MUSIC EPISODE: “You think you understand patriotism, you have your hands around it—it’s the simple thing, but it turns out it’s not. And maybe music and the history of music shows us all that better than mere discourse about it.”

Economist Tyler Cowen joins producer Rick Rubin on Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast for a conversation that treats patriotic feeling as something the history of composition reveals better than argument. The pairing fits: Cowen, a George Mason University economist who co-writes the Marginal Revolution blog and hosts Conversations with Tyler, has written extensively on the economics of art and culture, including the 1998 book In Praise of Commercial Culture, while Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and producer for artists ranging from the Beastie Boys to Johnny Cash, hosts Tetragrammaton as a long-form interview series.

The chapter list shows the scope—patriotism treated as a global and contested subject, not just ceremonial Americana:

0:00:00 Tyler Cowen

0:00:24 Intro: Patriotism in Music

0:03:09 John Philip Sousa & Stars and Stripes Forever

0:07:38 Country Joe & the Fish: The Anti-War Song

0:16:49 Andrews Sisters & Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

0:22:04 Liszt & Bartók: Hungarian Independence

0:36:29 Dvořák, Rossini & William Tell

0:47:24 Stockhausen, Percy Grainger & Sacred War

0:59:59 Trinidad, Congo & Brazil: Independence Songs

1:21:49 William Byrd & the Sex Pistols

1:28:00 Elgar, Charles Ives & Chuck Berry

The selections set the openly ceremonial—Sousa’s 1896 “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” the Andrews Sisters’ 1941 “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”—against songs of dissent, from Country Joe and the Fish’s Vietnam-era “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” to the Sex Pistols’ 1977 “God Save the Queen.” Classical nationalism runs through the Liszt and Bartók, Dvořák, and Rossini chapters—William Tell draws on the Swiss legend of resistance to outside rule—while the Trinidad, Congo and Brazil segment carries the theme to the Caribbean, Africa and South America. Stockhausen, Percy Grainger, William Byrd, Elgar, Charles Ives and Chuck Berry round out a track list that places Renaissance church music, concert music and rock in the same frame.

Listeners who want more of Cowen on music and culture can follow his Conversations with Tyler series and his writing on Marginal Revolution.

Here is one link to the podcast itself: here is another. Recorded in Tuscany, definitely recommended, all fresh material.