Slate's Bizbox
dialogues: E-mail debates of newsworthy topics.

Our National Anthems

dialogues
entries
123456789
from: Alfred Gingold
to: Josh Daniel, Timothy Noah, and Erik Tarloff

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2001, at 11:25 PM ET

I agree with Josh that the forthright language and stark melody of "TLIYL" elevate it and make it, in fact, my personal favorite of the songs under discussion. In a way, its sense of our country builds on the gorgeous first verse of "ATB": "Amber waves of grain" become "wheat fields waving." Woody's song is as fine an example as I can imagine of good crowned with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

But, while Guthrie's flirtation with communism is no longer a big deal, there's no denying that the song carries a countercultural taint. That's why people like me, who attended grade school in the '50s, had to learn the song in later life off Weavers albums, while subsequent generations had it spoon-fed to them from pre-K on. And that dissident aspect is really a part of the song, not just a legacy of Guthrie's problems with the committee. The song expresses love of country, but it's not blind. There's concern for the disenfranchised, even, God help us (that's the non-theological, civic God of God bless you and God damn it, if you please), irony in the words about the no-trespassing sign. Only one side of it is made for you and me. That richness of vision so simply put, makes it a great song but a poor anthem. An anthem can't handle that kind of ambivalence, just as Tom Lehrer's Harvard fight song ("Let's try not to injure them, but/ Fight, fight, fight!") inspires laughter but not much fighting spirit.

As to Francis Scott Key's poetical skills: Josh, if you think he's bad, check out all gazillion verses of "ATB." "Til souls wax fair as earth and air/ And music-hearted sea!" "O beautiful for pilgrims feet"? Say what? The truth is, "ATB" has one glorious verse, and the rest is a hodgepodge of unclear historic reference, Congregationalist theology, and mugwump sentiment. I assume "O Beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife" refers to the Civil War, but what the hell does it mean that they "more than self their country loved and mercy more than life"? It's hard to believe the song's final version was published within 10 years of Berlin's first big successes. "ATB" sounds at least a century older.

Which brings me to Tim's and Josh's dismissals of Berlin's greatest hits as kitschy or second-rate. For one thing, Tim, if you've got a problem with God in "GBA," you've got a bigger problem in "ATB," where God is all over the place shedding grace, which is a far more specifically religious notion than Berlin's simple request—call it a demand if you want, but certainly no more than that in "ATB"—for blessing. For another, I think both of you are confusing the simple with the simplistic.

In Craig Zadan's book about Stephen Sondheim, Sondheim opines that the big challenge for a popular songwriter is to create lyrics that are colloquial and simple, with rhymes falling naturally, and emotion flowing out of the song in an unforced way. Phrases that would be clichés in normal speech, he says, can take on a freshness of expression in the right musical setting. Berlin does this masterfully. "O, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." "Isn't It a Lovely Day?" "I'm Puttin' On My Top Hat." "Let's Face the Music and Dance." And yes, "God Bless America."

So let's not change our anthem in what we all hope is midstream. Let's hang on to our dear old, unsingable, God-invoking "SSB" and all our other love-of-country songs, too (How come nobody's mentioned "You're a Grand Old Flag"?). But let's not denigrate all those people who at special times of year, Christmas, Easter, and these past three weeks, want to sing Irving Berlin's songs. It's not because they don't know any better. It's because of how those songs make them feel.

dialogues
entries
123456789
from: Alfred Gingold
to: Josh Daniel, Timothy Noah, and Erik Tarloff

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2001, at 11:25 PM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
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.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

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)

Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Assessing Sarah Palin
| Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, John Podesta and others weigh in.
Colbert King: She's No HillaryEditorial: Is She Ready for This?
PLUS » PostPartisan: Quick Takes from Opinions