The Vibrant Channeled Creator

Today is the birthday of the “March King,” John Philip Sousa, born in Washington, D.C., in 1854. He began studying music when he was six, and over the course of his life he studied voice, violin, flute, piano, trombone, cornet, baritone, and alto horn, as well as composition. When he was 13, he tried to run away from home and join a circus band, prompting his father to enlist him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice musician. He published his first composition in 1872, at the age of 18, and was conducting a Broadway orchestra — for Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore — by the time he was 21. He went back to the Marine Band in 1880, this time as its leader, a position he held for 12 years. During his tenure, he composed “Semper Fidelis,” which became the official march of the United States Marine Corps.After he retired from the Marines, he formed his own concert band; they were the first American band to go on a world tour, and they even had their own baseball team. He was a strict perfectionist: Everything they played was note perfect and was accorded the same respect, whether it was a classical piece or a pop tune. During World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve and led their band; by this time he was a wealthy man, so he donated his naval salary to the Sailors’ and Marines’ Relief Fund.He composed many kinds of music, including suites, fantasies, humoresques, and dances; he even composed several university fight songs, operettas, and other vocal pieces. It’s his marches that he’s remembered for, though. On Christmas Day, 1896, he composed one of his best beloved marches, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” It was named the official march of the United States by an act of Congress. In addition to his skills as a composer and conductor, he was also a fine marksman, and is enshrined in the Trapshooting Hall of Fame. His Hall of Fame biography includes the following quote: “Let me say that just about the sweetest music to me is when I call, ‘pull,’ the old gun barks, and the referee in perfect key announces, ‘dead’.” He wrote several articles about trapshooting; he also wrote a full-length autobiography and three novels.He was not a fan of the new recording industry and all its technology, and spoke adamantly against it at a Congressional hearing in 1906: “When I was a boy … in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.”He was a hard worker, devoutly religious, and known far and wide for his personal integrity. He often said, “When you hear of Sousa retiring, you will hear of Sousa dead!” and his words were prophetic: He died suddenly of a heart attack following a rehearsal in 1932.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2022

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2022
“Let us beware of narcissism and exhibitionism, based on vainglory, that lead even us Christians always to have the word “I” on our lips: “I have done this, I said it, I understood it”… Where there is too much “I”, there is too little God.” 
Pope Francis