Happy Birthday, John Phillip Sousa 1854-1932

Today marks the birthday of an American hero, John Phillip Sousa.

He is remembered for the delightful marches he composed, which were only one part of his output as a composer. He is also remembered for his unflagging energy and insistence upon the highest standards of music making in every situation.

He personally shaped, for the eternal good, so much of the musical culture of America in his day. What would the American culture be without the contributions he made? Without Washington Post, or Stars And Stripes Forever?

For those readers in the Washington, D.C., area--you know who you are:

At 11 a.m. this Saturday, Nov. 6, “The President’s Own” will pay homage to its 17th Director, John Philip Sousa, with a graveside ceremony and wreath-laying on the 156th anniversary of his birth. The ceremony will take place at Congressional Cemetery located at 1801 E Street, SE, in Washington, D.C.

Sousa reminds us who we were, and can be, both individually and corporately.

A perennial Green Shoots Award to this gent.

Transcendence: Marines, Sousa Marches, Golf In A Gale, And South Oxhey

OldSouth just returned home from an extraordinary evening, spent in a basketball arena with the United States Marine Band and a large enthusiastic audience. It had been a long day. It was a long drive to the venue. He almost decided against going, and is so grateful he did.

The music-making was extraordinary, on so many levels. As a kid of nineteen, OS sat in a balcony at the Salzburg Festival, and watched Herbert von Karajan conduct Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, with the Vienna Phil in the pit. For them, it was another day at the office. For OS, it was a revelation to hear that music played in its true tradition and context. It was an 'A-ha' moment. 'Oh, that's how it's supposed to sound.'

Tonight was one of those experiences, which (as they always do) came as a surprise. To hear the Sousa marches performed by the organization he so indelibly shaped was revelatory. The music marched and danced at the same time, and the transparency of the scores in their detail became apparent. 'Semper Fidelis' performed with the complement of six cornets and two trumpets seemed almost lighter than air. 'Stars and Stripes' with four flawless piccolos on that countermelody (in tune!) seemed to take wings.

The band presented serious concert literature as well. Paul Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphoses was heavy going at first, but the audience hung in, and were won over. The Persichetti Psalm for Band, potentially as challenging to a lay audience, held their rapt attention.

The patriotic numbers were more poignant and heartfelt than OS was expecting, as the audience sang along on the opening stanza of 'My Country, 'Tis Of Thee', singing and applauding simultaneously as they arrived at the closing line--'let freedom ring', likewise as they sang Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America'. It was an audience full of vets, of soldiers' families, children and friends. These people have true 'skin in the game', in ways your average Ivy League liberal can never understand. No cynicism here, no intellectual's distance to be found between these people and the words they sang.

After the concert, the one band member from Tennessee was surrounded by a small mob of retired Marines, shaking his hand, having their pictures taken with the kid, slathering attention and love on the young man. It was extraordinary--they were all Marines, from the 80-year old guys in the funny hats to the shy 25-year old in his bright red concert dress, holding his trombone.

It was, well, transcendent. The evening was such a contrast to the banality and cynicism of so much of the culture. This music and this experience put the audience in contact with something that resonated deep within them: beauty experienced in community, in a cause bigger than their own entertainment or satisfaction.

And, it's been that sort of week. Mr. and Mrs. OS watched the season's final episode of The Choir Wednesday evening, with misty eyes, as young Gareth takes on the town of South Oxhey, north of London and essentially marooned and forgotten by the county that surrounds it. As the townfolk found their own voices, and learned how to sing and work together, that transcendence made itself known. And, the intrepid young conductor, on a mission to transform a town and then leave, found himself transformed by it, and remaining.

Transcendence.

Two teams of golfers battle the course, the elements and their nerves, until the American doffs his hat, shakes the Englishman's hand and concedes the match and tournament, and it dawns on the Welsh crowd that their boys just won, by one-half of a point. There was that moment of quiet just before the roar as it dawned upon everyone what had transpired.

Transcendence.

OS believes we cannot live without it, but that it must be the real thing; not the pale imitations promised by those who keep trying to peddle us aphrodisiacs, hair implants, weight-loss schemes, get-rich-quick courses, porn, drugs, political utopias and $80,000 automobiles.

Tonight was the real thing.

'Oh, that's how it's supposed to be...'

Pomp And Circumstance/Compare And Contrast: Obama Gives Calederon The Full White House Monty, Gives The UK The Back Of His Hand

It was quite a morning in Obama-land, with a Full-Monty welcoming ceremony on the White House Lawn, complete with the fife-and-drum corp in full Revolutionary War uniform livery, followed by a joint denunciation of all those bad bad bad racist racist racist people in Arizona who decided to stop waiting for the Federal Government to protect the southern border.

Let's compare and contrast this with the shabby treatment afforded the British Prime Minister when he visited Washington in March 2009.

From the Telegraph, 7 March 2009:

British officials....admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But they concede that the mood music of the event was at times strained. Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama's Oval Office desk. Mr Obama's gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.

It isn't like the President has to rehearse the fife-and-drum corps himself.  A career member of State Department Protocol Office makes the arrangements, and everyone shows up at the appointed places and times for the official welcome. The Marine Band is named 'The President's Own' for a reason, as they supply the staff musicians for the White House.

Himself certainly found His Obama-mojo to welcome the Mexican president, who oversees one of the most corrupt and violent countries of the Western Hemisphere. He mounted the Full Monty welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn for a man who doesn't recognize the legitimacy of our border with his country, who thinks his citizens have the inalienable right to enter our country with impunity and without penalty, and who views our country as a dumping-ground for his country's failures to create anything resembling a free society.

OldSouth has a problem with this, namely:

• Our prisons are not overrun with British citizens who make their careers trafficking in drugs and people. 
• Our schools are not bearing the burden of educating millions of British citizens who show up at the door and demand schooling in their native languages, complete with a history curriculum that portrays them as victims of unjust American oppression. 
• The British government concedes that it has no claim on its former colonies. 
• Our citizens are not in danger of being killed or kidnapped by British criminals illegally residing in our country. 
• Britain is not the national discount drug warehouse for North America (or Northern Europe, for that matter). 
• Great Britain has a free press, free elections, more than one effective political party, and power passes from one hand to another without bloodshed. 
• The UK has its problems, but it is a civil and free country, which means those problems can be addressed. Mexico lacks the civility and freedom to even begin to address its crushing problems. Mexico lacks the collective will to develop the qualities necessary to function. Why worry? Just blame the Yanquis and ship them the unemployed, illiterate and criminal. Collect the drug money as it flows south.

The British Prime Minister deserves a lot more than a DVD collection from Wal-Mart. (The Revolutionary fife-and-drum bit might rub him the wrong way, but the Marine Band in dress blues playing Sousa would do nicely, thank-you).

The Mexican President deserves a polite-but-firm welcome, a tour of the wall being constructed along the Arizona border, and should be sent home with a very special gift: Two planeloads of his fellow citizens serving time in our prisons for violent felonies.

And just for good measure, a send-off rendition of the Marine Hymn, performed by The President's Own, sung by the choir for good measure.  The first line tells the story:

 
From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli...