how long is the star spangled banner song performed

Others simply grumble that it is too hard to sing with a range that is out of reach for the average vocalist. The Kennedy Center website says, “Some Americans complain that it celebrates war and should be reserved for military ceremonies. Well, not exactly complicated, but definitely out of range for most amateur singers. Even professionals have trouble remembering the words.Īnd the music is too complicated as well. Most people, if they have any of the anthem memorized, usually stick to the first few verses.

To be perfectly honest, “The Star-Spangled Banner” isn’t a great pick for a public song or National Anthem. A radically democratic canvas that has been tweaked and altered by a succession of performers who each contributed a unique vision of their country. It’s been something more like a barometer, changing with the mood and course of the nation. From its earliest 20th century public performances, the “Star-Spangled Banner” was more than just a somber anthem to be reverently performed in cookie-cutter fashion with hand over heart.

They were the very issues that the song was being performed in reaction to. These things were more than just backdrops to the performance of the song. It’s probably not a coincidence that American forces had joined World War I just a little over a year earlier, with over 100,000 American dead at that point, and that the struggle for organized labor had reached such a violent fever pitch that the International Workers of the World set off a bomb in the Chicago Federal Building the day before the series began. The first recorded confluence of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and pro sports was in Chicago during the 1918 World Series. In a democracy as large and messy as ours, the anthem is a kind of living document always open to change and interpretation, and that can make for some pretty electric performances. Because of that, public performances of the song can be loaded events, with both artist and audience playing their own ideas of what it means to be American off of each other. The national anthem is the closest thing our country has to a secular hymn. Comedian Roseanne Barr plugged her ears as she scream-sang the national anthem at a San Diego Padres game in 1990.

How long is the star spangled banner song performed