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The Song Everyone Knows · Randy Unscripted

• 0:09
  Randy Black: Within seconds, you already know the song, but chances are you've never stopped to ask why this became the soundtrack of graduations.
• 0:20
  Randy Black.
• 0:22
  Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy
• 0:25
  Black. Black. Black. He's Randy a troublemaker.
• 0:31
  Welcome back to Randy Unscripted. I'm Randy Black, and this is the podcast where I talk about whatever just happens to come across my brain
• 0:40
  whenever it just
• 0:42
  happens to come across it. And today,
• 0:45
  in the midst
• 0:46
  of graduation season all across The United States,
• 0:50
  Randy Black: there's something that popped out to me that I really just wanted to talk about.
• 0:55
  You know the melody instantly,
• 0:59
  even if you don't know its name.
• 1:01
  It plays
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  in packed gymnasiums,
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  crowded auditoriums,
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  Randy Black: and football stadiums all across America
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  every single
• 1:11
  year.
• 1:13
  And within moments,
• 1:15
  everybody recognizes
• 1:16
  it.
• 1:40
  Within seconds, you already know the song, but chances are you've never stopped to ask why this became the soundtrack
• 1:47
  of graduations.
• 1:49
  Randy Black: Why this song?
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  Why this melody?
• 1:53
  How did a British military march
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  Randy Black: become one of the most recognizable
• 1:58
  traditions
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  in American education?
• 2:01
  Randy Black: Today,
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  we're talking about pomp and circumstance,
• 2:05
  the song
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  everyone
• 2:07
  knows.
• 2:09
  Randy Black: The story begins in England in nineteen
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  o one.
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  The composer
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  behind the music was sir Edward Elgar,
• 2:19
  one of Britain's most respected composers.
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  He wrote what became known as pomp and circumstance march number one
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  as part of a larger collection of ceremonial marches.
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  Originally,
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  this had absolutely nothing to do with graduation ceremonies.
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  This was military music,
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  grand,
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  formal,
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  patriotic,
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  the kind of composition designed to command attention the moment it entered a room. And honestly,
• 2:48
  man,
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  it still does exactly that today.
• 2:52
  Even people who know nothing about classical music
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  instantly recognize the feeling that this song creates.
• 2:59
  It sounds important
• 3:01
  because it was written to sound important.
• 3:03
  The title itself
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  came from Shakespeare's Othello.
• 3:07
  The phrase pomp and circumstance refers to the ceremony
• 3:11
  and the grandeur surrounding military life,
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  but the melody we recognize most today
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  almost took on a completely different identity.
• 3:21
  After the march became popular, lyrics were later added to its central melody in the patriotic British song, Land of Hope and Glory.
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  In The United Kingdom, many people still associate the peace with patriotism
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  and national pride
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  rather the graduation ceremonies.
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  But in America,
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  a song found an entirely new purpose.
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  And strangely enough, Yale University helped to make that happen.
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  In nineteen o five,
• 3:52
  Edward Elgar traveled to The United States after Yale had invited him to receive an honorary doctoral degree.
• 4:00
  During the commencement ceremony,
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  Pump and Circumstance was performed.
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  Apparently,
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  people immediately connected the music with the atmosphere
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  of graduation,
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  the dignity,
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  the ceremony,
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  the sense that something significant was happening.
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  Other universities then began adopting the song for their own commencements,
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  then high schools followed suit,
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  and eventually, the tradition spread across the country.
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  Now more than a century later,
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  generations of Americans hear those opening notes and immediately think of graduation day.
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  Not military marches,
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  Randy Black: not British nationalism,
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  not Shakespeare,
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  graduation.
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  That transformation, it fascinates me.
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  One culture,
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  the English, the British, heard patriotism.
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  Another,
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  Americans,
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  heard transition.
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  Same melody,
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  but completely different meaning.
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  And somehow over time, the the new meaning
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  became stronger
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  than the original one.
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  Randy Black: Most graduates today probably do not even know who Edward Elgar was.
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  They may not know the history of the composition.
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  They may not know the title of the song itself,
• 5:24
  but they still feel something when they hear it because music attaches itself to memory in ways almost nothing else can.
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  A song becomes linked to a moment so deeply that hearing it years later can instantly transport you back there,
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  back to the folding chairs,
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  back to the uncomfortable gowns,
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  back to the nervous anticipation,
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  back to the uncertainty
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  of what came next.
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  Randy Black: For some people, graduation represented an accomplishment.
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  For others,
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  relief,
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  and for others,
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  fear.
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  But almost everybody remembers the music.
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  Randy Black: And maybe that's why traditions survive,
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  not because everybody understands them, but because people continue attaching emotional meaning to them.
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  There's something powerful
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  about shared rituals.
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  Parents hear the same melody their children hear.
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  Grandparents recognize the song from decades earlier.
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  Different generations,
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  different experiences,
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  same moment.
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  In a culture that changes constantly,
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  traditions create continuity,
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  and maybe we need more of that than what we realize.
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  I sometimes wonder if
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  modern culture
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  undervalues ceremony.
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  Everything moves fast now. We rush from one moment to the next. We consume information
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  constantly.
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  We rarely slow down long enough to recognize when something actually matters,
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  but ceremony forces us to pause.
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  Graduation ceremonies
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  are not really about the diploma itself.
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  They're about acknowledging transition.
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  One chapter has ended
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  and another one is now beginning. And throughout human history, societies have marked major transitions with music, with rituals, with gatherings, and with symbolism.
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  And that's true across all cultures,
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  across centuries of time, across all civilizations.
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  So maybe
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  pomp and circumstance endured
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  because it communicates something
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  larger than words.
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  It sounds like importance.
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  It sounds like closure.
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  It sounds like stepping into something new.
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  Randy Black: And perhaps that is exactly why it became the soundtrack
• 7:46
  of graduations
• 7:48
  all across The United States.
• 7:51
  Randy Black: It turns out the song everybody knows has a history almost nobody does.
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  A British military march became an American educational tradition.
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  A patriotic composition
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  became the soundtrack for one of life's defining transitions.
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  And more than a century later,
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  the melody still carries emotional weight for millions of people every single year.
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  Not because most people know where it came from,
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  but because they remember
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  how it felt when they heard it.
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  Randy Black: And maybe,
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  just maybe,
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  that's the real power of music.
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  Randy Black: Thank you for listening to this episode of Randy Unscripted.
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  Randy Black: I'm Randy Black, and join me on the next one because you'll know that it'll be real talk,
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  real life,
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  and it will definitely be unscripted.