{"id":39138,"date":"2016-12-02T00:30:58","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T03:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=39138"},"modified":"2016-12-05T22:53:35","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T01:53:35","slug":"air-force-band-celebrates-christmas-flash-mobs-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/air-force-band-celebrates-christmas-flash-mobs-smithsonian\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Band Celebrates Christmas, Flash Mobs Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US Air Force Band continued its annual tradition of a &#8220;flash mob&#8221; performance of holiday songs. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/News\/ArticleDisplay\/tabid\/223\/Article\/1016666\/band-kicks-off-holiday-season-with-4th-annual-flash-mob.aspx\">This year<\/a> was less &#8220;flash&#8221; and more &#8220;mob,&#8221; given the use of prepositioned stages, but, in a refreshing surprise, the &#8220;holiday&#8221; songs clearly referred to the &#8220;holy&#8221; day:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gr4-akvoJuU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>This year\u2019s event featured two Christmas carols: \u201cPatapan,\u201d which the vocalists sang in French and English, and \u201cDing Dong Merrily on High,\u201d which is based on a French dance tune originally by Jehan Tabourot, with the text being written by English composer George Ratcliffe Woodward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From the two songs, which are clearly Christmas carols:\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;When the men of olden days, Gave the King of Kings their praise&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;Verily the sky<br \/>\nIs riv&#8217;n with angel singing<br \/>\nGloria, Hosanna in excelsis!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The AF Band was even joined by outgoing Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James in its second song.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;flash mob&#8221; USAF Band performances have been surprisingly popular.\u00a0 YouTube currently shows a bit more than 13,000 views in the day since the 2016 show was posted.\u00a0 The <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2014\/12\/04\/af-band-flash-mobs-smithsonian-with-christmas-songs-video\/\">2014<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2015\/12\/08\/us-air-force-band-military-bases-show-christmas-spirit\/\">2015<\/a> shows ultimately received more than 2 million views each, and the original (and best) <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2013\/12\/09\/af-band-flash-mobs-smithsonian-with-joy-to-the-world\/\">2013 video<\/a> has more than 200,000 views.<\/p>\n<p>Many people criticize the Air Force (and the other services) for even <em>having<\/em> a band, and making a flashy YouTube video probably isn&#8217;t high on the list of national defense priorities. Still, it&#8217;s interesting and entertaining to see, and people are clearly paying attention to it and &#8212; mostly &#8212; enjoying it.<\/p>\n<p>Two who <em>haven&#8217;t<\/em> quite enjoyed it have been Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein and his research assistant Chris Rodda. Weinstein actually emailed the Chief of Staff of the Air Force to complain about the Air Force Band&#8217;s 2013 performance &#8212; complete with ALL CAPS and random punctuation to accentuate his point. (Given that the Secretary of the Air Force was a <em>participant<\/em> this year, there&#8217;s no one left to whom he could complain&#8230;) Chris Rodda had a more academic critique, which basically boiled down to &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2014\/12\/18\/chris-rodda-criticizes-usaf-band-because-isis\/\">because ISIS<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, the Air Force ignored the heartless holiday critiques and the rest of the world enjoyed the joyous season.<\/p>\n<p>Somebody needs to send Mikey and Chris a box of chocolates.\u00a0 Maybe then they could have a Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-layout=\"standard\" data-size=\"small\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-share=\"true\" data-action=\"like\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Air Force Band continued its annual tradition of a &#8220;flash mob&#8221; performance of holiday songs. This year was less &#8220;flash&#8221; and more &#8220;mob,&#8221; given the use of prepositioned stages, but, in a refreshing surprise, the &#8220;holiday&#8221; songs clearly referred to the &#8220;holy&#8221; day: This year\u2019s event featured two Christmas carols: \u201cPatapan,\u201d which the vocalists sang in French and [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2983,134,4477,175,108,4303,4479,5982,5981,2569,4478,5980,85,2,5218,7,5979,17,10,171,2984],"class_list":["post-39138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-air-and-space-museum","tag-air-force","tag-band","tag-chris-rodda","tag-christmas","tag-deborah-lee-james","tag-flash-mob","tag-george-ratcliffe-woodward","tag-jehan-tabourot","tag-jesus-christ","tag-joy-to-the-world","tag-merrily-on-high","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-patapan","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-smithsonian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}