Leave it up to a darkie to ruin the singing of our National Anthem

Leave it up to a darkie to ruin the singing of our National Anthem

No matter what the preformer's race is the National Anthem should be respected enough to be performed as written not with artistic interpretation.

Never knew that fugly dyke was a singer, just thought she was an obnoxious biotch who liked to scratch her cooch in public. Perhaps the natives (crabs) were restless.

I have to say, slightly off topic, that I am a bit taken back by the apparent racism that exist on this forum. Does it really matter what color the person singing is? Are white folk not just as guilty of fuggin' up the Anthem? I seem to recall a string of them that bobbled the words, forgot words, sung off key...

It's one of the hardest pieces of music in the world to get correct because it wasn't written correctly to begin with. It was a poem set to music, not lyrics written to notes. I am not giving them a pass on the personal liberties taken with it, but I will say the darkie comment is just plain sh*t.

I have to say, slightly off topic, that I am a bit taken back by the apparent racism that exist on this forum.

Turns out, there is an answer to that question and we have just the experts here on staff who can help us out. I interviewed Kenneth Slowik, the Director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society.

"It has a lot to do with the range," he said. "It's a very wide range. Basically, the notes are very high." Okay, fair enough, but how high are we talking?

"High f—it's traditionally sung in Bb major because going higher than that makes it hard for the altos and basses singing to get to the high note, and going lower makes it hard for the tenors and sopranos to manage," he said.

Educator Dan Holm, a tenor who frequently sings the Star-Spangled Banner for, and much better than, me during the Flag Folding Ceremony, agrees, "I'm always practicing the first part of the song to make sure I'm low enough, but still starting in a comfortable place so I can hit both the high and very lowest note. If I don't, I just switch the octave I'm singing in."

Folk musician Pete Seeger might agree. In this video from Smithsonian Folkways, he invites the audience to join in and assures him he's using a "a very, very low key, so everybody can sing it," which they do.

Even trained choirs and singers have trouble with the song, and some flat out refuse to sing it because it is too difficult. So if people whose livelihood is singing can't do it, what are the untrained to do?

Kenneth offers sage words of wisdom: "Probably, it's best to be sung the way it was originally intended, that is to be sung as the Anacreontic Song, that is to say, a traditional British Gentleman's Club song—where you can really belt out the top."

Another important tip: get the lyrics right. If you think "O'er the ramparts" is a tough line, just be glad we typically don't sing beyond the first stanza, which contains challenging phrases such as "foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes" and "fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?"

Part of the difficulty with “The Star Spangled Banner” is its wide-ranging melody that skips around a lot, Henderson said. “Most popular songs today are not written with that wide of a range.”

There’s also the bit at the end, the last stanza where singers have to hit a particularly high note on “free” in the last line: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

“In most people’s voice, in the traditional key it’s sung, that’s a difficult place even for professional singers to make sound good,” Henderson said.

Add to that the fact that most people often forget the lyrics—originally a poem written by Francis Scott Key in 1814 after the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812—and the song becomes a land mine of potential blunders.

NATS member Robert Edwin believes that a lot of people forget the lyrics because very few understand what is actually going on in the song.

“Only a very small number of people have come into my studio with any idea of the ‘who, what, where, when, why, and how’ of the song,” Edwin wrote in the association’s Journal of Singing. “In order to diminish the chances of public failure and subsequent embarrassment for your students when they perform our national anthem, a short history lesson should precede any singing.”

Leave it up to a darkie to ruin the singing of our National Anthem

Leave it up to a darkie to ruin the singing of our National Anthem

Singers need to sing along to this:

Definitely not ruined, and considered a benchmark performance, but still too stylized for my taste.

It's just a song.

This is how it needs to be done. The yodeling and voice fluctuations are like tattooed people trying to signify their individuality. Save it for bar fights and beach parties, the National Anthem is more than just a song...

https://youtu.be/AcyCBdfgzWs

She's not a singer. Who the hell picks these people? Honestly, for a real singer, the National Anthem is not that difficult. Personally, I am sick of every dang song being blackified. White people like music too.

Gotta disagree Ricky.

That song is as much 'America' as the flag.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up when I hear it done properly