In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
The 50 short critical essays in Ed Simon’s book American Elegy each offer a glimpse at United States history through cultural icons, history, and more. These pieces coalesce to offer an unadulterated history of the country and a road map to righting its wrongs.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Editor and public humanities lecturer Ed Simon takes a critic’s approach in American Elegy…In 50 short essays, he weaves history, pop culture, literature, music, science, and more, interrogating what he calls the dis-United States. Simon’s cultural studies background leads him to draw from unorthodox sources, emphasizing thought and content over hierarchy of form.”
In his own words, here is Ed Simon’s Book Notes music playlist for his book American Elegy:
If America, at its best, is to be thought of as anything, it should be as a song. Let other nations have their epics, forget even the so-called claimants to the Great American Novel, for if the nation should be something, let it be musical. A novel is the work of a single person, but a song is endlessly variable, always reinvented, and in some intangible way independent of those responsible for its composition (that is if we even know who is responsible for a given song’s composition). Much as the eternal promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” must be ever reinterpreted, so too is music an ever-living thing, experienced in time and passed on in performance. The melody of thought, the soul of rhythm, the solidarity of harmony – all of it must be intrinsic to the functioning of democracy, which far from being an ossified political ideology has to be the living, beating heart of individual experience if there is to be any hope for our future.
It’s not a mistake that America’s most enduring cultural contributions have been musical. Long after this nation will have collapsed, and our literature turned to acidic pulp, our art buried beneath the rubble, they’ll still be humming our tunes. Blues, gospel, country, bluegrass, rock and roll, hip-hop, soul, disco, JAZZ – all of it an American innovation, fused from disparate sources into something new. Also, not a mistake that every single one of those genres has its origins in the Black experience, so that the most marginalized group in the nation’s violent history played the central role in its cultural genius. That’s because, as I explore in American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-united States, there’s a kind of psychic country within our country which marks how all of us as Americans must think of themselves. There is the actual nation of the United States, which has done both good and bad things (frequently the latter), but is a country like any other, and then there is a higher, grander, more utopian, entirely impossible, and completely beautiful place called America. Our culture at its most prophetic produces missives from America to hold the United States to those greater ideals, and frequently the greatest medium for doing that has been music.
When writing American Elegy, which is structured through a series of short essays on seminal texts in a form that could be called “flash criticism” that are then organized asynchronously as a “cultural mixtape,” I understand that music should feature prominently. There are of course works of literature considered (Moby-Dick, Beloved), art (The Peaceable Kingdom, Nighthawks at the Diner), and politics (“The Gettysburg Address,” the 14th Amendment), but music pulses through every section. America is the nation of Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, Sun Ra and Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and Nina Simone, and this was part of the glorious inheritance which I precisely wanted to remember as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches. During its composition, I continually listened to music as a means of charting my ship towards America, as a reminder of what could be rather than what is. This summer, as the anniversary is overseen by some of the most vain and sociopathic, cruel and wicked people imaginable, my ballast has been Guthrie’s reminder that this land is your land, and that this land is my land, more than it ever is their land.
“America” – Walt Whitman
What could better the announce such a project as the supposed voice of the good, grey poet himself, Walt Whitman, reading from his poem “America?” Discovered by researchers at the University of Iowa three decades ago, the recording was rendered on an Edison wax cylinder, the only aural connection to our greatest poet and his craggy, rich, Mid-Atlantic tenor. America, “centre of equal daughters, equal sons.”
“Wondrous Love” – Traditional, performed by Anonymous 4
“Wondrous Love” is an example of nineteenth-century “Sacred Harp Singing,” a type of choral arrangement for four-part a capella hymns based in the shape-note system of sight reading. To my ear, it’s strange and uncannily beautiful sound evokes a kind of Protestant Gregorian Chant.
“Appalachian Spring: Simple Gifts” – Aaron Copeland, performed by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra
American symphonic music is split between our two poles of Copeland and Gershwin, the country and the city, the West and the East (both men were, of course, New Yorkers). When Copeland took the theme from the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” and adapted it for Appalachian Spring, a piece intended to accompany the choreography of Martha Graham, he contributed an indelible piece that somehow sounds both grand and democratic, epic and personal.
“Rhapsody in Blue” – George Gershwin, performed by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra
Once while driving with a friend who knows virtually nothing about music (he’s a good but strange friend) I tried an experiment by putting “Rhapsody in Blue” on my car stereo and asking him what this iconic composition, which he’d amazingly never listened to before, was about. After a few minutes of contemplation, parsing the iron-and-steel sweep of the music, the chrome-buffeted soaring, its sonic playfulness and exuberance, he said “New York.” Can you imagine that?
