[Ed. Note: This essay is the third in a series of inauguration-related posts
leading up to the presidential inauguration on January 20, 2017. Each
author of these essays will participate in a "live-blog" event during
the course of inauguration day itself here on Musicology Now.]
By Katherine Meizel
The first
presidential inaugurations of Donald Trump’s lifetime (b. 1946) were also the
first to be televised, beginning with Harry Truman’s second term in 1949.
Though radio coverage was already available, the new availability of inaugural
sights and sounds in American living rooms transformed the ceremonies taking
place at the capitol into thoroughly nationwide popular events. If he watched,
a genuinely tiny-handed little Mr. Trump would have seen the Marine Band
playing “Hail to the Chief,” marching for Truman just as it would for him
decades later. He would have caught the 1953 moment when cowboy rodeo star
Montie Montana lassoed
the new President Eisenhower in his reviewing box, long before, as
president-elect, Mr. Trump would commission a cowboy
hat to commemorate his own inauguration. (He would also have heard Charlie
Brotman as inaugural parade announcer for the first time in 1957, little
knowing that 61 years later he would fire the same man just prior to his own
parade, by email). In fact, the participant roster
for the 2017 inauguration reads a little like a collection of the boyhood
heroes a man of Mr. Trump’s age might have worshiped in the 1950s—the
policemen, firefighters, veterans, and cowboys,[1]
ordinary working-class citizens who, in the post-War American imagination, made
America great.
By Katherine Meizel
![]() |
A marching band in Truman's 1949 inauguration |
In December 2016,
news outlets began gleefully publishing lists of artists who had declined invitations
to participate in President-elect Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Trump quickly
availed himself of his weapon of choice, posting
on Twitter:
“The
so-called ‘A’ list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but
look what they did for Hillary. NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE!”
We might puzzle
that the man who lives in a Versailles-inspired
penthouse will not have the most extravagant installation since the British
monarchy exited the colonies (the original Brexit), but it is consistent with
the anti-elitist rhetoric that attracted so many voters. Mr. Trump’s tweeted declaration
of independence from the celebrity casts him as a champion, and gatekeeper, of
ordinary Americans. The dearth of stars available does mean that in this
inauguration, more focus will be placed on these “PEOPLE,” as it was in the
early years of Mr. Trump’s life. They will be on display especially in the
inaugural parade, which accompanies the president from the capitol building to
the White House after the swearing-in. They will march in both homegrown
patriot groups and the civic organizations charged with keeping the nation
safe—and they will march to American music.
“Ordinary Americans” and “American music” are of
course complicated classifications, and the collective bodies chosen to
represent them on state occasions tell us much about social and sonic identity
politics at a given historical moment. The bodies who themselves choose to represent them, to accept the
invitation, says quite a bit, too. Hopeful groups applied to participate before
the end of the election, and those selected made the decision whether or not to
attend—most publicly, a band from the historically-black Talladega College,
which carefully considered its choice after alumni criticized it. In the end,
the band will perform, the college President disavowing any potential political
implications in performing at what he terms a “civil
ceremony.” But any performance can be political, as Lincoln and Denzin
argue, “an act involving potential struggles and negotiations over meaning,
identity, and power…” (Lincoln and Denzin 2003: 440), and the sounds of the
inaugural parade will encapsulate specific musical histories of Americanness.
The official
souvenir program
pamphlet for William McKinley’s 1901 inauguration included a fanciful essay
imagining what a 21st century event might look like. While McKinley
had the traditional cordon of military and civic bands, led by the “President’s
Own” Marine Band as it had been a hundred years earlier, the prophesied leader
of the 118 United States would have only “four great automatic bands…operated
by buttons, [that] simultaneously rendered a programme of popular music.”
Actually, despite the fact that we could use
pre-recorded or automated sounds, in 2017 the nine marching bands will still be
led by the same very-much live Marine Band. Every inaugural parade since 1801
has included professional bands of the U.S. military branches, and eventually
their progeny, civic, college & university, and high school marching bands,
as community ensembles took the nation by storm later in the 19th century.
Since then, the bands and their music have helped to shape our ideas about
American national identity in shifting global contexts. Sometimes there has
been a kind of world-exhibition character to the roster, as in 1909 when the
Philippine Constabulary band
joined William Howard Taft’s inaugural concert to demonstrate American colonial
success (“Men Who Seven Years Ago Had Never Seen Instruments Now Play Wagner
and Beethoven,” read a contemporary news feature.) And often, the music of our patriotism
reflects the complex relationship between the U.S. and Britain, between
immigration and Americanness.
Next Friday, the
Marine Band will, as it has since the 19th century, and as it does
dozens of times per year, play “Hail to the Chief.” Charmingly, as Elise Kirk
relates (1997: 123), Harry Truman turned musicologist himself after he heard it
at his inauguration, and wrote to a Scottish journal to ask about the origin of
the familiar tune. Though Truman did not learn the full story, the tune that
honors our presidents was popularized during the War of 1812 (the same conflict
that produced The Star Spangled Banner)
through sheet music, after it appeared in a dramatic production based on Sir
Walter Scott’s 1810 poem Lady of the Lake.
