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These Songs Are Your Songs: A July Fourth Playlist

Supporters of the United States men's national soccer team sing the national anthem before a Copa América match against Paraguay in Philadelphia June 11.
Nicholas Kamm
/
AFP/Getty Images
Supporters of the United States men's national soccer team sing the national anthem before a Copa América match against Paraguay in Philadelphia June 11.

For this most American of holidays, how do we define our music? What makes it uniquely American?

In 1929 George Gershwin wrote that it's "something deeply rooted in our soil." Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Marin Alsop said, "It's highly energized, rhythmic music derived from the blurring of lines between popular and serious styles."

I think you can hear all of that, and much more, in this five-hour playlist of American tunes selected from a wide swath of mainly classical sources. We celebrate Scott Joplin's ragtime opera Treemonisha and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, but also contemporary works like David Lang's The National Anthems, Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman and music from the new album by ETHEL with Native American composer Robert Mirabal. There's also room for Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Elaine Stritch — and a non-American piece that's become an Independence Day staple, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

In other words, a little something for everyone. Happy Fourth!

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tom Huizenga is a producer for NPR Music. He contributes a wide range of stories about classical music to NPR's news programs and is the classical music reviewer for All Things Considered. He appears regularly on NPR Music podcasts and founded NPR's classical music blog Deceptive Cadence in 2010.