Pictured: Patriot Plaza. Photo by Dale Smith.

This year the country marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred and fifty years since a handful of people put their names to an idea, that we are all entitled to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It tells you something about who we hoped to be. Not just free, but fulfilled.

That pursuit is where the arts live. Free expression is not a footnote to the American experiment. It is the heart of it. And the arts are where free expression reaches its fullest voice. The arts have always been part of how this country has understood itself, and they belong to all of us. These are American values. Freedom of expression. The right to a voice. The idea, at our founding, that voices were supposed to matter. We can take pride in that.

I grew up in Bexley, Ohio, and every Fourth of July from the summer before eighth grade through high school, I marched in the town parade with the Bexley High School marching band. Five miles, all the way through town and back. I played trumpet the first couple of years, then moved to percussion, and as a section leader I never stopped playing. I’d keep the cadence going so everyone else could catch their breath. Five miles of drums. I’ve never seen a town honor the Fourth quite like Bexley did, and I’ve carried that feeling my whole life. Part of it was patriotism. Part of it was endurance. Most of it was the simple fact that the music is what made the day feel like something special.

That’s the thing about the arts and this country. They’ve been intertwined from the start.

Think about “Yankee Doodle.” It began across the ocean, and the British sang it to mock our ragged colonial troops. So, we took it, flipped it, and made it our own anthem of defiance. That is about as American a story as there is. and we have been doing it ever since. Jazz. Rock and Roll. Hip Hop. Abstract expressionism. Pop art. Forms that could only have grown here, each one making room for the next voice that needed to be heart. And here’s why that matters now. When I hear a Sousa march on a July afternoon, I feel hopeful. I feel optimistic about who we might still become. I know not everyone comes to this day feeling that way, and I understand why. But the arts have a way of holding all of it, the pride and the longing and the hope, and welcoming every bit of it into the room.

The Declaration was a remarkable start, and its spirit is the through line. It is what the arts protect and practice every day, the simple, radical idea that everyone gets to speak and be heard. The arts don't divide us. At their best, they are how a free people find each other.

This is also a good moment to tell you something you may not know about the Alliance. We partner with The Patterson Foundation to oversee tours at Patriot Plaza in Sarasota National Cemetery, one of the most moving examples I know of art doing exactly this work. Through commissioned art, Patriot Plaza honors those who have served this country, a tribute to the living and a remembrance of those we’ve lost. Service protects the freedoms and values we hold most dear, and the freedom to create, to express, to gather and make something together is among them. I find it fitting that we honor that service through art. If you’ve never walked through it, I’d encourage you to go. You can take a self-guided tour, and a virtual tour is available at sarasotaarts.org for anyone who wants to experience it from home.

So, this Fourth of July, as the country turns 250, I hope you’ll hear it the way I do. In the brass and the drumline, in a jazz standard, in a Sousa march drifting across a park. Two hundred fifty years in, and the music hasn’t stopped.

Neither have we.

Brian Hersh is the CEO of the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County. To learn more, visit sarasotaarts.org.

Pictured: Patriot Plaza. Photo by Dale Smith.