“Peace Behind the Bridge” – Traditional, performed by the Carolina Chocolate Drops
Instruments have personalities, but something about the fiddle both laughs and cries in a manner that is unique. “Peace Behind the Bridge,” a traditional song from the almost-forgotten genre of the Black string band tradition, was preserved by the blues and folk musician Etta Baker and later interpreted by the brilliant and cheekily named Carolina Chocolate Drops. The fiddle and the banjo working together sound unmistakably “country,” and of course it is – but in American history, “country” also meant Black.
“Star Trek Theme” – Alexander “Sandy” Courage, Loulie Jean Norman
If the British have history, then Americans have space; which is why the former gave us Doctor Who, but the later the grand epic of Star Trek. Conceived of by Gene Rodenberry during a fraught, if in someways optimistic time, Star Trek imagined a future that was better than the present, not just in terms of science and technology, but in the far more important relationship between human beings.
“The Weary Whaling Grounds” – Traditional, performed by Stuart M. Frank
Before America was a continental civilization, it was an oceanic one; before it looked west, it looked east, and the first frontier was the shore itself. The great industry of the first half of the nineteenth-century was, as any reader of Herman Melville knows, whaling. It was sea shanties like this one which sustained a motley crew of men from all nations, as any reader of Melville also knows.
“Tapestry from an Asteroid” – Sun Ra
Jazz, arguably our single greatest cultural contribution, is not bereft of visionaries, but few were as eccentric as the great Sun Ra. An Afrofuturist visionary prior to that term even existing, Sun Ra – with his baroque conspiracy theories and cosmologies, his claims of interstellar patrimony – was slurred as a madman, but he also happened to be a genius. There is hopefulness in his music, which though it’s surreal, is also beautiful; though it’s experimental, is also glorious; though it’s strange, also swings.
“dlp 1.1” – William Basinski
America is sometimes considered a brash country that’s home to a loud people, but in classical minimalism, there is an underappreciated genius for quiet, for unassuming simplicity that’s far more complicated than at first listen. Experimental composer William Basinski’s haunting Disintegration Loops, rendered from the literal sound of aging magnetic tape flaking away into nothingness as it was digitally transferred, has long been associated with the 9/11 attacks that occurred on the day it was created. From that horrible event, Basinski offered the most poetic of inadvertent elegies.
“Rally Round the Flag” – George Frederick Root, performed by the Weavers
Also known as “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” abolitionist composer George Frederick Root’s clarion call to confrontation against the Confederacy during the apocalyptic Civil War is the rare patriotic song to rise above pablum and into something prophetic. That this particular version is performed by the folk group the Weavers (which included Pete Seeger), accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee of disloyalty, is all the more perfect.
“Halloween Parade” – Lou Reed
The frontman of the Velvet Underground, which Brian Eno joked was a band that only a few dozen people bought the debut of (though they also all formed seminal bands), is often dismissed as cynical, if not nihilistic. Yet Lou Reed’s “Halloween Parade,” which mournfully recounts the ever-thinning participants in an annual gay costume parade as members of the community die from AIDS (many of those mentioned being the composer’s friends), is heartbreaking and anything but nihilistic.
“Can I Kick It?” – A Tribe Called Quest
The seminal hip-hop group famously sampled Reed’s instantly recognizable bass-line in their classic “Can I Kick It?” A postmodern symphonic bricolage of samples (including from Ian Drury and Prokofiev), “Can I Kick It?” demonstrates the avant-garde brilliance of hip-hop as a musical form, where disparate parts are synthesized together in an aesthetic unmistakably American.
“Hard Travelin’” – Woody Guthrie
The hillbilly troubadour who set Methodist hymn melodies to communist lyrics, the hard-working Okie with the heart of an anarchist, Woody Guthrie is the great songwriter of the American proletariat. To choose a single representative track is a fool’s errand, but the relentless litany of places mentioned by the singer, with the narrator being an indigent, traveling worker just trying to stay alive, is as classic Guthrie as I can imagine.
“La Guacamaya” – Traditional, performed by Los Lobos
A traditional Mexican son jarocho number, “La Guacamaya” is a reminder that the border crossed millions of people before they ever crossed the border. As historian Greg Grandin makes clear in America, América: A New History of the New World, the United States has always had more in common with our neighbors to the south than our pretend ancestors to the east. A nation that is, first and foremost, not European, but American, which means that we’re as much Latin as we are Anglo.
“As Time Goes By” – Herman Hupfield, performed by Dooley Wilson
Casablanca gets more of the national character than almost any other film, a people that will do everything but the right thing until the last minute. In “As Time Goes By,” first written for another movie and soulfully performed by Dooley Wilson, the deep and intrinsic sadness of America – a place so often historically misinterpreted as fundamentally plucky and optimistic – is made manifest.
“The Internationale” – Pierre De Geyter, performed by Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips
What could seem less American than the international communist anthem, associated with Red Square May Day parades and marching Maoist soldiers? Yet “The Internationale,” with a melody by the French composer Pierre De Geyter from 1888 and lyrics by his countrymen the poet Pierre De Geyter written seventeen years before, is a consummately American song in that like May Day itself it was in part inspired by the brave rebellions of American workers. In this homespun, twangy, instrumental version by Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips, that American flavor is discernable.
