Francis Scott Key just happened to be out there negotiating the release of a prisoner. It's not like the writing of this song was scripted out. "It's a strange thing how fate works sometimes. But you know what? They reacted the same way when Martin Luther King stood up and said, 'I am a man.' The anthem embodies the values of our culture at different times." Vince Vaise, National Park Service ranger at Fort McHenry My grandparents were probably floored when Jimi Hendrix pulled out an electric guitar and played it. They'll say, 'That's not the anthem.' But for me, the anthem is the message, not how you sing it. I've got family who get frustrated like that when they hear people singing it wildly. He became so sick and tired of hearing it, he forced the military to write an approved version.
It got to a boiling point in the second world war when the band leader Henry Fillmore came out with a new version that Franklin D Roosevelt went nuts about. Freedom of expression is very much alive in the song. You could hear 150 people singing it, and every one would do it differently. "The thing I love about the anthem is its individuality. Reading on mobile? Click here to view Jimi Hendrix video It's a hymn of, 'We've been saved! The fact I can see the flag means the fort has not been taken.' It's the ultimate statement of relief with a capital R, and that emotion gives the song a really strong appeal." Mike Bayes, senior chief musician, United States Navy Band, who has played the anthem for every president since Clinton It was more like, 'Oh my gosh, what am I witnessing?' So this is a hymn of redemption. He wasn't thinking, 'I'm going to write a hit and make a million bucks.' He was trapped on a boat watching the British bomb the last defensive post in his nation. "Francis Scott Key was a modest man, a church man, and so he wasn't looking to gain fame when he wrote this. David Hildebrand, director of the Colonial Music Institute and a man who has studied the song more than anyone else So how did it overcome its problems, and why does it still mean so much to so many Americans? We asked the people who should know best. But none of the complaints stuck and in 1931 it was officially adopted. This did not please some, especially temperance campaigners who pleaded with the government not to pick a drinking song for the anthem and several newspapers who ran editorials calling for a song people could actually sing. But people kept singing it, through the civil war and beyond, and, after the first world war, there started to be calls for the US to make it the national anthem. That choice should have sealed The Star Spangled Banner's fate – made it a song that was momentarily popular, then quickly faded from memory.
Overcome, he immediately wrote a song about that moment.įor some reason, he set it to the tune of a British drinking song – one with such a large vocal range you basically have to be drunk to sing it well. Key spent that night assuming his nation had lost its last line of defence, but once the smoke cleared, he saw the fort's flag flying high.
On 13 September, British ships started firing hundreds of rockets and mortars at Fort McHenry and did not stop until the next morning. He succeeded, but was then forced to stay on board and watch the British try to bomb the city's fort out of existence. The US was at war with Britain at the time, and a 35-year-old lawyer named Francis Scott Key was sent to a British ship outside Baltimore to negotiate a prisoner's release. This is a song originally of relief and of the little man holding his ground, and it has somehow risen from the least auspicious of beginnings to become one of the most important songs ever. When you know its history – or speak to the people who have been most affected by it – you get a different picture. Do you need better insight into the heart of the American soul?" he said.īut perhaps Gladwell himself needs some more insight into the song.
What does the star spangled banner song represent series#
The anthem is "a nasty piece of work", according to the Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell, who picked a bizarrely sexy Marvin Gaye rendition of it for Desert Island Discs, the long-running BBC Radio 4 series in which celebrities introduce the pieces of music that mean the most to them. And now, just weeks before its 200th birthday, it has also started attracting the ire of intellectuals. It has been labelled unsingable, campaigned against by the United States's own politicians, and booed across half the Middle East.
T he Star-Spangled Banner has taken many knocks in its time.
0 kommentar(er)
