Musical Memories

Music is often used to call to mind a certain time, location or mood. The popular music created in the ’30s (“Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”) or 40s (“I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time”) evokes the era, and we are lucky that, as time goes by, more of these songs are appearing on digital archives like the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project or Internet Archive. Some songs, though written much later, suggest an earlier event. One of the best known of these is “(Coming to) America,” released by Neil Diamond in 1980, which strongly brings to mind the great mass of immigrants of the second half of the 19th Century, traveling in steerage as they made their way to what they hoped was a better life. What’s your favorite “history” song?