Respect for National Anthem

[Tundratubast]

How timely, Via my position as the ND Dept. Adjutant (State Executive Director) of the American Legion, I am in the process of introducing
a new "Certifcate" program to the Directors of the International Music Camp. The program is being designed to teach/train high school
students to sing the Nation Anthem and play Taps according to the Congressionally approved DoD version and the U.S. Army Field manual
for Taps. The students will receive a certificate and acknowledgement via a press release to their home county news media outlets.
The area American Legion Posts will receive the names of approved students for playing Taps for veteran funerals. We have extended an
invite to the Manitoba Provincial Legion to include the Canadian students to learn their respective anthem. Our goal is to implement this
program into the 2014 season.

[iiipopes]

The performance of our national anthem is not an opportunity for the soloist to perform vocal excercises or try to put their immense skills on display. It should be played and performed straight, like Hail to the Chief , and any individual should feel honored to have been invited to present our anthem.
How about we just accept the notion that WhitneyHoustons Super Bowl performance of our anthem will never be out done and everybody just stop trying and play it as written -

So, you want people to play it as written but your favorite rendition of the piece is in 4. Surely you realize that the piece as written is in 3?

One of my least favorite forms of musical snobbery (remember, of course, that I routinely engage in many forms) is the sneering by critics at national anthem performances that do not align with their own arbitrary aesthetics for the piece. The USA is a place where artistic freedom, guided by the legal framing of the First Amendment, is the absolute rule. To expand, embellish, alter, and even parody the Star Spangled Banner is one of the most purely American activities.

Further, I ask these critics to consider the artistic choices that went into the performances that they so quickly deride as unworthy or even un-American. Consider the most popular 'alternative' rendition: Jimi Hendrix's 1969 anthem at Woodstock. Given that Hendrix was performing the anthem of a country that, some 100 years earlier, would have allowed him and his entire family to be enslaved and even still in 1969 continued to struggle with civil rights issues, is it any wonder he would have decided to reject the piece's historic performance traditions? Or consider my favorite rendition: Jose Feliciano's 1968 World Series anthem. Feliciano (an American citizen) performed the anthem in a manner that emphasized the stylistic traditions of his cultural background. If the American anthem, the national song of 'a nation of immigrants' and 'a melting pot' can't be synthesized with non-Anglo aesthetics, is it even any good? Finally, consider one of the most infamous alternative renditions: Roseanne Barr's 1990 anthem. Barr, a professional comedian and satirist of American life ("domestic goddess" anyone?) was parodying the very same thing that critics bemoan: supposedly tasteless anthem performances!

The critics of non-traditional performances are, of course, free to opine accordingly but also free (and welcome, as far I and all other music fans are concerned) to host their own concert, where they may perform the piece however they wish. The antidote to speech is always more speech![/quote

You and all other music fans ? Really ? So glad you are speaking for the masses- I am a music fan- do not put words in my mouth , or suggest otherwise.

I had always regarded Hendrix's rendition as a protest piece.
Roseanne Barr's attempt at humor disgraceful and insulting to those who are proud to be Americans and those who have fought and died to insure the very freedom that Ms Barr and others choose to use as a platform for all kinds of performance art.
I will continue to believe that some things remain sacrosanct .
You want to fly the banner of constitutional rights and artistic freedom ? Me too!, I am not the arbiter of good taste, nor are you, so to avoid the need for definitions of what is or isn't tasteful, leave the anthem alone

Go, Jim, Go!!!

In elaboration on Jim's comments, before the Star Spangled Banner became the National Anthem, it was performed in a variety of circumstances and renditions. The tune started out as a drinking song, "Anacreon in Heaven," written for a British men's club. The top note provided for a break for a cadenza in the classical sense for many years, for many different arrangements and performance situations, before it was shortened to the tenuto and out.

As for me? Yes, as posted above, I will still play the Sousa arrangement as my favorite. But the older I get, the more I understand personal renditions. I do not like the current US Armed Forces arrangement. To me, the harmony is disjointed, lacking flow.