, and you have a recipe for a grand commemoration of the past, present, and future of the United States. Not UFC fights on the White House lawn, not a Freedom 250 Grand Prix race on the Mall, not triumphal arches or promenades to the river. Those are one man’s tasteless transient fantasies soon to be forgotten.
An early local celebration was presented last Sunday afternoon as the Nova Lights Chorale, a Northern Virginia community choral group founded in 2011, presented a well-attended free concert at the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bailey’s Crossroads. The program charted American history through musical selections, some familiar and some not. A pre-revolutionary patriotic song exhorted “Then guard your rights, Americans. Nor bend to lawless sway. Oppose, oppose, oppose, oppose. For Free America.” Centuries later, in today’s political atmosphere, that exhortation seems eerily modern and cogent.
Appropriate for the concert setting was the chorale’s rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a signature melody of the Civil War. Many in the audience were unaware that the Union camp outside of Washington, D.C. that inspired Julia Ward Howe’s words was located near the intersection of today’s Columbia Pike and Leesburg Pike, about two blocks from where they were sitting! The “watchfires of a hundred circling camps” segued to “Lift every voice and sing,” also called the Black National Anthem, and its recognition that the American story is full of dark times, tempered with a “hope that the present has brought us.”
It was the rendition of “America” and a reading of the Emma Lazarus sonnet, “the New Colossus,” which is mounted on the Statue of Liberty pedestal, that brought tears to my eyes. Her 1883 words embody the hopes of millions of people who have come to this country in search of their dreams. Those timeless words – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door” – epitomize an ideal and a philosophy that often seems endangered 150 years later. America was in the throes of social and economic change in the 1880s, but the basic humanity of the poem, and the dreams it encompassed, reflect the words of Lincoln a generation before: “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”
The concert was bookended with familiar audience participation music – the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” along with immigrant Irving Berlin’s paean to his adopted country, “God Bless America.” One could stand a little straighter, breathe a little more deeply, and sing a little louder as the patriotic melodies soared to the rafters and beyond. As a couple hundred people participated in the musical memories, it was an apt reminder that patriotism is a shared emotion, not relegated (or hijacked) by one political party or another. The catch in the throat, the tear in the eye, the love and commitment to one’s native, or adopted, country, exemplify the exceptional nation that has been built by generations who came before, and who entrusted its longevity, democracy, and fairness to each following generation. That’s a trust that cannot, and should not, be abrogated, diminished, or tarnished, by us or our leaders.
(The Mason District Arts Council is sponsoring a series of events throughout June to reimagine the ideas of the American Revolution and engage the public through the arts. Check out www.masondistrictarts.org for more information. The Nova Lights Chorale is open to all interested singers, without regard to musical training. Log on to www.novalightschorale.org for more information or to donate.)