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Our National Anthems

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from: Alfred Gingold
to: Timothy Noah and Erik Tarloff

Posted Monday, Oct. 1, 2001, at 9:30 PM ET

Alfred Gingold has written eight books, Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column, Erik Tarloff is a novelist and Slate bookclubber, and Josh Daniel is Slate's managing editor. This week they weigh the merits of our patriotic greatest hits.

Ich Bin Ein (Irving) Berliner

It's been widely noted (in the New York Times and on NPR, among other venues) that "God Bless America" has, in the weeks since the terror attacks, become the people's patriotic song of choice. There's even talk of it being made the official national anthem. At ballgames and vigils, assemblies of all sorts, it outstrips in popularity the hard-to-sing "Star-Spangled Banner," the tuneful but lugubrious "America the Beautiful," and the folksy, refreshingly deity-free "This Land Is Your Land." "My Country Tis of Thee," with its archaic language (that "Tis" just pops right out) and borrowed melody, is nowhere to be heard. Neither is the bellicose "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was the song of the hour after JFK's assassination.

Less noted is the fact that, with the "GBA" revival, Irving Berlin achieves a unique hat trick: He is the composer of the nation's most popular Christmas, Easter, and patriotic songs. Why does "GBA," a song that was considered embarrassingly jingoistic in the '60s, when "This Land Is Your Land" began its conquest of grade-school music classes, work so well right now?

First of all, it works because Berlin had a genius for creating songs that are easy to sing, easy to remember, and applicable to just about everybody. The enduring popularity of "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade" is due at least in part to their secularism; they are all warm and cuddly sentiment, no Jesus, crosses, not even a manger in sight. In "GBA," however, the supreme being is front and center in the title. But just as you needn't be Christian to enjoy "WC" or "EP," you don't need to believe in God to appreciate "GBA." Berlin's is the nondenominational, civic god, the one in whom, our currency says, we trust. When someone sneezes, even an atheist says, "God bless you."

Secondly, while "The Star-Spangled Banner" describes a situation not unlike the present one—American courage and sacrifice shining through a terrible time of "bombs bursting in air"—"God Bless America" speaks to how we feel now. Its tone is benign, not militaristic, and unusually personal for a patriotic song ("Land that I love," "My home sweet home," not "we" and "our"). It reflects a desire for help and comfort in a time of uncertainty and fear. The song's first round of popularity came in 1938, when there was also a lot to worry about. Berlin had written it for a show 20 years earlier, but it was deemed wrong for the show—and, presumably, the times—and was cut.

Also, intimate though it is, "GBA" passes what I call the Casablanca challenge. Remember the scene when Conrad Veidt and the Nazis start singing and Paul Henreid and the French drown them out with "The Marsellaise"? Now imagine that the French are Americans and they respond to the Krauts with … "This Land Is Your Land"? Forget it, too rambling and folksy, not to mention those lyrics about people on relief and the no trespassing sign. Dissent in an anthem? I don't think so. "The SSB" would work, but unless you've got pipes like Aretha's, there's a tendency to quaver in the upper reaches of the rockets red glare, which is also when people get a little fuzzy about the words too. "America the Beautiful" has the right feel, but the best-known lyrics are just about scenery and the more obscure are awfully religious, as in: "America, America, God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm the soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!" But "God Bless America" would be just right in Rick's Cafe. It's stirring, humane, uplifting—in short, anthemic.

But should it be our national anthem? I side with Irv on this, who felt there was only one national anthem and that you don't just change it because you prefer another song. Besides, how do you go about changing anthems? Is it a matter of law? Would a referendum or amendment be required? Aren't there more important things for our pols to do?

Besides, I like having an anthem that's hard to sing and almost as hard to learn. Trying to memorize those convoluted lyrics is a rite of American childhood, and hearing assorted celebs attempt its lofty reaches is a curious pleasure that also tells you something about the performer. Roseanne embarrassed herself a few years back when she muffed the words, screeched the high notes, and flipped the bird at a stadium-full of fans; she's a jerk. On the other hand, class-act Marc Anthony sang it beautifully last week at Shea. It's the only anthem we've ever had, so proudly we should hail it.

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from: Alfred Gingold
to: Timothy Noah and Erik Tarloff

Posted Monday, Oct. 1, 2001, at 9:30 PM ET
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Alfred Gingold has written eight books, Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column, Erik Tarloff is a novelist and Slate Book Clubber, and Josh Daniel is Slate's managing editor. This week they weigh the merits of our patriotic greatest hits.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: Joseph Britt also commented on Erik Tarloff's remarks on the Fray; in fact Mr Tarloff is a very experienced Fray-watcher--see also BML's post here. BML also introduced the tangential but deeply fascinating topic of songs about states, here, while Urquhart revealed that Tennessee has six official state songs.]


Has it occurred to anyone else that Americans tend to regard singing the way our colonial ancestors regarded combat--as something anyone can do without any training or discipline, based on their natural ability? I think of this every time I hear someone moaning about how hard "The Star-Spangled Banner" (or, for that matter, "O Holy Night") is to sing. It's certainly a challenge, but challenges can be mastered by most people with a little practice and the right technique.

It goes back to the lamentable low standard of musical education in the public schools, a product of the soft bigotry of low musical expectations. It may be that currently popular music that is designed only to be danced to, not sung along with, bears some responsibility also. Thankfully no one has suggested we ought to have a national anthem we can dance to, not even in The Fray.

--Joseph Britt

(To reply, click here.)


I have to cast my vote with Josh on this one. Despite its terminal hootenanny connotations, "This Land" as a national anthem would be a defining break with the pseudo-arch prosody of nationalistic anthems, and would be in fact the first democratic people's anthem in history. Is that worth something?

Forget Pete Seeger and the debacles of the American Communist Party's Stalinization for a minute and think about the real progeny of Guthrie's road-minstrel folk revival: the entire boom baby generation. We came of age in a landscape where geiger counters were replacing rosaries, and the language of Dick and Jane had replaced the Bible and McGuffy's reader as our entree to literacy. We made out to the lyrics of doo-wop and had our moral awakenings in the turgid prose of surgeon-general's warnings.

We don't need, nor can we parse, the locutions of the founding fathers. While I was growing up, I didn't know anyone who could have paraphrased "The Star Spangled Banner," or glossed it beyond "something about rockets and our flag, kind of tattered, some battle. Baltimore?"

"God Bless America" is the song of Lion's Clubs and Rotary lunches, tent revivals and mall openings. It is for my generation an evocation of black and white rotoscope images of Milton Berle and Pearl Bailey. There is something contrived and reminiscent of gastro-intestinal finales at fund raisers and school auditoriums. It is the song of an ersatz America, a formulaic tin-pan populism that never really reaches beyond the footlights into the junk drawers, closets, photo albums and reveries of a real America.

I know that "TLIYL" will never become our national anthem. But it is a song closer to the dead center of the bell curve of true American sentiment than any of the others mentioned here.

--Zeitguy

(To reply, click here.)

 (10/2)

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