the "star spangled banner" revised

I wonder what the gold-medal athletes at the Olympic Games in Beijing are thinking as they hear their country's national anthem. Achievement, fatigue, energy, pride, unity, or reverence? Or do colors, smells, and memories of a more individual type flash through their minds?

And what of the audiences at home and in the arena? National Anthems at the Olympic games are paradoxical, in a sense, because while they unify one country - rallying around one shared song - anthems also aid in distinguishing country's from one another. In this microcosm of international athleticism, anthems identify communities, but bring unity within those communities.

Similarly, I think "The Star Spangled Banner" also has a great unifying effect, while being divisive as well.

Picture being at a baseball game (or any sporting game of your preference): whether it's a little-league game or the World Series, the anthem begins the game and upon hearing the anthem, the crowd shouts a final "amen" in the form of "play ball!" It's tradition and everyone rallies behind this song. At the end of the game we may curse the Cubs, or that kid that tripped our team's kid, but for one brief moment, when we rose for the national anthem, we were unified.

The national anthem is a powerful symbol because it stands for many more things than just the Olympics and baseball. For performers this matters not only because the national anthem symbolizes a greater unity, but it also reflects the political and musical biases of the performers.

Everything and nothing is personal about performing the national anthem. If you do it "well" and nobody is offended, then the anthem is applauded for. Sometimes the praise is directed at the performer, but typically people clap because they feel it's the right and respectful thing to do. I know this to be true: Once in high school, singing the anthem at a basketball game, I lost my nerve and repeated a line. Mind you, I did not loose track of the music, I just simply omitted a line to regain the text underlay. While everyone knew something had gone awry, not everyone knew where and what I did wrong; at the end of my humiliation people still applauded.

Some artists, however, daringly put their own personality, and sometimes politics, into their performances. Jimi Hendrix made the anthem truly personal by using his own guitar stylings at Woodstock, depicting the violence of war with the guitar distortion in "the rockets' red glare." Sometimes it's more about the musical than the political style, as it is with some of the diva-performances. Whitney Houston's soul style, Mariah Carry's octave leaps, or any number of American Idols who turn the anthem into yet another over-the-top audition piece.

How we react to these style, be they a capella choirs or stadium divas, is very telling about our own musical and political biases as well.

When Bush commented on a Spanish version of "The Star Spangled Banner," called "Nuestro Himno," he chastized it by saying "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English," (NY Times). This, as Bush knew, was about more than language, but was about protest and immigration laws. This version was to unify those participating in a national protest against stricter immigration laws in May of 2006. Not only were the revised lyrics in Spanish meant to unify, but the artists contributing and the musical style was meant to reflect Latin American pop music. What was unifying to many Hispanic-Americans, further divided left- and right-wing politicians.

A more recent example is Rene Marie's performance where she substitutes the traditional lyrics written by Francis Scott Key, for the lyrics of the black national anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."



This, to me, is the such personal musical and political expression through music. It is identity through musical style and lyrical choice. I hope that artists will continue to push the limits of self-expression, or even protest, or at least feel the freedom to do so. We may not agree with everyone's definition of patriotism, and that is a good thing, but we can respect (and maybe marvel at) an artist who dares to question such symbols through music.