“So What” – Miles Davis
Miles Davis on the album Kind of Blue, joined by Bill Evans, “Cannonball” Adderly, and John Coltrane, is so preposterously cool that it’s difficult to be in his aura. “So What,” both in what it performs and what it doesn’t, is the single coolest track ever written, an embodiment of a distinctly American aesthetic and ethos.
“Thunder Road” – Bruce Springsteen
“All the redemption I can offer is beneath this dirty hood/With a chance to make it good somehow/Hey, what else can we do now?//Except roll down the window/And let the wind blow back your hair.” What else can be said? When I was still a drinking man, I used to kill with this at karaoke.
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” – Blind Willie Johnson
Like virtually every luminary to caress a guitar a century ago in the Mississippi Delta, the bluesman Blind Willie Johnson’s life was one of suffering, marginalization, and pain. Dying from malarial fever after Texas hospitals refused to admit him because he was Black, the blind singer was buried in an unmarked grave that remains undiscovered. In this track, there aren’t even lyrics, just a kind of melodic keening. And yet after the United States is no more, after the sun itself has undergone a supernova, this track will endure on the Voyager space probe’s famed Golden Record, somewhere deep into interstellar space.
“We Are Family” – Sister Sledge
Like many disco tracks, “We Are Family” became a gay anthem, in this case because of the lyrical paeon to the idea of a found family, of creating one’s own network of love, care, and relationships that are based in human flourishing. It’s also, maybe incongruously, the song associated with the 1970s Pittsburgh Pirates, my beloved team that hasn’t been to a World Series since when this track was in the Top 40.
“The Rainbow Connection” – Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher, performed by Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson)
The Muppets evidence a special type of American genius, superficially saccharine but actually subversive, with the mild-mannered green frog a neurotic, if ultimate well-meaning, avatar of his associates. In the heartbreaking “The Rainbow Connection,” from the 1979 The Muppet Movie, there is a clarion, almost religious, call to the possibility of a better and more beautiful way of being.
“John Brown’s Body” – Traditional, performed by Paul Robeson
Who exactly was the composer of “John Brown’s Body,” that arresting, haunting, and dark humored Union march, is of some debate. The melody itself is traditional, from hymns that proliferated during the Second Great Awakening, but the lyrics have been associated with this or that regiment, even while the more dignified lyrics of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” are unequivocally by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe. As performed by Paul Robeson in his sonorous bass there is a regal and martial dignity to its message about justice’s inevitability.
“Blue Moon” – Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, performed by Elvis Presley
Maybe only Lennon and McCartney can top Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart as a twentieth-century musical partnership. Tin-pan alley prodigies, composer Rodgers and lyricist Hart were indispensable contributors to that collection of oral law known as the “Great American Songbook,” works meant to be reinterpreted and made anew over and over again. Elvis’ haunting, eerie, and almost avant-garde rendition, with his thin quivering falsetto sounding out over the clip-clop syncopation that accompanies him in this strip-downed version, proves that a bit of enchantment absolutely dwelled about the King.
“A More Perfect Union” – Titus Andronicus
The New Jersey post-punk indie band’s 2010 The Monitor, an unlikely concept album based on the Civil War and featuring spoken word excerpts of quotations derived from Ken Burns’ documentary, along with lyrical allusions to everyone from Billy Bragg to Springsteen, presaged the exact cultural fissures we face nearly two decades later. “A More Perfect Union” is both mournful and angry, dejected and ready to fight, conveying the exact energy and emotion needed if the song’s title is ever to be true.
“Over the Rainbow” – Harold Arlen and Yip Harburb, performed by Judy Garland
The most painfully sad song from the single most American movie based in the most American novel. The Wizard of Oz conveys – spiritually and psychically – everything that is intrinsic about America. It concerns our imagination, our striving, our reinventions, and our bullshit. Sung by a young girl, abused and destroyed by the Hollywood machine, “Over the Rainbow” nonetheless tries to envision some better place beyond the gauzy filament of that colorful illusion, where even if we don’t actually believe that we can get there, we understand that we must continue trying to.
“American Tune” – Paul Simon
“And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered/I don’t have a friend who feels at ease/I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered/Or driven to its knees,” sings Paul Simon. “But it’s alright, it’s alright.” So we sing again.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Ed Simon’s playlist for his book Devil’s Contract
Ed Simon is the author of over a dozen books, including An Alternative History of Pittsburgh; Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology; and The Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, named one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker. His essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Poetry, McSweeney’s, Aeon, Jacobin, The New Republic and The New York Times, among others. Simon is the Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University and the founding editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Belt Magazine, and Creative Nonfiction Editor at Carnegie Mellon University Press.