“Free America” - Patriotic American Song (Parody of The British Grenadiers)

"Free America" was composed by Joseph Warren in 1774, the 2nd President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who fell during the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. Set to the tune of "British Grenadiers," the lyrics of this song were used to rouse the spirits of American soldiers, warning Patriots to not let "Americay" meet the same fate of Athens and Rome.
Performed by The Boston Camerata, 2019 (Free America: Early Songs of Resistance and Rebellion).

[@FlyingTooFast]

The boston camerata are really good singers

[@BartlomiejDmowski]

Great! Song like this make me feel patriotic and sympathetic towards USA, even though I've never been there Long live Polish-American friendship!

[@PetervanInwagen-d7k]

The song is not a “parody” of “The British Grenadiers.” It is simply a song that was written to be sung to the same tune-just as the German Imperial anthem “Heil dir in Seigerkranz” is not a parody of “God Save the King.” As for this: What would American composers have done if they hadn't just taken the tunes of British songs and given them new lyrics? Still cracks me up that the melody of the Star Spangled Banner that makes Americans weep originally comes from a British drinking song, the author of “Free America”-one Joseph Warren, a Minute Man who fell at Bunker Hill in 1775-would have thought of himself as an Englishman who was taking a familiar English tune, a tune from his own musical tradition, and setting new words to it. (In the 1770s, the statement “I am an Englishman and an American” was no more contradictory than “I am an Englishman and a Yorkshireman.”) That tune, by the way, was already at least a hundred years old when the words of the song “The British Grenadiers” were written. “The Anacreontic Song” was a drinking song in the sense that it consists mainly in the praise of wine, but it was not a bar-room ballad. The words were written by a highly educated man, and a prize-winning composer was commissioned to set them to music. They were first performed before an aristocratic dinner-and-music society. Does it crack you up that the melody of “God Save the King” that makes the British (or at any rate certain of the English) weep originally comes from an English country dance tune?

[@LivingCrusader]

July is almost here!

[@ХетагБигаев-ф8ъ]

🇺🇸💞🇨🇮

[@ХетагБигаев-ф8ъ]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@DomWeasel]

What would American composers have done if they hadn't just taken the tunes of British songs and given them new lyrics? Still cracks me up that the melody of the Star Spangled Banner that makes Americans weep originally comes from a British drinking song. That's as bad as the anti-European British having a monarch who's mostly German and Greek.

[@balladsofhistory]

It was popular then to reuse the melody of songs, whether to parodize them, reuse a catchy tune, or both. Some say the melody of the British Grenadiers derives from the Dutch Anthem “Het Wilhelmus”, others claim it came from an English Royalist march composed in the 1650s.

[@deangoldenstar7997]

Greek? You mean the danish monarchy in greece?

[@DomWeasel]

@@deangoldenstar7997 The Danish monarchy which is manly German for the past two centuries. How the hell Europe went to war in 1914 when all the emperors and kings were German or half-German and cousins is astonishing.

[@deangoldenstar7997]

@@DomWeasel ... If it's been the same royal family for several centuries I feel like it's its own thing tbh. Hell one of the reasons why everyone was related in royalty was that one of the Danish kings basically pumped out kids for marriages, his nickname is "the father in law of Europe".