Please America, over the last 10 days I’ve heard you sing all of your anthems, ATB, God Bless America, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, but why oh why are you not singing the Star Spangled Banner? Musically, and lyrically, that song rocks, and yet you aren’t singing it.
I’m sitting here right now watching " a League of their Own" - first time I’ve heard the SSB in it’s entirety since S11.
You are proud, you are strong, you are most certainly courageous - are you guys really going to let some asshole stop you from singing the SSB? Much as I realise that the lines regarding the rockets red flare and bombs bursting in air must be very painful right now, I ask you to consider the remainder of the words to your anthem - THE FLAG WAS STILL THERE.
Never, ever, has a nation in my lifetime needed so much to sing the words of their anthem loud and clear - if you’re all afraid that you will cry, then cry, the rest of us will be there for you with our voices and our shoulders. Let yourself sing and grieve America - us other democracies do have big enough shoulders to support you as you have supported us in the past.
Your flag is still there, you are still the land of the free and the home of the brave - if you guys aren’t going to honour and celebrate that then we’ll sure as shit do it here.
I still hate the fact t hat Willy Nelson made me cry, but I haate even more than for the first time I can recall my US friend are NOT singing the SSB at every opportunity.
I’m pretty sure that all of the victims and all of the rescue workers would want you to sing it…
“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.”
I think the reason that most people aren’t singing the anthem is that it is too hard for most of them… the lyrics are tricky, the vocal range is extreme, and if the key’s too high or too low, most folks can’t hit the extremes. I can do it without too much trouble, but then I love to sing (I actually sang the ‘Banner’ at work, because the co-workers were hassling me for a song - this was before the WTC, by the way).
On the 11th, I was actually thinking of going to the mall and doing a ‘drive by singing’ at the food court, but decided that would be a little much. Now I wish I had done it.
At TF Green airport in Providence, RI, passengers watched as workers unfurled a huge American Flag in the terminal. News cameras were there filming it, and one of the passengers watching happened to be an opera singer from Kansas (I think). Overcome with emotion and patriotism, he started belting out the Star Spangled Banner. The news camera panned around, and everyone there was standing silently, hand over their hearts, tears in their eyes.
He had an incredible, powerful voice, and he hit all the notes perfectly, even though his hand, over his own heart was visibly shaking.
When he was done, the whole place erupted in applause.
After they showed the film, they interviewed him. He broke down telling a story about a woman who came up to him after he sang, her face wet with tears, and told him how she’d cried many, many times in the past week. She told him that all the other times she cried it was from sadness, but this time it was different. This time, it was a good cry. And then she thanked him.
My husband and I took the kids for dinner the other night and in the restaurant, my youngest asked me about the words to the Star Spangled Banner. I started to explain about Key being in a ship–not being able to see through the smoke of battle and the darkness of night–not being able to see if the flag was still there. The words to the song are his questions–did we win? Is the flag there?
It was pretty hard, I’ll admit, getting through the story without losing it right there. And when my kids had a Day of Compassion at school, listening to 400 little kids sing the Star Spangled Banner–all dressed in red, white and blue–hands over their precious hearts, and small, passionate faces turned toward the flag–well. I love to sing and I love to sing patriotic songs, but my voice was gone. If I had tried to sing…I would have lost it. And not tears–sobs of grief, pride and hope all together. I didn’t want to scare anyone.
But I love that song.
That broke me up too, Apollyon, but it was so right and so fitting and so needed. Incidentally - did you see the service that the Aussie firefighters held here the other day for their fallen comrades where they all sand The Star Spangled Banner? Very moving stuff.
And while I understand the dynamics of the song in terms of range, there’s always been someone to sing it at superbowl - I don’t think anyone would give a damn tight now who sang it (RoseAnne excepted), we just need to hear it being sung.
Almost an aside here - but heck, I’m hijacking my own thread - has anyone thought that now might me a good time for the Liberty Bell to be rung again?
Apologies to the mods - just realised that I used a swear word in the OP in an inappropriate forum. Please edit if you feel you need to.
One of the lesser known stanzas has already been quoted. My personal favourite right now is :
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation
Blest with victory and peace may the heav’n rescued
land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us as
a nation*
