Although “This Land is Your Land” is such an American musical icon that it does not need an introduction, I believe sharing some of its history helps to explain why it was chosen to provide a rousing finish to American Pageant, in which the cast and the audience joined in its singing. “This Land is Your Land” was written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. He wrote it in 1940 in critical response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”. The melody is based on a Carter Family tune called “When the World’s on Fire.” When Guthrie tired of hearing Kate Smith sing “God Bless America” on the radio, he sarcastically called his song “God Blessed America for Me” before renaming it “This Land Is Your Land”. (I note at this point that American Pageant does not share Guthrie’s critical view of “God Bless America,” but I nonetheless am sharing the fact of his viewpoint because honesty about history is a value central to American Pageant.) Guthrie was a fervent Isolationist when he wrote “This Land is Your Land,” and once he finished it he put it aside and did nothing with it—not so much as a single performance!-until 1944, by which time Guthrie’s view of American involvement in the Second World War had dramatically changed. Thus began the journey of “This Land is Your Land,” from just another folk tune by a well-known American folk singer to its status today as one of the great songs about America. In 1989, a 1947 release on the Asch record label was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2002, “This Land Is Your Land” was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2021, it was listed at No. 229 on Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Here are two of the song’s verses, and I bet just about everyone who was in the audience for the January 20 performance had sung each of them, and more than once!