The Star-Spangled Banner, Jacobins and Abolitionists
Listen now
Description
"Millons be Free" is a Jacobin song which originally celebrated the idea of the French Revolution, whose tune became the American national anthem. Oskar Jensen sings us the melody and tells us a story involving Alexander Hamilton, the advocate of women's rights Mary Wollstonecraft, Haydn and Hummel at a drinking society, a Liverpool lawyer William Roscoe and William Pirsson, a Chelmsford bookseller who immigrated to the USA. Oskar Jensen is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, based at Newcastle University working on a project called The Invention of Pop Music: Mainstream Song, Class, and Culture, 1520–2020. His books include Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London and he also worked on The Subversive Voice research project. You can find more from his research on BBC Sounds in episodes of the Arts & Ideas podcast called Victorian Streets, Napoleon in Fact and Fiction and Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking. Producer: Jayne Egerton.
More Episodes
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the...
Published 11/06/24
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the...
Published 11/06/24
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the...
Published 11/06/24