The National Anthem

[Fischkoepfin 1]

April 12, 2006

Talking Points

The Star-Strangled Banner

By LAWRENCE DOWNES

Unless you think about it for a while, which not a lot of people do, "The Star-Spangled Banner" does not appear to be a problem. It's a serviceable national anthem. It does the job, which is to say it gets baseball games moving and provides a suitable audio backdrop for Olympic medal ceremonies and for TV channels signing off in the wee small hours of the morning.

Given its circumscribed ceremonial function, and the general shortage of non-sports public gatherings these days, "The Star-Spangled Banner" doesn't get around the way it used to. When it does, it is tolerated – halfheartedly sung or mumbled, or simply sat through. A recent Harris poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans don't even know the words. Prompted with phrases like "whose broad stripes and bright stars" and "were so gallantly streaming," and asked to supply the next line, people were more likely than not to mangle their order or to come up with nothing at all.

With a situation like that, it's hardly surprising that the song seems to have lost the ability to stir within many Americans feelings of patriotic grandeur or civic purpose.

This is not always true, of course. Naturalization ceremonies are an obvious exception. At events like these, the anthem rises to match the emotional heights of the moment. An immigrant's love of America naturally expresses itself in a heartfelt attachment to its symbols, "The Star-Spangled Banner" included. I don't know of any polls on the matter, but it seems safe to say that naturalized citizens are more likely than the native-born not only to know the song, but also to like it enough to want to keep singing to the last lines, rather than to start yelling "Woooooo!" through its closing couplet in their impatience for the home team to take the field.

The enthusiasm of new Americans for the national anthem only underscores the indifference and ignorance of the rest of us. This gap between what the anthem could be and what it is has prompted the National Association for Music Education, a teachers' group, to create The National Anthem Project to try to reinvigorate "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The project's organizers and supporters fear that the decline of music education is to blame. They have begun a campaign to promote the song in schools, and have forged a diverse alliance to rally the nation to the cause, including First Lady Laura Bush, the honorary chairwoman; Julie Love Templeton, Mrs. America 2005; Jeep vehicles; the Kansas City Royals; the Oak Ridge Boys; Florence Henderson, and the mighty Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

There is, however, another point of view: Some of us feel that the current national anthem is not worth saving.

I. Our Problematic National Anthem

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is a song nobody can sing, commemorating an event nobody cares about, in a war nobody remembers. It should never have become our national anthem, but since it did, we appear to be stuck with it, at least until something better comes along.

No, wait. Check that. Something better has come along. Something better is always coming along, in every decade since a punchy, sleep-deprived Francis Scott Key scribbled his fretful ode to battlefield anxiety in 1814, then grafted to it the melody of a well-known ditty of the day. Whether it's "Camptown Races" or "Minnie the Moocher" or "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," there has never been a shortage of songs making more credible claims on the affections of Americans, or burrowing more deeply into the American memory bank. In every era and genre, there have always been songs to inspire Americans to heights of soul-stirred emotion. Some you can even dance to. A few would even work as national anthems.

But inertia and nostalgia being what they are, "The Star-Spangled Banner" has become an impregnable monument. Like Mount Rushmore , it seems like something that has been around forever, rather than a relatively recent concoction. Congress officially declared it the national anthem only in 1931. Whether at baseball games or the Olympics or Nascar events, it seems there will always be enough people who like the song enough to make sure that suggestions to replace, abolish or improve it come to nothing. Screeds against it, like this one, can always be dismissed as the rantings of unpatriotic wingnuts, or people simply unwilling to get with the program.

Of course, devotees of "The Star-Spangled Banner" have a different problem. They are always in danger of becoming outnumbered by the swelling ranks of Americans who have forgotten the words or grew up not knowing them — nor caring.

I do not want to fault the National Anthem Project, a group of devoted teachers undertaking a difficult and noble task. But I fear they are trying to rescue the wrong song. Nobody should have to work so hard to salvage a song with so many manifest flaws.

II. "Star-Spangled Banner": Many Wrong Notes

Flaws? Let's see.

