The Song Everyone Knows

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Randy Black:
Within seconds, you already know the song, but chances are you’ve never stopped

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Randy Black:
to ask why this became the soundtrack of graduations.

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Randy Black:
Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black.

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Randy Black:
Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. He’s a troublemaker.

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Randy Black:
Welcome back to Randy Unscripted. And I’m Randy Black, and this is the podcast

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Randy Black:
where I talk about whatever just happens to come across my brain whenever it

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just happens to come across it.

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And today, in the midst of graduation season all across the United States,

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there’s something that popped out to me that I really just wanted to talk about.

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You know the melody instantly, even if you don’t know its name.

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It plays in packed gymnasiums, crowded auditoriums, and football stadiums all

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across America every single year.

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And within moments, everybody recognizes it.

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Randy Black:
Within seconds, you already know the song, but chances are you’ve never stopped

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Randy Black:
to ask why this became the soundtrack of graduations.

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Why this song? Why this melody?

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How did a British military march

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become one of the most recognizable traditions in American education?

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Today, we’re talking about pomp and circumstance, the song everyone knows.

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The story begins in England in 1901.

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The composer behind the music was Sir Edward Elgar, one of Britain’s most respected composers.

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He wrote what became known as Pomp and Circumstance March No.

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1 as part of a larger collection of ceremonial marches.

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Originally, this had absolutely nothing to do with graduation ceremonies.

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This was military music. Grand.

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Formal. Patriotic. The kind of composition designed to command attention the

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moment it entered a room.

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And honestly, man, it still does exactly that today.

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Even people who know nothing about

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classical music instantly recognize the feeling that this song creates.

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It sounds important because it was written to sound important.

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The title itself came from Shakespeare’s Othello.

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The phrase pomp and circumstance refers to the ceremony and the grandeur surrounding military life.

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But the melody we recognize most today almost took on a completely different identity.

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After the march became popular, lyrics were later added to its central melody

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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, rather the graduation ceremonies.

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But in America, the song found an entirely new purpose.

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Strangely enough, Yale University helped to make that happen.

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In 1905, Edward Elgater traveled to the United States after Yale had invited

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him to receive an honorary doctoral degree.

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During the commencement ceremony, pump and circumstance was performed.

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Apparently, people immediately connected the music with the atmosphere of graduation,

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the dignity, the ceremony, 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, and eventually the tradition spread across the country.

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Now, more than a century later, generations of Americans hear those opening

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notes and immediately think of graduation day.

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Not military marches not british

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nationalism not shakespeare graduation

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that transformation it

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fascinates me one culture the

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english the british heard patriotism another americans heard transition same

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melody but completely different meaning and somehow over time that the new meaning

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became stronger than the original one.

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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. But they still feel something when they hear it.

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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

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instantly transport you back there.

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Back to the folding chairs. Back to the uncomfortable gowns.

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Back to the nervous anticipation.

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Back to the uncertainty of what came next.

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For some people, graduation represented an accomplishment. For others, relief.

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And for others, fear.

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But almost everybody remembers the music.

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And maybe that’s why traditions survive. Not because everybody understands them,

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but because people continue attaching emotional meaning to them.

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There’s something powerful about shared rituals.

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Parents hear the same melody their children hear. Grandparents recognize the

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song from decades earlier.

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Different generations, different experiences, same moment.

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In a culture that changes constantly, 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 modern culture undervalues ceremony.

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Everything moves fast now. We rush from one moment to the next.

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We consume information 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 are not really about the diploma itself.

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They’re about acknowledging transition. One chapter has ended.

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And another one is now beginning. And throughout human history,

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societies have marked major transitions with music, with rituals,

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with gatherings, and with symbolism.

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And that’s true across all cultures, across centuries of time,

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across all civilizations.

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So maybe, pomp and circumstance endured because it communicates something larger than words.

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It sounds like importance. It sounds like closure. It sounds like stepping into something new.

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And perhaps that is exactly why it became the soundtrack of graduations all

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across the United States.

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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 became the soundtrack for one of life’s defining transitions.

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And more than a century later, the melody still carries emotional weight for

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millions of people every single year.

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Not because most people know where it came from, but because they remember how

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it felt when they heard it.

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And maybe, just maybe, 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

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be real talk, real life, and it will definitely be unscripted.