Sweet Freedom's Song
Sweet Freedom's Song

Author: the late Robert James Branham

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-03-28

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0195350294

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Although it isn't the official national anthem, America may be the most important and interesting patriotic song in our national repertoire. Sweet Freedom's Song: "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and Democracy in America is a celebration and critical exploration of the complicated musical, cultural and political roles played by the song America over the past 250 years. Popularly known as My Country 'Tis of Thee and as God Save the King/Queen before that this tune has a history as rich as the country it extols. In Sweet Freedom's Song, Robert Branham and Stephen Hartnett chronicle this song's many incarnations over the centuries. Colonial Americans, Southern slaveowners, abolitionists, temperance campaigners and labor leaders, among others, appropriated and adapted the tune to create anthems for their own struggles. Because the song has been invoked by nearly every grassroots movement in American history, the story of America offers important insights on the story of democracy in the United States. An examination of America as a historical artifact and cultural text, Sweet Freedoms Song is a reflection of the rebellious spirit of Americans throughout our nations history. The late Robert James Branham and his collaborator, Stephen Hartnett, have produced a thoroughly-researched, delightfully written book that will appeal to scholars and patriots of all stripes.

Sounds of liberty
Sounds of liberty

Author: Kate Bowan

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2017-08-10

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 152610623X

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Throughout the long nineteenth-century the sounds of liberty resonated across the Anglophone world. Focusing on radicals and reformers committed to the struggle for a better future, this book explores the role of music in the transmission of political culture over time and distance. Following in the footsteps of relentlessly travelling activists – women and men - it brings to light the importance of music making in the lived experience of politics. It shows how music encouraged, unified, divided, consoled, reminded, inspired and, at times, oppressed. The book examines iconic songs; the sound of music as radicals and reformers were marching, electioneering, celebrating, commemorating as well as striking, rioting and rebelling; and it listens within the walls of a range of associations where it was a part of a way of life, inspiring, nurturing, though at times restrictive. It provides an opportunity to hear history as it happened.

Village Song & Culture
Village Song & Culture

Author: Michael Pickering

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1317307984

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Originally published in 1982. The songs on which this study is based were once vibrant in the throats and ears and minds of living people. This book examines the songs and their meanings in relation to the lives of those people, and relates them to the cultural tradition and practice of which they were an integral part. The art of village song represents a sense of cohesiveness and mutual identity around local patterns of kinship, social groupings, territorial orientations and cultural relationships. The actual ways in which songs were part of village life is of course highly problematic, but this book endeavours, most of all, to present an understanding of the place of song in the social life of villagers.