1. It's ponderous and bombastic, emphasis on "bomb."

Francis Scott Key, a lawyer, should have stuck with his day job. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is not a poetic atrocity on the scale of, say, "A Visit From St. Nicholas," by Clement C. Moore, with its rhymey-dimey ineptitude and cloying bourgeois smugness. But it is, shall we say, just a little bit thick. It recalls a moment of intense emotion — the gasp of relief when, Key, after a dreadful night spent watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry as a prisoner on the British side, sees the American flag still flying at dawn, and realizes that things weren't as bad as he thought.

If that's the case, as an editor might say, why doesn't he just say so? The song's turgid lyrics and somnolent pace almost beg people to misplace phrases and commit mondegreens — mishearings or misinterpretations of misunderstood words — and lose grasp of what Key was trying to convey. Ramona Quimby, the precocious grade-schooler created by the author Beverly Cleary, stood in for many of us when she mistook the "dawn's early light" for the "dawnzer lee light," whatever that could be, earning the ridicule of her sister, Beezus, but the sympathy of generations of young readers.

2. It's unsingable.

From the first "O, say" to the "rockets' red glare" to that last vocal hump that takes you from the land of the free to the home of the brave, "The Star-Spangled Banner" forces amateur throats through more peaks and valleys than the Tour de France.

There is an odd suspense in hearing the song performed publicly — in waiting to see if the singer will hit the song's high notes, or embarrass himself trying. In "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, an African-American character named Belize suggests that the difficulty was part of the composer's plan. "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing," Belize insists. "He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it."

Garrison Keillor for years has suggested singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in what he calls "the people's key," G major, instead of the customary A flat. It's a good idea, but like most good ideas having to do with this misbegotten song, it hasn't caught on.

3. People who do sing it invariably ruin it.

The "Code for the National Anthem of the United States," adopted in 1942, stipulates some basic rules about the singing of the anthem that are very conservative – and quite sensible, especially if you've ever heard Aaron Neville or Roseanne Barr do their versions.

"When the national anthem is sung unaccompanied," it says, "care should be taken to establish the correct pitch." It continues: "The slighting of note values in the playing or singing of the National Anthem will seriously impair the beauty and effectiveness of both the music and lyric." Which is to say: Jimi Hendrix had an interesting version, but he was unusual, and it takes way too long too kick off a baseball game, if you could even find a guitarist to play it as well as he did.

4. It uses a melody from a song sung by an old, debauched fraternity of snobby Englishmen.

It may have been Key's brother-in-law, Judge J.H. Nicholson, who recognized that the poem could be sung. (Key himself, according to numerous sources, was hopelessly tone-deaf, and couldn't tell one note from another). The melody was cribbed from "To Anacreon in Heaven," by John Stafford Smith.

That song was sung by the Anacreontic Society, a sort of 18th-century Raccoon Lodge, a fellowship of society gentlemen dedicated to living it up the way Anacreon did (he was, of course, "the renown'd convivial Bard of ancient Greece, as distinguished for the delicacy of his wit, as he is for the easy, elegant and natural turn of his poesy," as one account put it, which is reason enough to turn me against the whole thing.) This meant lots of drinking and bawdy songs, but no women.

The group survives to this day, sort of, in an ironic (I think) organization called the Sons of Anacreon, a group of guys who like to wear top hats and plaid and other anachronistic garb while drinking and performing old British songs.

III. The Case for (and Against) "God Bless America"

Not every country has America's problem. A survey of anthems of the world – the melodies at least, as played by the United States Navy Band – suggests that many nations have cooler anthems than we do, even when played by the standard military brass and snare drums. Aruba's anthem, for instance, sounds something like "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain."

Over the years, there have been numerous suggestions for songs that could replace "The Star-Spangled Banner." My suggestion, since I have a weakness for American popular songs, and a sentimental attachment to immigrant success stories, is "God Bless America," which was written by Irving Berlin, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, as a paean to the land that welcomed him.

Unlike "The Star-Spangled Banner," which sounds best when accompanied by the clamor of military brass and snare drums, "God Bless America" sounds best when it is sung — by regular people or Kate Smith or children or boy scouts. It's a humble song, patriotic without being jingoistic, universally known, and — best of all — short and simple.

