From: Josh Daniel
To: Alfred Gingold, Erik Tarloff, Timothy NoahPosted Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2001, at 11:30 PM ET Now I know how Ben Franklin felt, trying to convince everyone that our national bird should be the turkey.
Everyone points out that the music of "This Land Is Your Land" is comparatively simple and wouldn't stand up to orchestration. To which I still say: You're right. And that's all for the better, because people should sing—want to sing—a national anthem. Each performance is a chance for everyone in earshot to be reminded of what they love about the country, and if they can't be bothered to sing, well, that's just another missed opportunity.
Alfred, great point about the dissident thrust of Guthrie's song. But I'm not convinced that that should disqualify it as an anthem. We are, or at least like to think ourselves as, a nation of dissidents. What could be more appropriate than a song that embodies that notion?
Similarly, to Erik's point that "TLIYL" makes him want to grab someone's hand and start swaying, rather than to salute Old Glory: I love the flag and happily stand to honor it when I have the chance. Still, these days, I don't think a little swaying and hand-holding would be out of order. And even when you want something more anthemic, "TLIYL" can fit the bill if you slow it down and sing it with a little gravity—a point that's easy to forget, after all those prettified renditions by Peter, Paul, and Mary.
If I can't have my own turkey, I'll cast my lot with Tim's choice, "America the Beautiful," despite all its thees and thys. I love the way the melody swells at "America, America," and its lyric is more graceful and less militaristic than the "Star-Spangled Banner" 's. Tim, I did think your complaint about the way "GBA" orders God around was unfair. I'm no theologian (God knows!), but the few prayers I'm aware of use that sort of language—"God bless you and keep you," etc.—not as a command but as an entreaty, an earnest request. I also laughed out loud at Alfred's line about pilgrim feet—but it is slightly dirty pool to dig up these subsequent verses no one ever sings. When was the last time you saw a complete version of Hamlet? Did you complain about the scenes that were skipped?
From: Josh Daniel
To: Alfred Gingold, Erik Tarloff, Timothy NoahPosted Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2001, at 11:30 PM ET 
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. 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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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)