So, jazz singer Rene Marie was asked to sing the National Anthem prior to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s annual state of the city address last week. She decided to sing the lyrics of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (also known as the Black National Anthem) to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” According to her website, she “had sung the exact same song in May at the Colorado Prayer Luncheon, an event attended by members of the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of the state government earlier this year…”
Anyway, she did it (watch video of her performance here). And what do you know? A brouhaha broke out. The Mayor first accepted her apology and then denounced the performance.
I’m not really crazy about performers pulling a “switcheroonie” on people who’ve requested a performance. But if you watch her performance, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Marie says she wondered if she could “find a way to marry the two ideologies musically by melding the two songs into one harmonic thought…” One of the original intents of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” — first performed in public in 1900 — was for African Americans to have a way of demonstrating their patriotism, while at the same time delivering a subtext that spoke to racist forces, such as Jim Crow laws and lynchings.
Some people disagree. One blog called it the highjacking of our national anthem. At Planck’s Constant, it was referred to an an example of how Some People Do Not Appreciate America.
I’m not talking about immigrants who become citizens and do not appreciate this country, that is at least comprehensible. I’m talking about black citizens who, had they been born in Africa, would have been slaves to some Muslim overlord or dying of hunger, disease, or war.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson didn’t like it either and called it “a risky act for Obama and African-Americans.”
I wonder about people who think our country is so fragile that it’s harmed by somebody burning a flag or messing up a song. Myself, I happen to think our country is a little stronger than that. We survived Hendrix at Woodstock and Roseanne Barr at that Padres game and I think we’ll survive this.
Below is a clip of Kim Weston singing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” from the film Wattstax.