This year as America prepared for the fourth of July, I wasn't in the United States. I was in Greece with my father, pianist and writer Ben Sidran, after a month-long European tour.
As America celebrated its 250th birthday, we spent the day doing something that felt somehow appropriate: walking through the Acropolis and brushing up on the history of Athenian democracy.
What we were reminded of is that democracy isn't a monument. It isn't something that's built once and then simply preserved. Athens itself has lived under democracy, empire, monarchy, dictatorship and military rule. Democracy didn't simply begin there, it has repeatedly disappeared and been reinvented.
That got us thinking about America at 250. Fifty years ago, during the Bicentennial, Ben released an album called Free in America. Long before that, he'd gone to England to study what it meant to be American from the outside looking in. And after spending a lifetime making the case for jazz as one of America's greatest contributions to the world, I asked him what he thinks democracy really is.
You can hear my full Third Story Podcast conversation with Ben about jazz, democracy, Athens and Free In America here.
