First Thoughts About Anthems

When I was about eight years old, living on an Air Force base in Virginia, I stopped one afternoon, at whatever time they did this, and watched the lowering of the American flag at, I guess, the base headquarters.  This ceremony was performed every day.  Somewhere in the middle of “The Star Spangled Banner,” I whispered something to my friend along the lines of “Pretty long, huh?”  My friend replied with something like “Be quiet.”

That was probably my first experience with public anthems.  Of course I’d recited the Pledge of Allegiance probably every morning in school.  But now we were standing outside, away from the adults, watching airmen lower the flag.  We were watching, not participating; not singing the song.  But my companion must have been surprised, maybe embarrassed, maybe actually shocked when I spoke during the Anthem.

Ten years later, as a senior in high school, no longer living on an Air Force base, my father now in Vietnam, I attended a pep rally for the school basketball team.  The rally began with the National Anthem, which was met with a general “Ho-Hum.”  The rally continued.  Towards the end, the band struck up a brisk version of “Dixie.”  I was amazed at the enthusiasm of the students.  They hadn’t particularly cared either way about the National Anthem; they’d only been moderately interested in the basketball team; but they sure went wild about “Dixie.”

This was awhile back:  1969.  The year before, during the election, I had sat with the other Hubert Humphrey supporters towards the rear of the school auditorium during our “mock election.”  I think Nixon won at our school, with George Wallace coming in second.  Very few students supported Hubert Humphrey.  They were mostly black; I was one of the few whites.

Five or six years later, in Graduate School, I would see “Triumph of the Will” for the first time, and hear the “Horst Wessel Song,” the Nazi anthem.  I had already learned “The Marseillaise” in my French Class.  I knew “Deutschland Uber Alles” from studying German and living in Germany.  I knew the Japanese National Anthem from having lived in Japan.  And I’d spent a summer “up north,” and had heard “Oh Canada.”  Of course I had heard “We Shall Overcome.”  In time, I would learn the Marxist “Internationale” as well as the so-called Black National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

I’m a musical person.  These tunes all moved me.  I’ve now heard Czarist anthems and Soviet anthems.  These are more than just songs.  I would suggest than these songs are stirring because they represent an identity beyond personal identity.  They bind us to a larger group, for good or ill.  And sometimes, even in spite of the words, the music possesses us.