Comments on: Though he may have won all the battles / We had all the good songs

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 23:39:36 +0000

Well, he was Welsh wasn’t he?

By: harry

harry — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 02:07:55 +0000

I bet none of you noticed that the sleeve notes on Shakin Stevens’ first album contains a tribute to Karl Marx. God, I wish I still had that album.

By: Norsecats

Norsecats — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 04:42:53 +0000

>I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned The Internationale. I have a recording of the International sung by Tuvan throat-singers. Very cool.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:30:54 +0000

Votes for Strange Fruit and And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda seconded, but I prefer Slim Dusty’s version of the latter to the Pogues’. I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned The Internationale. Damn, I love that tune, but it sounds better in French, Russian, or even German than it does in English. As far as national anthems go, I choose my own – Hen Wlad Fy’n Nhadau. Russian, French, and Italian are next, I think. In fact, apart from the dirge of God Save The Queen, the Six Nations must have the highest average musical quality of any sporting event, with Flower of Scotland and Ireland’s Call always bringing a tear to my eye.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 12:43:34 +0000

I’d have thought Beasts of England would replace GSTQ.

By: Peter Clay

Peter Clay — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 11:19:28 +0000

How can you mention Swing Low Sweet Chariot without mentioning Land Of Hope And Glory? If the monarchy is ever abolished then it should will almost certainly replace GSTQ.

The old soviet anthlem is a rousing tune by Prokofiev. Russian is a wondeful language to sing in, like Welsh.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Finlandia, or the grand Irish tradition of rebel songs like The foggy dew

By: Vance Maverick

Vance Maverick — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 10:08:48 +0000

The Haydn quartet is Op. 76 #3 (second movement). But the anthem came first—the movement is a set of variations on it. For me, clearly the best anthem of all, considered as a tune. And considered as a political utterance by Haydn, clearly conservative. (One of the most striking things about the movement is that only the accompaniment is varied, never the tune itself. The effect is very beautiful, but it’s hard not to read politically.) Vance

By: clew

clew — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 09:39:49 +0000

And Pogo said the point of the tune to the Star Spangled Banner was that no one person could sing the whole thing; the high and low notes were shared by neighbors. Mam’zelle Hepzibah hit the high ones.

By: laura

laura — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 04:35:45 +0000

My understanding is that the tune that the Star Spangled Banner words are set to just wasn’t meant to be sung like it generally gets sung these days—faux operatic, soaring, sustained notes. It was a folk tune, meant to be sung a lot quicker so that the high notes go by faster and you just hit them, perhaps raggedly, and move on. I’ve heard it sung that way a time or two and it works.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 03:52:37 +0000

Peter Tosh, Downpressor Man, ultra-left. Pogues, Turkish Song of the Damned, just because we’re talking about the Pogues. Maybe the Turks could retrofit the lyrics a bit and make it an anthem. The melody Deutschland uber Alles is from a Haydn string quartet (Op. 76, #5—??). Musically I think it’s the best of all—except for Hitler, etc. There are also two great Russian patriotic songs, “Meadowlands” (featured on an album by Jefferson Airplane, alas) and the one in the 1812 overture, but I don’t know if either was an anthem. You could add several things from Boris Gudonov or Alexander Nevsky too.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 01:12:08 +0000

Luc, I’m not Matt. I took you to mean you were born like me in 1963, which would make oyur memory of the 60s limited. I can attest for strong French nationalism in Montreal by 1967, when I got beat up there at the age of four, by some 10-year-olds. I just know my friend visited around then, and he doesn’t lie to my knowledge. He’s quite religious. It was indeed in a Montreal department store, in his anecdote. But he didn’t live there. Mind you, he’s US so a shopkeeper may have objected to his insisting on French with a metropole accent. I just trust his story. The Pogues, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. Great album, almost all political. I once sang “And the Band” in Paris, with an Australian girl who was bemused that I knew the lyrics.

By: Luc

Luc — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 01:06:04 +0000

Oops… my last comment should have been addressed to John Isbell, not Matt! Hope that doesn’t reflect on its accuracy!

By: Luc

Luc — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 01:01:23 +0000

Matt, I can’t vouch for what your friend may or may not have heard in 1943 (I was born in 1941; did you misinterpret the reference to “63”?), but I can assure you that I have never heard anyone being asked to “speak white”—outside of obligatory readings of Michèle Lalonde’s poem at nationalist events. Any more than I have ever encountered that apochryphal “fat English saleslady” in Eaton’s despite having shopped regularly at their Ste-Catherine street store in Montreal from the mid-1940s (with my mother; she loved taking me for lunch at their splendid art deco dining room on the 9th floor) until the company’s demise several years ago. The unilingual saleslady, of course, is an outright fiction, a political urban legend. I can’t say that no one ever uttered “speak white”, but it just doesn’t ring true in an everyday context and the expression fits just a bit too nicely with the circa 1968 Nègres blancs d’Amérique interpretation of québécois history to be very convincing.

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 00:56:16 +0000

Ahhh, and I just saw mention of the Pogues, which brings to mind Young Ned of the Hill—could virtually be a national anthem in its own right: A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell You who raped our Motherland I hope you’re rotting down in hell For the horrors that you sent To our misfortunate forefathers Whom you robbed of their birthright “To hell or Connaught” may you burn in hell tonight Great stuff.

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 00:52:21 +0000

Not sure if anyone's got round to mentioning it, but I'm told Henry Rollins (of Black Flag fame, among other things) is an Ayn Rand fan. As far as best political song goes... tall order. Strange Fruit is a great song, but in the later 20th/early 21st century it's not really staking out any particular ideological ground. Billy Bragg's There is Power in a Union and Woody Guthrie's The Ballad of Tom Joad both come to mind (hey, the Folk Song Army has had some great generals, you have to admit). Or there's Concrete Blonde's classic anti-gun anthem God is a Bullet, or Cat Power's homage to Third World youth in Cross-Bones Style, or Rage Against the Machine's cover of Maggie's Farm (they were tolerable when doing other people's songs, oddly enough). All contenders. Right now, though, I'll go with Mos Def's New World Water -- not only does it have the unusual distinction of being an environmentalist rap song, but it's also intelligent and un-kooky (unlike so much "conscious" rap music). As far as national anthems go, first I'll say that I've had to sing O Canada and God Save the Queen back to back, and for my money GSTQ is definitely worse. If only by a smidge. If Nkosi Sikelele alone had been adopted as SA's national anthem, I would rank it above any contender. (You can't beat an anthem that features call-and-response shouting at the end. "Amandhla! Ngawetu! Amandhla! Bayete!") With that one out of the running, though, I have to concur with the nomination of the Russian anthem -- from a different, but similarly stirring, choral tradition. think the Irish national anthem deserves a mention. I do think the Irish anthem is a very close contender, though. And that Maryland anthem. Yeeesh. "Remember Howard's warlike thrust"? Well, I suppose sometimes an anthem is just an anthem, just as a cigar is just a cigar...