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Unread 08-24-2001, 10:57 AM
MacArthur MacArthur is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
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I've been thinking about this topic since it got posted a couple of days ago. Mostly I've been thinking of "public songs"-- anthems.

The dreadful national anthem, of course, began life as a poem. It's adaptation as a song was pretty unfortunate. I'm an ardent advocate of replacing it with "America the Beautiful" (under consideration by congress), which also began as a poem, if I'm not mistaken.

I believe the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" started as a devotional poem, became a popular hymn, and then was adopted as a marching song by the Grand Army of the Republic. I don't know what the status is now, but I think it may have been the official hymn for a time...the ACLU probably has scotched that.
There's something irresistably compelling about this tune it seems. Not only has it been reworked into innumerable parodies and travesties (most famously by both Ogden Nash and Vachel Lindsay) but also exists as two genuine anthems-- "John Brown's Body" for the abolitionists, and also "Solidarity Forever" for the labor movement (first for the IWW, later for the AFL-CIO).

The labor movement seems best at this. Last May I heard this on public radio and was touched again by how moving the combination of song and lyrics is:

Bread and Roses

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.

"I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill" is a tribute to the Wobbly martyr-- himself a bit of a song-writer. The favorite of every camp-fire group, "This Land is Your Land", was intended by Woody Guthrie as an organising song for migrant workers.

W.H. Auden would have been interested in anthems, even after his politics changed...I wonder whether he said anything about it? The French I'm told, may change the lyrics to the Marsellaises. A spin-off, The Internationale is reputedly the most widely translated song in history.
In a documentary by Max Ophuls ("The Sorrow and the Pity") a French peasant recalled his experience as a teenager in the resistance. His cell would sing the Internationale.
Why?
"We couldn't sing the Marsellaises...the fascists sang that."
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