Growing up I loved watching American classic movie musicals. Last night our classical radio station profiled some of the music of Irving Berlin, who wrote a lot of iconic American music, like the wartime “God Bless America”, “Over There”, and “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning”

and music that was used in film such as the beautiful “What’ll I Do”, “White Christmas”, “Blue Skies”, and the syncopated “Puttin on the Ritz”.

Wikipedia reveals that he was born in Russia, in the part now known as Belarus, was the son of a Jewish cantor (his first musical influence), and moved to New York at age five when his family’s village was burned down in a Pogrom ordered by the last Tsar. He is not the only defining American with that story.

“The new Tsar of Russia, notes Whitcomb, had revived with utmost brutality the anti-Jewish pogroms, which created the spontaneous mass exodus to America. The pogroms were to continue until 1906, and thousands of other families besides the Balines would also escape, including those of George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe Gilbert (“Waiting for the Robert E. Lee”), Jack Yellen (“Happy Days Are Here Again”), and Louis B. Mayer (MGM).”

So does that make American popular culture not really American? Not at all. These artists were extremely grateful to the land of opportunity, freedom, and relative safety. All of us except the American Indians and the imported slaves share this same heritage. To be American in most cases, means to have fled here.

Irving Berlin grew up destitute in the streets of New York. He found his niche selling newspapers near the saloons where he could hear and learned to imitate popular music. His musical genius beyond what he learned from his father, was mostly self-taught. “Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim being to “reach the heart of the average American” whom he saw as the “real soul of the country.”"

He said, “My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American, not the highbrow nor the lowbrow but that vast intermediate crew which is the real soul of the country. The highbrow is likely to be superficial, overtrained, supersensitive. The lowbrow is warped, subnormal. My public is the real people.”

American popular culture is characterized by a certain unrestrained freedom from rules. This section from the article presents some criticism of that,

Whitcomb also points out the irony that Russia, the country Berlin’s family was forced to leave, flung itself into “the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania:”

“… like a display of medieval religious frenzy; some seemed to be doing a dance of death. Lady Diana Manners, at a London ball reviving the Age of Chivalry, was escorted by Prince Felix Yusupov. This young man, a recent Oxford undergraduate, had an impeccable Russian noble lineage: a descendant of Frederick of Prussia, he was heir to the largest estate in Russia, he would be richer than the Tsar. He was exquisite and heavily bejewelled, but Lady Diana was irritated by his ‘wriggling around the ballroom like a demented worm, screaming for ‘more ragtime and more champagne’.”^[5]:183

Lady Diana Manners was apparently not alone in her dislike of ragtime. A newspaper clipping found in Berlin’s scrapbook included an article titled, “Calls Ragtime Insanity Sign”:

(excerpt)”‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band” [Berlin's first hit - A.E.] is a public menace…. The authority for these statements is Dr. Ludwig Gruener of Berlin, a German [doctor] who has devoted twenty years’ study to the criminally insane…. He says, ‘Hysteria is the form of insanity that an abnormal love for ragtime seems to produce. It is as much a mental disease as acute mania—it has the same symptoms. When there is nothing done to check this form it produces idiocy’. He also stated that 90 percent of the inmates of the American asylums he has visited are abnormally fond of ragtime.”^[14]:23

[adding: I think there is something redeemable in the energy of ragtime and other controversial styles, and that each generation seems to need to build on the energy of the last generations' energetic experimentions or we'll go crazy or grow dull. However some things need to be thrown away.]

Berlin was also advised against getting a more formal education, “Not always certain about his own writing abilities, he once asked a songwriter friend, Mr. Herbert, whether he should study composition. “You have a natural gift for words and music,” Mr. Herbert told him. “Learning theory might help you a little, but it could cramp your style.” Berlin took his advice.”

Many American achievers come from a life of adversity, but have an inner driving energy to forge their own path, which they believe they have the freedom to do in this land that they love.

In striving for an American Church, it seems that some want to approach Orthodoxy with this same pioneering, from the heart, spirit. Some of the forms of Orthodoxy can strike Americans who have not criticized popular American cultural sensibilities, as constraining and “highbrow”.  Many times Orthodox criticize “undisciplined” (meaning untrained in old-school methods) Americans, and do not want to incorporate this aspect of freedom into American Orthodoxy. I agree that the Church should not seek to incorporate a syncopated tempo or emotive singing into the Liturgy. Rachmaninoff may have been the last classically trained composer who could add a somewhat “popular” form into Liturgical worship, though I’m a bit more open to the styles used at the Monastery of St. John of San Francisco, where Metropolitan Jonah was formerly abbot. Trusting in these types of updates is going to be very difficult for the Church at large. It’s almost like we’ll know it when we hear it. But then some seem to accept forms, like organ music, that others wont. I think those controversial new elements should be put on the shelf until they are somehow proven. Peace in the body is a mysterious thing. Not all will agree, yet concensus is possible.

There is perhaps something else that American culture can contribute. This exuberant American heart can find a place. Maybe not in renovating the services, but in joining with the energy in the services to refine the heart’s direction and expression upon leaving the nave. This is something each person can do in their own lives. Irving Berlin loved American simple expression. Some may feel that American vernacular is beyond redeeming. I don’t think that we need to blanketly accept the increased advertising quality of American sloganeering communication. Beyond a return to pre-WWII speech patterns and heart-felt,  unschooled discipline (Irving was very disciplined in his writing schedule), I’m not sure what has survived, but there must be something.

Another note: As sad as conditions were in Russia, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that the Russian and Jewish heritage of the above artists contributed to their American expressions (we can’t overlook other cultures’ influence into ragtime and jazz either). The combination  apparently resonated in Russia too.