The Concert Washington Won’t Hear: When “A World United” Fell Silent at the World War I Memorial

On Thursday evening, August 27, there was supposed to be music on Pennsylvania Avenue. Not simply a concert, but an ambitious idea: performers and cultures gathering at Washington’s National World War I Memorial for A World United, an international program conceived around the belief that music can cross the boundaries that history so often records. The Doughboy Foundation described the planned evening as an international gathering of cultures brought together in a single sound. It was to be the August installment of the Foundation’s free Summer Concert Series, which uses music to travel from the battlefields of World War I through Broadway, ragtime, jazz and swing.

But when five o’clock arrives on August 27, there will be no concert. The Doughboy Foundation has canceled A World United, citing extensive road closures, traffic disruption and continuing cleanup following the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, held in downtown Washington on August 23. The Foundation concluded that it could not guarantee safe transit and access for performers, staff and guests. The disruption is understandable: the Freedom 250 transformed central Washington into an extraordinary urban racetrack for America’s 250th-anniversary celebrations, with IndyCars racing through a 1.7-mile circuit incorporating some of the capital’s most recognizable streets and landmarks.

The cancellation is disappointing. Yet it also exposes something unexpectedly moving about the place where the concert was supposed to happen, because the music will not entirely disappear. At exactly 5 p.m., as it does every day, a bugler will still sound Taps at the National World War I Memorial. The Doughboy Foundation has confirmed that the ceremony will proceed despite the concert’s cancellation. Twenty-four notes will replace an entire evening’s program. And suddenly, the absence of the concert becomes a story of its own.

The National World War I Memorial is relatively young by Washington standards. Congress redesignated Pershing Park as the national memorial in 2014, addressing the absence of a comprehensive World War I memorial in the capital. The site opened to the public in 2021 and was completed with the installation of its monumental centerpiece, sculptor Sabin Howard’s A Soldier’s Journey, in 2024. Stretching approximately 58 feet and comprising 38 figures, the sculpture follows an American soldier from his departure from his wife and daughter through the violence of combat and finally home again. It is both an individual story and a larger metaphor for a young nation transformed by its entry onto the world stage.

That human emphasis helps explain why music belongs here. World War I was not experienced only through military strategy and casualty figures; it had a soundtrack. Soldiers marched to music, sang in the trenches and carried popular songs across the Atlantic. Ragtime and early jazz traveled with American servicemen into Europe. One of the most consequential figures in that story was James Reese Europe, the celebrated Black bandleader who served with the 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters, and helped introduce French audiences to a distinctly American musical vocabulary. The Doughboy Foundation’s Summer Concert Series builds upon that cultural history, treating the memorial not simply as a place to read inscriptions but as a living space where music can reconnect contemporary audiences with the people and culture of the era.

Perhaps the most powerful musical tradition at the memorial is also the simplest. Daily Taps began in 2021, and every day at 5 p.m. Eastern, a live bugler sounds the familiar 24-note call in honor of American service members and those who died in the conflict once called “the war that changed the world.” The Doughboy Foundation says the National World War I Memorial is the only location in the United States where Taps is sounded live every day as an ongoing tribute. The tradition was inspired in part by remembrance rituals abroad, including the nightly sounding of the Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium. More than a century after Americans crossed the Atlantic to fight in Europe, a Washington ritual of remembrance draws inspiration from a European one. It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of memory traveling between cultures.

The August cancellation therefore creates an intriguing contrast. A World United was designed as a large international expression of connection. Daily Taps achieves something similar with almost nothing: one musician, one instrument, 24 notes and a few minutes of attention. There is also another opportunity ahead. On September 18, the Doughboy Foundation is scheduled to return to the memorial for the finale of its Summer Concert Series, From Ragtime to Swing, America Finds its Rhythm. The free program will honor the legacy of James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters while exploring the evolution of jazz and community dance. Daily Taps will sound at 5 p.m., followed by the concert.

That may ultimately be the more compelling reason for FQM to tell this story. Washington is filled with monuments designed to resist time: stone, bronze, inscriptions and names. Yet remembrance does not survive through architecture alone. It survives because people continue to activate those places; through ceremonies, stories, music and the simple decision to return. On August 27, the chairs will not fill for A World United. The musicians assembled for the international celebration will not perform. A program conceived around many cultures and many sounds will have fallen unexpectedly silent.

But at five o’clock, someone will still lift a bugle. And across a memorial built for a generation that lived through one of history’s most devastating wars, 24 notes will do the work an entire concert was supposed to do: ask a city to stop, listen and remember.

Sources:

Doughboy Foundation — A World United cancellation notice

Doughboy Foundation — Daily Taps Program

National Park Service — National World War I Memorial

National Park Service — A Soldier’s Journey

Doughboy Foundation — From Ragtime to Swing, America Finds its RhythmDoughboy Foundation — Daily Taps history