How America’s most patriotic anthem was actually written by a Russian: “The real soul of the country”
America has been iconised through music in a myriad of ways. In fact, it might just be the most spoken about country in all of music.
Whether it’s Creedence Clearwater Revival’s political outrage in ‘Fortunate Son’, Bruce Springsteen’s existential questioning in ‘Born In The USA’, or more recently Childish Gambino’s takedown in ‘This Is America’, the cyclical nature of Western society has often been highlighted through songs about its most powerful country.
As those three aforementioned examples outline, it’s arguably its most compelling when critical. The endless socio-political nuances of America as a country make for great artistic criticism, and some of the great songs of history have gone to prove that.
But maybe that’s coming from a perspective on the other side of the pond, where my view of the country isn’t quite wrapped up in the same patriotism of its own inhabitants. Maybe to American residents, the simple celebratory tone of Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’ serves as a better anthem.
But what is the background of perhaps their simplest musical ode that, in some ways, serves more as a de facto national anthem than anything else? Given the composition of the song, you wouldn’t be forgiven for thinking that Frank Sinatra had something to do with it, for the New York crooner was at his very best when expansively singing in tribute to his homeland. But no, the writing of ‘God Bless America’ predates Sinatra’s work by some distance, and the genesis of it steps well outside his jurisdiction.
The song was originally written by Irving Berlin in 1918, after he was stationed at the US Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York. It was penned as a wartime peace song during the battle by a man whose early life had been shaped by the fallout of political feuds, having to flee Russia at the age of five.
Irving Berlin was born in the Jewish village of Tyumen, one of the harsh regions of Russia’s Siberian landscape. But it was only at that tender age of five when Berlin’s family home was attacked, with biographer Laurence Bergreen writing that “he was lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching his house burn to the ground. By daylight, the house was in ashes”.
After Berlin’s family settled in America, they found a home in New York City, where Berlin would soon enlist in the army and begin writing songs in his spare time. Berlin used his music as a platform for his deep sense of patriotism, claiming his ambition was “to reach the heart of the average American, that vast intermediate crew which is the real soul of the country.”
He concluded, “My public is the real people.”
Naturally, the song evolved into an anthem of defiance for many Americans, with the civil rights movement often using it at their labour rallies. But that wasn’t to say its rather one-dimensional patriotic narrative prevented it from criticism. No, both sides of the political spectrum took aim at Berlin’s hit, with Woody Guthrie criticising it for its nationalist leanings, before writing ‘This Land Is Your Land’ as a response, while the Ku Klux Klan also protested against the song due to Berlin’s background in Judaism.
So rather aptly, a song meant to be a homogenised anthem of American patriotism only seemed to illuminate the fragmented socio-political make-up of a country that sat so deeply divided.
