Yesterday I was on my walk, and I was listening to a podcast. I had the volume on a bit louder because of the traffic noise and the occasional ambulance going to Cedars-Sinai. I was heading east and had just finished walking along the southern perimeter of Pan Pacific Park. As I approached the corner of Gardner Avenue, I heard music slip into my podcast. I stopped because the music was familiar. It was only a few bars, but I knew right away it was Aaron Copland. I love Copland, and in the same way a mother can hear her child’s voice in a crowded room, I can hear Aaron Copland even on a noisy street. I took out my earpieces and listened. It was unmistakable. It was Fanfare for the Common Man.
I love the piece. When I feel the need for big awe, I play that song. I looked around, wondering which car was playing Copland loud enough to cut through the afternoon traffic. No car was responsible. It was coming out of 7-11.
This should not have been a surprise. Many 7-11s and other convenience stores have been blasting classical music into their parking lots for years. It is their view, along with many transit authorities, that classical music deters loitering. One day I was in Hollywood at a stoplight and some kind of German opera was blasting from a convenience store. That green light did not come fast enough for me. There is controversy around this practice and whether it is, in effect, targeting people based on race and class. For me I think of musicians who began as children with endless violin, cello, and flute lessons, who eventually end up in the LA Phil, then walk into a 7-11 and hear one of their beloved pieces blasting in a parking lot so teens, people with substance issues, and the unhoused do not gather at the door. For those who love classical music it must cause a cognitive dissonance.
I certainly had a moment on the corner seeing it all and hearing Copland. Last month, on a trip to Arizona, driving through Monument Valley, my husband and I played four pieces of Copland: El Salón México, Fanfare for the Common Man, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring.
He is the composer for North America. In the 1930s, after spending time in Mexico, Copland wrote El Salón México, built from Mexican folk melodies. Rodeo came after he was approached by Agnes de Mille to write for a ballet about a cowgirl. Appalachian Spring was another ballet, with Martha Graham, about a young American couple on the prairie. These musical pieces are cinematic, wide in perspective, big. But of all of them, Fanfare for the Common Man is arguably the biggest and boldest.
In 1942, the United States had just entered World War II. Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conductor Eugene Goossens had the idea to commission short fanfare pieces from American composers to open concerts during the war. He wanted to honor people contributing to the war effort. Goossens suggested titles like Fanfare for Soldiers and Fanfare for Heroes. Copland had another idea: Fanfare for the Common Man, meaning factory workers, soldiers, laborers, and everyday citizens. Everyone was part of the fight. It was quintessential music reflecting American idealism from the son of immigrants; Copland’s family having come from Lithuania.
That music now was blasting while I was looking at a young man, unshaven, no shirt, unkempt hair and dirty pants, waiting for someone to give him something, was it food, money? I am unclear. Another man was asleep at the edge of the line, his body perfectly aligned in the thinning shade of the billboard poles, where a sinister figure holding a needle from a TV show loomed above.
This is Aaron Copland’s fanfare in 2026.
Is a ballet being commissioned for this scene on the corner of Gardner and Third? In the land that once was Mexico, with rodeos and folk dances, and later the land of Americans and their dairy farms that turn into oil wells that fuel a war and finally end up as a park and a 7-11.
All of that history, and all of this present, held in the same frame. Aaron Copland’s 7-11.
Here is the music:
Rancho Land 