Musical Debate
Oh say can you see…The Star Spangled Banner is perhaps one of the most popular songs in the world today. Americans stand to the song to face their flag may be in the battlefield, before a public event, even before two baseball teams slug it out. The song and the flag are symbols of America and its free people. Americans stand up to it and the world listens to them belt out the song that their forefathers rally behind to during their war for Independence against the British in 1812.
The song was written by a lawyer named Francis Scott Key, who watched, on board his tiny little boat, as the vaunted British Navy fired their rockets and cannons at Fort McHenry to force the surrender of a tiny group of American soldiers holding out in Baltimore, Maryland.
The British confidently started the war with the Americans. Fresh from their eradication of Napoleon at Waterloo the English is at the pinnacle of their world domination. However, they were wary of the growing American power – foremost the American Navy which has started to send forays into the Caribbean. When the British forcible boarded the American ship Chesapeake, a close battle ensued, signaling the inevitable start of the War of 1812, as the British call it.
The confident British were so sure they will trounce the amateur American soldiers and end the word quickly.
All over the night and day, the British bombarded the fort, leaving it into just a little pile of rubble by the next morning. Key, was, of course, watching the whole proceedings. By the next morning, however, instead of the universal white flag of surrender, few remaining American soldiers inside the fort raised the tattered but otherwise majestic American flag – a sign of continued defiance of the Imperial British.
Key was so moved by the scene, he immediately scribbled the opening words of the now immortal song – Star Spangled Banner:
However, the controversy over the song has not ended more than 200 years since it was first sung. Experts and even the British claim the song was derived from a pub song of a popular club in England. Yes, there are actually people who claim the most melodious and solemn song for Americans were taken out of a song from a pub – a place where men gather at the end of a day’s work to drink beer, whiskey and what have you.
The song was supposedly called To Anacreon in Heaven, sung by members of the Anacreon club. Anacreon was a known 6th century Greek poet who specializes in writing about love and drinking wine, thus the connection between him and the drinking Brits and their club.
Well, this controversy may not see the end of the day soon. For anything, it shows the cultural even musical connection between the two countries that started well, went to war, and presently into an alliance that has gone through the toughest tests in the world. It also showed that knowledge and debates will continue as long as there is freedom – one thing both countries staunchly fought for in their own ways – shown by one of the lines of the Anacreon song: Boys hear the loud flute, no longer being mute…
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