Gannett News Story sent to 104 papers. May 24, 1999

Oh, say, what does your anthem say about the nation?

By GREG BARRETT

Gannett News Service

Every evening at 5, streets in rural Thailand come to a halt. Crescendos of marketplace banter fall silent. Citizens stand rod stiff out of respect for their country's song, which composer Philip Blackburn says screeches from rusty government-owned speakers nailed on utility poles and hung from houses.

"Thailand embraces in its bosom all people of Thai blood," the anthem begins. "Every inch of Thailand belongs to the Thais...." National anthems demand a certain reverence. And loyalty. Like our flags that shall not be desecrated, our songs are sacred. They are country and citizen and history ceremonially wrapped in a military timbre, all brass instruments and marching bands.

"They are really the symbol for the society, almost like a trademark," says Anthony R. Pratkanis, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "This symbol portrays what the ideas are for a society ... and it helps define who the group is."

Some lyrics read like mission statements (Thailand) or prayers (Jamaica: "Eternal Father, Bless our Land...") or cheers (Canada: "Our home and native land, true patriot love in all thy sons command"). Others are built on pluck: "Broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight" (United States). "At the cry of battle lend your swords and bridle" (Mexico). "March on, march on, let an impure blood soak our fields" (France). What do anthems reveal about a nation's character? Was the United States forever cast in the role of freedom fighter when Francis Scott Key watched from a distance in 1814 as Baltimore's Fort McHenry withstood a terrible shelling from British cannons? Key, a Maryland lawyer and poet, was aboard a British ship in the Chesapeake Bay negotiating the release of a prisoner of war when Great Britain opened fire on Fort McHenry. Through the rain and fog and dense cannon smoke, Key believed the fort would fall. But at sunrise it was still visible, as was the 50-pound flag, its stars and stripes pockmarked with 11 holes from British shot.

The poem Key penned after that 25-hour assault became our official national anthem in 1931. It's no wonder it teems with all things bursting - bombs and pride - and is a trumpet for perseverance and a leader of NATO. On some level, perhaps subconscious, Pratkanis says, nations strive to live up to their anthems. "You may not be aware of the process but you are aware of the stimulus."

Philip Blackburn, a British-born program director for the American Composer Forum, says, "To some extent I think we live in a culture in America where freedom is our propaganda; it's the country for the free, releasing hostages into freedom and all things we do in the name of freedom. "It doesn't matter if you are singing 'Bah, Bah Black Sheep' or saying the creeds as long as you are doing it in a nationalistic sense. When you're trying to rally the populace or girding up your loins for battle ... it is the act of doing it that matters."

Music has always been a great manipulator of emotion, from ballads to church hymns to school songs. Anthems, with their bold consonance, are no different. They are meant to stir national pride and loyalty to the state, says Patricia Shifferd, program director for Continental Harmony, a rural program within the American Composer Forum, a national non-profit organization based in St. Paul, Minn., that generates new music by linking communities with composers and performers. "Clearly the national anthem, like any patriotic symbol, is a legitimizer for a political entity," she says. "Think how bent out of shape people get when the flag is desecrated. It has a quasi-religious character to it." Key's poem was set to the music of an English barroom tune and in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson ordered it played at all military events. It became a preamble to sporting events during World War I. Between 1968 and 1996 Rep. Andrew Jacobs, D-Ind., introduced a bill every two years that sought to change the national anthem to "America the Beautiful." It's a gentler, friendlier tune written in 1893 by English professor Katharine Lee Bates after she witnessed the majestic view atop Pikes Peak. Jacobs liked how the song was easier to sing and about the love of land, not the glamorization of war. Yet the bill never garnered much support, not even from fellow Democrats. Jacobs, now retired and living in Indianapolis, says members of Congress have to pick their battles carefully. "They have enough trouble having to decide about abortion and gun control and things like that so a lot of things that ordinary people might say, '... that makes sense,' don't get passed. You know someone is going to raise hell about it."

Pratkanis, co-author of "Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion" (W.H. Freeman, $24.95), says the hallowed quality of an anthem makes it seem like personal property. "The attack on any symbol," he says, "whether it's a national anthem or flag or whatever, is really an attack on ones self."

So two generations now have grown up hearing the Star Spangled Banner at schools and stadiums and on TV late at night when local affiliates signs off. We've heard and seen Jimi Hendrix screech it from his guitar (Woodstock, 1969), Roseanne Barr shout it, then spit and grab her crotch when she was booed (San Diego Padres-Cincinnati Reds baseball game, 1990) and Whitney Houston translate it into a spine-tingling pop song (Super Bowl, 1991).

"When you hear it played there can be quite an emotional response ... but I'm not sure we even know all the words," Pratkanis says. "I don't think it is something we sit down and analyze."

When the Thai government plays its national anthem daily, no one sings along, recalls Blackburn, who worked in Thailand in 1989 and 1994. The public loudspeakers are so bad lyrics sound like static. Yet, he says, citizens stay "quiet and zombie-like" in complete reverence. Whether the anthem is a prayer in Jamaica or a war rally in France, he says, national songs are not so much about the lyrics, violent or gentle. "The meaning of something is in its use not in itself," he says, quoting Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. "That's never more true than with anthems."

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