National Anthems

Music is a practice through which people produce and circulate meaning. It is also a practice through which people challenge old meanings and propose new ideas.

Anthem comes from Greek word antiphon = opposite voice, call-and-response. Anthem: A composition, in prose or verse, sung antiphonally, or by two voices or choirs, responsively– from the Oxford English Dictionary

Anthem is a song of praise or devotion or patriotism; a piece of sacred vocal musictaken from the scriptures.

• State = The policies and bureaucratic structures that organize a population within a given territory

• Nation = The ideology that creates a sense of peoplehood and unity among those individuals encompassed by the state.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (1983)

National-building depends on a process of “imagining a community.”

Any nation is an “imagined political community” because “members of even the smallest nation will never know their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”--Benedict Anderson

The nation is imagined as• Limited—the nation has finite boundaries

beyond which there are other nations• Sovereign—the nation is free and self-

governing• A Community—regardless of any actual

inequality and exploitation, the nation is conceived as a deep and inclusive comradeship

To imagine a community effectively, people use symbol and representations; they manipulate definitions of belonging to bring people into the nation.

Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)

The Anacreontic Society, London

Anacreon, a Greek poet who wrote short verses in praise of wine and women.

“To Anacreon in Heaven”

Attorney Francis Scott Key witnessed the twenty-five hour bombardment of Fort McHenry from a British troopship anchored some four miles away. He had boarded the ship to negotiate the release of an American civilian imprisoned by the British, and had been detained aboard as the bombardment began.

http://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/francis-scott-key.aspx

Abolition Movement: “Oh, say do you hear, at the dawn’s early light, The shrieks of those bondmen, whose blood is now streaming.”

Temperance Movement: “Oh! Who has not seen by the dawn’s early light, Some poor bloated drunkard to his home weakly reeling.”

Jimi Hendrix, 1942-1970Born John Allen Hendrix His father changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix Experience (from left: Mitchell, Hendrix, Redding)

Jimi Hendrix ExperienceLondon, 1966

• Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), guitar• Noel Redding (1945-2003), bass• Mitch Mitchell (1947-2008), drums

Jimi Hendrix albums

• Jimi Hendrix Experience:Are You Experienced 1967Axis: Bold As Love 1967Electric Ladyland 1968

Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys 1970

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, August 15-18, 1969

“Three Days of Peace and Music,” White Lake near Bethel, NY crowd estimate: over 400,000Michael Lang and three partners, organizers

Woodstock, dir. Michael Wadleigh (1970)

Some Woodstock Performers

Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie,The Who, Sha-Na-Na, Sly & the Family Stone,Country Joe & the Fish, Janis Joplin,Crosby, Stills & Nash,Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix commented on his Woodstock performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” on The Dick Cavett Show on September 9, 1969:

“All I did was play it. I’m American so I played it. They used to make me sing it in school. It was a flashback…It wasn’t unorthodox. That’s not unorthodox. I thought it was beautiful.”

Anthems can• Enlist commitment to a nation, community, or

cause;• Mobilize people in service to goals;• Unify people under a common cause; and • Provide inspiration by demonstrating the

existence of a community of people who share beliefs.