What We Share

We listen to the same music from Satchmo to the Blues Brothers to Heart

A heartfelt Happy 250th to my American friends. I cherish you and the fractious Republic you call home and we call our neighbour. May we never forget how fortunate we are to share a history, a border and a ton of fabulous tunes.

On this, the 250th Anniversary of American Independence, there’s a lot of wailing and teeth gnashing about the State of America. Especially up here in ‘elbows up’ Canada, where suddenly patriotic Canadians no longer buy American and don’t cross the border much, either. And in the great Republic itself, there are doubters and alas, haters, who agitate against this noble experiment in self government and want to turn the vibe towards Communism. Don’t buy it. It’s just another turning of the endless re-invention that is the DNA of America. It’s messy, but they will once again sort themselves out and forge ahead. It’s what they’ve always done and still do better than any other nation. It’s a beautiful, generous place as Satchmo knew:

And since I am now very old and almost wise, let me tell you: we’re very very fortunate to have neighbours like them. Relatives like them. Friends like them. We share not just a border but history, often fractious, but also, uniting. Canada is simply the Conservative side of the American coin, Canadian Empire Loyalists are as much a part of the American reality as the Revolutionary 13 States who risked everything for self government. Together, we make up North America and while we are different we also swing to the same music.

We tap so the same beat, we dance to the same tunes. Still. From What a Wonderful World to the Blues Brothers and Stairway to Heaven, what we share is a feeling that you can only find here, in North America: an Irrepressible yearning for liberty and a determination to keep it. While whistling a snappy tune.

Europe did not give birth to Satchmo (who claimed to be born on July 4, 1900), and The Blues Brothers is a movies so quintessentially American it could not have been made anywhere else. It’s not just the crazy car chases and the nutty plot: it’s the fabulous music scenes that puts this movie (in my humble opinion) into the top ten list every time. The Blues Brothers personify the can-do crazy never give up until you get ‘er done spirit of America. And the built in ‘mission from God’, that too is America and the realization of what that means is returning. Our shared Christian roots are showing up and it is leading somewhere new, perhaps a revival of Faith itself. If it’s anything at all, America means never ending re-invention, a glorious spirit of let’s try this again and make it better.

And then there is the heart stopping rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, with a full orchestra and a black choir bringing Americans together in a rare display of cultural harmony. The occasion was the induction into the Hall of Fame of the now older Led Zeppelin guys, quietly wiping tears from their eyes while the great and the good swayed to the feeling. Oh what a feeling! That’s what the best of America is, even today. Even among all the nay sayers, America is still bringing it. I would never bet against it because of this unique ability to renew and regenerate itself.

The music expresses it better than all the words though I do declare that the opening sentence of the Bill of Rights rings as true today as it ever did: We hold these rights to be inviolable . No state, no government can mess that up. Even today.