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Oh Say Can You Sing?
Once again, I fail to hit the right patriotic note
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/july42007.htm
7/4/07
During this past spring’s Stanley Cup, some of the games were hosted in
Ottawa, the Canadian capital. In the first game there, one of the American TV
announcers was openly amazed that when the national anthem for Canada played,
the crowd sang along.
It isn’t that Canadians are a hyper patriotic lot. They aren’t. By and large,
Canadians don’t go for flag waving and chants of “we’re number one!” and if they
stick a maple leaf on their suitcase or back packs, it’s not so much a statement
of national pride as it is a message to terrorists: “I’m not an American, so
please don’t shoot me.”
The only real element that makes a hockey game in Canada different from one in
Buffalo is that the national anthem can be sung by most people. As anthems go,
it’s not bad. That’s damning with faint praise since I lump anthems in with the
category of “military music” and I adhere to the old dictum that military music
is to music as military intelligence is to intelligence.
If you want to compare the Canadian national anthem to actual music, then it’s
safe to say that it sounds like a set of bagpipes, turn over by a truck and left
dying by the side of the road. But it’s singable. Or at least droneable.
The US anthem has that one note that only one in a thousand people can hit.
Beverly Sills (RIP) could have done it. So could have Tiny Tim. Running a plank
with a nail in it through a rotary saw works, as well. Nobody can sing it, and
it’s just as well. If fifty thousand people all hit that note at the same
instance, it may exceed what the architects and engineers had in mind for the
stadium, and catastrophe, or a major delay in play, might ensue.
Scotland has an official national anthem, “Scotland the Brave.” It has a
similarly impossible note at the end, and it’s probably no surprise that Scots
wrote both anthems. For such a dour lot, the Scots certainly love their music
melodramatic, and the Scottish national anthem tends to sound like the stock
listings read by a tenor for a Mozart opera. I have a copy of it, sung by one
James McCracken, and he successfully hits that final note, and I’m pretty sure
that when he does, his scrotum splits from one end to the other like an
overcooked hot dog.
At that, it beats the British anthem which feels a need to identify the monarch
by gender four times in the first sixteen words. By the time it’s done and the
football match begins, you’ve resolved to go home and smash all your Queen
records rather than have to ever hear the word again. Usually, but not always,
you can tell what gender the British monarch is. My theory is the words were
written by a court syncophant who saw a way to curry favor by playing off the
king’s feelings of inadequacy concerning gender identity. (Or in the case of
James I, “queen’s feelings of inadequacy...”)
Both the French and the Italians got it right. They have anthems that are
musically interesting, fun to listen to, and singable. The only trouble is that
both feature plots that would be right at home in a kick-boxing movie.
“Deutschland Über Alles” was a spritely, friendly little tune that perfectly
captured the German dream of visiting all their neighbors and turning them into
cat food.
Back in the 1980s, Los Angeles hit on the idea of having a “city song”. New
York, after all, had that Frank Sinatra song which fitted it perfectly and which
even people who didn’t like Frank Sinatra enjoyed. I forget what the song was
the LA city council finally picked. I heard it once and forgot it before the
next song even begun. I doubt twenty-five people in Los Angeles know what it is.
But there was a song that millions of Angelenos WANTED to represent their city:
Randy Newman’s “I Love LA”. It’s the unofficial song of Los Angeles, and it’s a
great match. (I would have voted for Jim Morrison’s “LA Woman”, which would have
appalled the politicians but which really caught the spirit of the place).
Joni Mitchell did a song when she was still a girl in the Canadian prairies
called “Urge for Going”. It features the lyrics, “Now the warriors of Winter,
they give a cold, triumphant shout. And all that stays is dying, all that lives
is getting out.” It’s a very Canadian song, one of her very best. Parliament
would never approve of it, but then, governments have a way of losing touch of
the things that connect the people to their lands. It’s why LA has a suck song
nobody remembers. It’s why most countries have execrable national anthems that
seem designed to deter patriotism.
The US didn’t have an official anthem until 1931, when fascism was on the rise
and suddenly things like national anthems and saluting the flag became popular.
(The original American salute to the flag consisted of lifting the right arm out
in front of the body at a 45 degree angle, fingers pointing straight and
together, thumb tucked alongside, a gesture made famous at Nuremburg). The Key
piece was just another patriotic song that drunken barbershop quartets sang at
Fourth of July picnics up until then.
Maybe countries should have contests every generation or two to select new
national anthems. It would be decided, not by the legislature or the monarch or
whatever, but by popular plebiscite. Yes, that could result in something truly
dreadful getting chosen and leaving an entire nation stuck with it for 25 years
or more (if they are willing to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the Liverpool
matches, then they won’t mind a new anthem by the recently resurrected Spice
Girls). It probably wouldn’t happen in America, though. A country that clings
desperately to inches, gallons and Fahrenheit isn’t going to go monkeying around
with something sacrosanct like the national anthem. They’ll keep the tiresome,
screeching drone of Francis Scott Key over an incredible library of music that
captures the spirit of America so much better.
What would my choice be? What really says, “America” to me?
I just happen to know a little ditty by a fellow named Woody Guthrie. It goes
something like this:
Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me
Chorus
I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me
Chorus
The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me
Chorus
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!
Chorus
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.
Chorus (2x)
©1956 (renewed 1984), 1958 (renewed 1986) and 1970 TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI) Fuck the corporations.
Now, be honest: doesn’t that beat the hell out of an archaic English drinking song about bombs bursting in air?