There is precedent for a pop tune becoming an unofficial, goosepimply embodiment of national pride. Think of "Edelweiss." When the Austrians in "The Sound of Music" wanted to get under the skin of the Nazis, they didn't turn to Schubert, Strauss or Schoenberg, but to Rodgers and Hammerstein (You didn't think "Edelweiss" was really Austrian, did you? Lots of tourists in Salzburg do.) And a few years ago, Lazlo Toth, the earnest immigrant alter ego of the comedian Don Novello, proposed to the leaders of the newly independent Baltic states to adopt his newly written national anthems, set to tunes by Neil Diamond ("I Am Moldova, I Said"). I don't think he got a response.

There are two obvious objections to "God Bless America," of course: the first two words of the song, "God" and "bless." I'll admit this is a problem, although I feel sure that only the twitchiest atheists would object to the nonsectarian deity that "God Bless America" — and "In God We Trust," for that matter — evokes. The song is literally a prayer, but it's far gentler than one a crazed theocrat might concoct.

The God objection is, in any case, far outweighed by the song's many strengths, starting with the affection so many Americans have for it. It has been a powerful rallying point for the nation — during World War II, and again more recently. Remember the evening of Sept. 11, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania were full smoke and ashes and the members of Congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol? In their numbness and grief, they spontaneously sang a song.

It wasn't "The Star-Spangled Banner."

A campaign to replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" with "God Bless America" — or any other song — will never succeed, of course. Forging a national consensus on the merits of a work of art would be all but impossible in a democracy as populous and turbulent as ours. Countless Americans consider "Achy-Breaky Heart" a country classic. Countless others think it's one of the most stupid-wupid songs ever.

But it's still fun to consider the anthemic possibilities. What works for you: "America the Beautiful"? "This Land Is Your Land"? "God Bless the U.S.A."? The status quo? Your suggestions -- with your reasoning -- are eagerly invited.

Lela Moore contributed research for this article.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Source

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

It's a crappy song. But it's 'our' crappy song.

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Yup, I agree once you have a national anthem, it's hard to change it. And I don't mind the American anthem anymore than other anthems.

I do think though the article offers some interesting thoughts as to what the national anthem is, why it is the anthem, and as to the role of the anthem in public life. And then there's of course the question why the National Association of Music Education has an interest in reviving the anthem for the general public. Why not Congress?

[I'm Gone 60]

It's a crappy song. But it's 'our' crappy song.

Exactly, it's not American Idol, it's the freakin National Anthem, so what if it's hard to sing.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Maybe we should have a rotating national anthem. One year it can be country, next year it can be rap, followed by a year of reggeaton.

I'm not being serious, btw.

[I'm Gone 60]

Way things are going it will be "Mexicanos, al grito de guerra" in about 50 to 75 years.

[Jenn! 918]

I personally love the national anthem. Its difficulty is what makes it so much fun!

Edited April 18, 2006 by jenn3539

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Way things are going it will be "Mexicanos, al grito de guerra" in about 50 to 75 years.

No, it'll get Americanized a little bit.

Yo quiero Taco Bell!

Edit: That was a joke, btw. Please no one quit over my Taco Bell joke.

Edited April 18, 2006 by Agent Smith

[Fuzzness 2]

I've always known the words. I don't see whats so hard about it. and i'm not even american

[Kajikit 65]

It's totally unsingable! I think they should have made America the Beautiful the national anthem instead - it's much more singable and it's about how lovely the country is, not about some stupid war!

[Jenn! 918]

I think it's a beautiful melody.

[Mand 1]

I've always liked the American national anthem...but I hate how people like Jessica Simpson butcher it with their warbling attempt at singing nonsense!!

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I've always known the words. I don't see whats so hard about it. and i'm not even american

And I know that O'Canada is not sung to the tune of O'Christmas Tree.

[almaty 19]

i like the star spangled banner...

[pax 0]

People do ruin the National Anthem. Any national anthem of any country should be sung mindful of the fact that the singer is far less important than the event and the subject matter of the song.

I have to say, sadly, that as far as I can tell, this is an American problem. The Jessica Simpsons and thousands of wannabes at baseball games and the like all over the country think that a heartfelt rendition of the National Anthem involves mangling the melody with trills, runs, and grace notes so over-the-top that it becomes unrecognizable. It's not only grating, it's disrespectful. The National Anthem--again, any national anthem--is not meant to be a runup to American Idol. It's a pet peeve of mine. It should be sung in a simple, straightforward manner that reflects an attention to the way the song was composed.