Consider This from NPR - The songs that define America

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Independence Day means different things to each of us. On this 249th birthday for America, we spend some time looking at different definitions of America by revisiting NPR's 2018 series: American Anthem — which had the simple goal of telling 50 stories about 50 songs that have become galvanizing forces in American culture.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Independence Day means different things to each of us, and even though there is only one official national anthem, ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] there are a whole lot more songs that help define America. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Like America the Beautiful, courtesy here of Ray Charles, which marvels at the nation as it is, but also as it could be. Or Woody Guthrie's, This Land is Your Land, which hands each of us the keys.

And the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me. Today on America's 249th birthday, we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're gonna dig into some songs that have become galvanizing forces in American culture from NPR's American Anthem series. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.

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Hear from reporters who've been embedded with the biggest news of the week. Join us every week for the Friday News Roundup. Listen to the 1A podcast from NPR and WAMU. It's Consider This from NPR. We're gonna start with a song that many of you will probably remember from childhood. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Critic Eric Deggans looked at how the beloved children's song This Little Light of Mine became a civil rights anthem.

Sometimes experts say songs like This Little Light of Mine start off as children's folk songs, which become spirituals sung everywhere from churches to prison work camps. As the civil rights movement grew in the 1950s and 60s, singers changed the lyrics to reference their struggles. These new versions were known as freedom songs. I write the life of freedom. I'm gonna let it shine. It might seem odd to call such an innocent sounding song defiant, but that's exactly

how blues singer Betty Mae Fikes felt when she created her classic version of This Little Light of Mine in 1963. She improvised the lyrics after a protest in which several of her friends had been attacked. And I'm thinking, you know, how does the light shine when they're trying to put our lights out? So everybody was taking verses. In order to come in, I just went into the slave call. Whoa! Say Jim Clark, yeah!

I'm calling! And all of a sudden, I just started adding our pressers in the song. Tell Jim Clark I'm going to let it shine. And as I added my oppressors, here other people in the audience began to shout out, tell the KKK, tell our president. It was like being free.

Still, one question persists. Tell our president it was like being free. Still one question persists. Why has This Little Light of Mine survived for so long? Robert Darden, a professor at Baylor University who's written about the song in at least two books, has a theory. If you've asked some of the survivors of the civil rights movement, as I did, survivors who sing these songs for protection and for courage, why this little light of mine survives and is still sung.

They would look at me straight in the eye and say, because those songs are anointed. And as an academic, I have no way to refute that, nor do I want to. That was Robert Darden talking to NPR's Eric Deggans about This Little Light of Mine. The word anthem connotes something big, right? Something that unites listeners, but also maybe something that challenges them. Aaron Copeland's fanfare for The Common Man was composed in 1942, and since then it has been heard everywhere. NPR's Mandalit Del Barco looked into why this song continues to command so much attention.

Aaron Copland began his fanfare with dramatic percussion. It heralds something big, exciting, heroic. Then simple trumpet notes ascend. It's a piece that feels like it was written by God and not by a human. Jazz trumpet player and composer Terrence Blanchard. Whenever I hear it, it stops me in my tracks and it makes me reflect on the goodness of man really. And I know that sounds corny for some, but it really makes me think about at the end

of the day, you know, most people in this country are good God-fearing people. Honestly, that could have been our national anthem. It has that type of spirit to it. By 1942, the U.S. had entered World War II, and composer Aaron Copeland was inspired by a speech Vice President Henry A. Wallace gave to rally Americans. Some have spoken of the American century. I say that the century on which we are entering, the century which will come into being after this war, can be and must be the century of the common man. And the common man deserved a fanfare, Copeland once said, remarking it was the common man after all who was doing all the dirty work and

the war and the army. NPR asked listeners to reflect on Aaron Copeland's fanfare. My name is Lynn Gilbert and I live in Bristol, Maine. My career was in IT for a utility company. And in spite of the current political landscape, I guess I still believe that there is an American dream of peace and prosperity for everyone. And music that soars and inspires like this piece does, brings hope for the future. It's powerful, it's direct, and it's really just American.

I love it. Thank you, Erin Copeland. All of that in a piece that's under four minutes long. Mandelita Albarco, NPR News. Lynn Neary first heard Bob Dylan's The Times They Are Changing when she was barely a teenager. Once she heard the song, she says pretty much nothing was the same after that. Come gather around people, wherever you're on. This protest song from 1963 continues to find new meaning for new generations. In 2018, thousands of young people gathered on the National Mall for the March for Our Lives in response to the Parkland School shooting. Singer Jennifer Hudson closed the event with this song,

and she was backed by a choir of young people. All right, let's run it from the top. Ranging in age from 13 to 30, they meet regularly to rehearse in Columbia, Maryland. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, Come gather round people wherever you grow. Choir director Jonathan Ball says he was surprised when the choir was asked to sing The Times They Are a Change in at the march. He didn't know the song, and neither did most of the members of the choir. Ball says as they started to rehearse the lyrics took on more meaning for all of them. He began imagining what it would be like to sing

those words, Come Senators, Congressman, please heed the call on the National Mall. In my mind when I was arranging the part I was like I hope the President hears this. I hope the Senators, the Congressman are actually listening and like a movie almost like you know like they hear the music and they just like write a new law. Erica Edmond is the lead singer. She says the full impact of the song really hit when the choir sang it during the march. Because we were there looking at all of these people, I was looking to the crowd, seeing people crying, you know, you had people that are begging, screaming for change. So it makes

it easy for me to sing the song because it means so much to what I've seen now. Choir member Theron Fowler was amazed that one song could be so powerful. This anthem, it brought us together for something bigger than ourselves. No matter what race, what culture, background, religious, whatever, it brought everyone together. And so a new generation takes up the anthem that inspired young people more than 50 years ago. But it's not a song that looks to the past. It's an anthem of hope for a future where change is always possible. And in the heart of the crowd, we are the champions.

NPR's Lynn Neary on The Times They Are a-Changin. NPR also asked you to send us stories about your personal anthems. And a number of you wrote about the Simon and Garfunkel song, America. It's a road trip song that's about more than just traveling, right? Listeners said it speaks to a quest for meaning. Here in their own words are Eugene Lissansky, Yael Cohen, and Val Sullivan. The whole part where he says I'm empty and aching and I don't know why just really is kind of how I feel as an American right now. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.

Counting the calls on the New Jersey Turnpike, they've all come to look for America. Many of us, myself included, have been stuck on the New Jersey Turnpike and it's not a place that you would really think that you would find meaning. Realizing that everybody is looking for America. What does that mean? For me, getting to know America is more about the questions that we ask than the sort of sureness that we might reach in our own experience. I don't know whether we ever did find it or whether this was just a kick-sodic quest,

but I think all of us are still searching for America and hoping to find it and define it and give it meaning, and we all do that in our own way. Whether you have found your America or you're still searching, we wish you all a very happy Independence Day. Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together. NPR's American Anthem series first aired on the radio in 2018. You can still listen to all of the stories on npr.org. There's a link in our episode notes.

And before we go, we want to acknowledge our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Thank you so much. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. Learn more at plus.mpr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at theschmidt.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from Yarle and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.