"Our Music Will Never be the Same": A More Inclusive Anthem

“Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

–Leonard Bernstein

When, in 1814, during a battle of the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics for what became “The Star-Spangled Banner,” he was looking at a flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes. Key’s brother-in-law, Joseph H. Nicholson was the first to set the lyrics to music, the English composer John Stafford Smith’s popular melody, "The Anacreontic Song." Key did not name the poem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but rather “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” Thomas Carr, who owned a music store in Baltimore, published it under its now well-known name, after it had become popular up and down the East Coast through printings in newspapers. Throughout the 19th and into the early 20th century, it remained a popular song with various versions in use, though it was only one of a number of songs serving as an anthem for the nation. The official version we now recognize was first performed in public in 1917, and this only after the Bureau of Education, at the behest of President Wilson, chose five musicians to agree upon and specify a standardized arrangement. Yet, even so, not until 1931 was it made, officially, the national anthem—117 years and an untold number of different arrangements since its inception.

In a historical coincidence, the poem and song, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” also came to popularity and prominence in the early 20th century. The original lyrics were written in 1899 by James Weldon Johnson, who would go on to become a civil rights activist and leader, Harlem Renaissance novelist, poet, and playwright, and a US ambassador to Venezuela and Nicaragua. His brother, the composer John Rosamond Johnson, set the song to music in 1905, and the song was first performed to welcome Booker T. Washington to the Edwin M. Stanton school—which both brothers attended—as part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. By 1919, the NAACP would dub the song “The Negro National Hymn.” The song is now included in myriad Christian Hymnals and sung across North America, and continues to be known as the “Black National Anthem.”

The theme for both of these accounts is that meaningful creation takes time, collaboration, and the embrace of history—moreover, that which remains meaningful changes over time. The flag now has 50 stars and 13 stripes, as the former number grew to include all the new states, and the latter shrank to signify the original 13. Thus, in its very composition, the flag at once commemorates the past and proclaims the present. In other words, as Johnson wrote in “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” when we behold the flag and sing the national anthem, we “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,” while also “Sing[ing] a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.”

We all know the tradition of singing the national anthem before sporting events, and we know recent controversy over protests during this tradition. This tradition began in earnest after WWII to commemorate and remember those who sacrificed their lives fighting for the country in the world wars. Yet, this is not the only way in which people fight for their country, nor is it the only way we should express our remembrance of those who have lost their lives as part of this great experiment. Recent protests have highlighted those losing their lives because of an unaddressed racial history, and recent tragic events have underscored the protests’ validity.

Just as the most current flag’s 50 stars represent inclusion and the 13 stripes, remembrance, just as the national anthem was formed over one century, embracing new versions of the national anthem that respond to both acknowledged growth and heretofore unacknowledged history seems fitting. The “Star-Spangled Banner” is the anthem of a “more perfect union,” and as a union striving to be “more perfect,” yet never “perfect,” the national anthem can too evolve to symbolize a “more perfect” form of that nation, one that knows its sins as clearly as its triumphs, remembers both its bright and “gloomy past,” in order to “keep [it] forever in the path” toward a better tomorrow.

In this spirit, and inspired by the centuries of struggle endured by Black Americans, we offer this new arrangement and rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” that integrates “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” This integration, as well as the modulation that occurs in the climax of the song, is meant to symbolize that it is time for us to enter a new day as a nation, together. This is our "reply to violence."

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organizations the author is affiliated with.

Music Credits:

Stephan Davis – Original Concept, Saxophone and Co-Arranger

Matt Podd – Lead Arranger, Pianist, and Director of String Orchestra

References:

1. https://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/black-authors-spoken-word-poetry/lift-every-voice-and-sing/
2. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/LiftEveryVoiceAndSing.pdf
3. https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-lift-evry-voice-and-sing/
4. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/638324920/american-anthem-lift-every-voice-and-sing-black-national-anthem