Update: The revised and extended Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack series for Independence Day 2025 (Part 1), entitled “Romantic Total Revolution: The Democracy of Soul & The Goddess Of Liberty” (broadcast 6/30/25), is now available for listening on the “Archived Musical Essays” webpage, along with the corresponding playlist on the “Program Playlists” webpage, of the Tower of Song website.
This Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack series for Independence Day 2025 attempts to answer the question What is America? by (a) exploring the visionary roots of the image of America in the minds of the 19th-century Romantic poet-prophets and revolutionary theorists of Europe and the United States, who saw America in terms of the eternal hope of the dream of liberty (the “dawning of a new age”); (b) re-mythologizing America’s national image and its symbols (such as “The Goddess of Liberty”); bring attention to the largely forgotten theoretical foundations of political revolution based upon the radical merger of the tradition of the Romantic literary imagination and the political tradition of democracy (i.e., mythopoetics and political ideology); in terms of the “First American Revolution,” re-vision the “Second American Revolution” of the 1960s as taking up the fallen standard of the 19th-century Romantic vision of “total revolution.” Therefore, the Gypsy Scholar, in these extremely dark times of totalitarianism in America, would still hold up “this little wild bouquet” of eternal hope that “Democracy is coming to the USA”!
Be sure to check out the fantabulous “Independence Day” webpage dedicated to this musical essay, which is located on the Tower of Song website at revradiotowerofsong.com.
