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Just in time for the Fourth of July: PBS\u2019 \u201cBruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song\u201d airs on PBS stations July 5 at 6:30 p.m., but is now viewable online. You can watch it, embedded, below.<\/p>\n
The half-hour special includes an interview with Springsteen by \u201cPBS News Hour\u201d co-anchor and co-managing editor Geoff Bennett, as well as footage from the recent all-star \u201cMusic America: The Songs That Shaped Us\u201d<\/a> concerts at Monmouth University in West Long Branch. It also offers a detailed look at the university\u2019s Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music<\/a>, whose opening the concerts celebrated.<\/p>\n Bennett also interviews the Center\u2019s founding executive director, Bob Santelli; Springsteen\u2019s manager Jon Landau; and \u201cMusic America\u201d performers Ken Casey (of Dropkick Murphys) and Shemekia Copeland.<\/p>\n \u201cAnytime you get to share the stage with Bruce \u2026 if you get asked, you\u2019d better be there,\u201d says Casey.<\/p>\n The well-named \u201cFinding America in Song\u201d makes for particularly good viewing on the Fourth of July, as Springsteen talks about the state of the country, the purpose of his music, and his belief in \u201ccritical patriotism.\u201d He explains critical patriotism this way: \u201cYou love your country so much that you are willing to look at it clearly, recognize its faults, encourage it to be a better place, and believe that you carry in your heart the country that is waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point, Bennett asks, \u201cWhere do you see yourself fitting in that longer narrative, that longer arc of American music?\u201d<\/p>\n Springsteen responds: \u201cI\u2019m just a guy that came along at this particular moment, and was interested in writing about the times that I lived through, grew up in \u2014 my family\u2019s life, how that connected to America in the second half of the 20th century, during the post-industrialization of the country. I was interested in writing about those things just to try to figure them out myself.<\/p>\n \u201cI had my heroes, of course. Bob Dylan, I always called the father of my country, because he was the first guy that sort of showed me America with the veil pulled back, to where I really recognized the place I was living in. And I wanted to be an artist who encompassed their times, the times that they live in, and wrote about those things.\u201d<\/p>\n Here is the video:<\/p>\n _________________________________________<\/p>\n
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