Ep. 103
This week on Three Tune Tuesday, Boneapart and Yulia open with a piece of music history: on this day in 1916, Swedish tenor Aage Wang-Holm stepped into a New York recording studio to record a tender song of longing for home, sung in his native language for the millions of Scandinavian immigrants who made up a largely invisible audience for the early phonograph industry. Then the episode turns to its theme – freedom versus authoritarianism – beginning with Arthur Pryor’s Band and their 1904 march commemorating the Boston Tea Party, a moment of defiance against an empire that had decided the colonies existed to serve the crown rather than themselves. The episode closes with Reinald Werrenrath, one of the most recorded voices of his era, singing “Freedom for All Forever” – a WWI rallying cry built around a phrase chosen by the American public in a nationwide wartime slogan contest, and written by a soldier-songwriter then serving in the Canadian Engineers. Recorded in March 1918 with the outcome of the war still uncertain, it was a declaration that some things are worth fighting for. A century later, we’re still having that argument.