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The National (Spanish) Anthem: Just More Pop Treacle Barrett Kalellis Think of the "American Idol" TV show done entirely in Spanish. That's about the level of the ersatz "Star-Spangled Banner" recently performed by some well-known Latin pop stars and timed to coincide with the current controversy about illegal immigration and the media-grabbing demonstrations being staged around the country. A treacly setting of our national anthem, in a non-literal translation of Francis Scott Key's lyrics called "Our Hymn," it's performed as if it were a romantic ballad. With different voices sharing the four-bar lines, punctuated by melismatic vocal counterpoint, the singers are accompanied by a lush string orchestration, Spanish guitars, castanets and the gross sounds of a snare drum added for martial effect. This agitprop addition to the repertoire is tailored to a special audience, those who view the illegal immigrant brouhaha through Marxist, class-warfare lenses: "The glow of battle, in step with libertyPart of the strategy of the open-borders contingent, who want to give illegal immigrants a free pass for their prior flouting of U.S. residency laws, is to frame the argument in terms of civil rights and oppression rather than blame lax border enforcement, prosecution of violators and official shoulder-shrugging by the government of Mexico. Newspaper editorial writers and conservative talk radio hosts are inflamed, and even George W. Bush added his view that the national anthem should be sung in English. Outrage aside, this entire matter should be forthwith swept under the rug, representing only a calculated nose-thumbing by the music producer who put it together. Headlines have been suggesting that this might be an attempt to "replace" the English version of our anthem with a Spanish one – a triumph for the bilingual constituency who want further "Spanishification" of our country. Nonsense. I doubt that anyone who has heard this new treatment will be able to sing it by themselves, let alone in a group at a ball game. Don't forget that the power of the national anthem usually comes from communal performances in communal gatherings, particularly when the national conscience is troubled – when great leaders die or when the nation is in peril and patriotic rumblings need to be tapped. Not with this effort, however. Only the harmonies remain. The spirited martial three-quarters-time, dotted-eighth and sixteenth-note strains of the original have been changed to a lugubrious, lazy duple meter that is almost interchangeable with Celine Dion, Andrea Boccelli and Gloria Estefan together crooning the sappy "My Heart Will Go On" from the film "Titanic." When will we see the music video?
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Readers with an historical bent will recall that this teapot tempest is nothing new. The melody of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was first a popular 18th-century drinking song ("To Anacreon in Heav'n") to which Francis Scott Key wrote new words after witnessing the British shelling of Fort McHenry in 1814. Purists often have complained about keeping "The Star-Spangled Banner" as our designated national anthem because of its seamy heritage before the War of 1812, and also because it is somewhat difficult to sing by untrained voices. Many would call on Congress to replace it with "America the Beautiful" or Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." Still others register complaints when performers improvise their own pop styles on the melody in public performances. Mini-uproars have come and gone when Jose Feliciano, Stevie Wonder and Jimi Hendrix deviated from tradition. Opprobrium followed when Robert Goulet botched the words at the Liston-Clay boxing match in 1965. Far worse was when the untalented Roseanne Barr screeched her way off-key through the anthem at a baseball game in San Diego in 1990, disrespecting the song and the tradition. Translations and performances of songs, even entire operas, into other languages is commonplace, mainly so that others can understand what is being said. And yes, English translations of "La Marseillaise" are available ("Arise children of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived. ..."). But you wouldn't want to hear this sung in Rick's bar in Casablanca, would you? So this trifling rendition is not going to replace the national anthem anytime soon. It's only a cheesy love song masquerading as revolutionary entitlement, and not very well, either.
Barrett Kalellis is a Michigan-based columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print publications, and is a featured pundit for NewsMax.com.
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