The stanzas set by English composer John Sanderson for an 1811 British play
were was picked up in an 1812 American version, for a scene in which a chorus
of boatmen salute the Douglas clan’s chieftain Roderick Dhu—Kirk suggests that
Sanderson’s may have either used the melody of a preexisting traditional boat
song or composed an imitation (131).[2]
At the time “Hail to the Chief” was written, the U.S. was engaged in a conflict ignited in part by contradictory understandings of immigration (Taylor 2010). For the U.S., a British subject who had emigrated from Britain was no longer a British subject; Britain did not subscribe to this line of thinking, and had been continually pressing, among others, Irish American sailors into military service for the crown. Now, as we inaugurate an administration elected partly for its own controversial views regarding who is allowed to be American, the ceremonies will showcase another tradition, one that is central to the negotiation of Irish American identity.
Mr. Trump has
been hailed by some as a hero of American whiteness. The made-in-the-U.S.A. whiteness
he grew up with emerged after the Second World War, constructed through the destruction of non-white ethnic
neighborhoods, and the evacuation of white ethnic neighborhoods in fear of the
sudden resulting influx. These changes led to the development of suburban spaces
(like those Fred Trump built) to house a newly monolithic collection of white
“European American” identities (Lipsitz 1995: 373-374). Consequently, the
reaffirmation of white ethnic identities suddenly felt like a newly urgent
matter. This is where the pipe and drum band tradition came in.
Five pipe and
drum bands will play in the parade, including the US Border Patrol Pipe &
Drums and the NYPD Emerald Society Pipes & Drums. The NYPD Emerald Society
started it all, founding an organization for New York’s Irish American police
officers in 1953, as a response to the City police commissioner’s reluctant,
but official, 1949 acknowledgement of the Black policemen’s Guardians
organization (Darien 2013: 33-34)[3].
The founding of Emerald societies engendered a renewed interest in the
preservation of traditional Irish music, overlapping with a broader American
“folk music” revival, and soon police departments, then fire departments and
other civil service units, and even military academies, across the nation
boasted pipe and drum ensembles[4].
Emerald society bands learned the pipe and drum music inherited from Irish
military and funeral contexts,[5]
and have had a vital presence at police funerals ever since. They eventually
became ubiquitous at certain public events and parades, and they have been
assigned a special importance at memorials for those who died on 9/11, as 145
of the 343 fire fighters who perished in the rescue effort belonged to the FDNY
Emerald Society (Meagher 2006: 610).
So this is the inaugural parade, a pageant for (a version of) “the PEOPLE” and by (a version of) “the PEOPLE”. Its lineup privileges the culture of particular American demographic groups whose interests helped to shape Mr. Trump’s career and his understanding of the country he would one day lead. Its sounds will make some Americans feel safe, nostalgic, while others will hear only the same silenced voices that have crowded the Capitol at every inauguration. “Making America great again” demands a focus on the past. But if we continue to march ahead with our gazes fixed firmly behind us, we’re bound to fall.
REFERENCES
Darien, Andrew
T. 2013. Becoming New York’s Finest: Race, Gender, and the Integration of the
NYPD, 1935-1980. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
Kirk, Elise K.
1997. “’Hail to the Chief’”: The Origins and Legacies of an American Ceremonial
Tune.” American Music 15(2):123-136.
Lincoln, Yvonna
S. and Norman K. Denzin, editors. 2003. Turning
Points in Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief. Walnut
Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.
Lipsitz, George.
1995. “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and
the “White” Problem in American Studies.” American
Quarterly 47(3): 369-387.
Meagher, Timothy
J. 2006. “The Fireman on the Stairs: Cmmunal Loyalties in the Making of Irish
America.” Making the Irish American:
History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States. (J.J. Lee and
Marion R. Casey, editors). New York and London: New York University Press.
Taylor, Alan.
2010. The Civil War of 1812: American
Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
[2] The origin of “Hail to
the Chief” has special resonance for our new president. His mother was
Scottish, a MacLeod born on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He has
visited his mother’s hometown, and the website for the Trump International Golf
Links in Scotland offers lengthy
information about his ancestry there, as well as a crest
he invented. The crest’s motto reads “Never Give Up.” But the crest for the
Lewis clan MacLeod is a burning sun, and the Scots motto (not Gaelic) reads “I birn quhil I
se,” (translated variously as I burn while I see or I burn while I shall) or in
Latin “Luceo non uro” (I shine/glow, not burn, or I burn but am not consumed). Though
the English translations for these phrases do not correspond exactly, they both
have to do with a quality of fire-resistance, an ancient predecessor of “Teflon Don.” The story
of this motto is tied, weirdly, to the ruined Trumpan Church on the Isle of Skye—ruined
because some MacDonalds, the mortal enemies of the MacLeods, tried to burn a group of them inside in 1578 (it
was revenge for a similar act on the part of the MacLeods). Basically, the
motto says, “You can set me on fire, but I’m indestructible, and I’ll just come
out of it stronger.” For America’s new Sun King, that sounds about right.
[3] The Nevada Emerald
Society also confirms as
much on its website, though without explicitly mentioning the Guardians.
[4] The first was the
NYPD’s in 1960.
[5] Speaking of military
contexts, it’s worth noting that the pipe portion of the Citadel military
academy’s Regimental Band & Pipes, which will perform in the inauguration
January 20, was added in 1955.
Katherine
Meizel is an Associate
Professor of Ethnomusicology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She earned
her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at UCSB, and also holds a doctorate in vocal
performance. Her research includes topics in voice and identity, popular music
and media, religion, American identities, and disability studies. Her book Idolized:
Music, Media, and Identity in American Idol (IU Press) was published
in 2011; she also wrote about Idol for the magazine Slate from
2007 to 2011. She is currently co-editing the upcoming Oxford Handbook of
Voice Studies, and completing a monograph for Oxford University Press
titled Multivocality: An Ethnography of Singing on the Borders of Identity.
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