Anthems

Perhaps because of the Olympics which are a particular spark point for national fervour – I mean you literally go there flagwaving, proud to REPRESENT YOUR COUNTRY – I kind of paused to think about that musical flag of every nation, the national anthem.

Because this year’s Olympics are in Paris, the obvious place to go is the Marsellaise – for some, that takes you back to an immortal scene in “Casablanca”, but for me almost the definitive version is the one sung by Mireille Mathieu, here:

 

I mean, she is so tiny and so diminutive and so goddamn FIERCE that you DO want to surge up and “arm your batallions”. If the Marsellaise had been a tool available to Jeanne d’Arc to rally troops with, she might have sung it like this. It stirs the blood, like a good anthem should.

I thought about others.

Say what you will about the Russians, their national anthem has a similar sweeping power.

By contrast, the Brits are almost tame – I mean, God save the King and all that but it’s all piled on the person not the country. The closest they come is “Rule Britannia”, maybe, but that is not what is played when their flag is raised somewhere. The Americans had a perfectly good one in “America the Beautiful” but then they had to pick an impossible to sing tune about bombs bursting in air (sorry, USA. not a great choice). I literally cannot even remember what Canada or Australia have (I know the names that the anthems bear but the tunes are just not there). I don’t  even know what Germany uses these days (I hope it isn’t still Deutschland Uber Alles because that has way too much baggage…)

The one that existed briefly and brightly is the one that defined the brilliant, broken, flawed, proud, visionary country into which I was born and which does not appear on world maps any more – Yugoslavia.  Our anthem was luminous, and it is probably the only one to which I know all the words, and the only one that makes me cry for all that was lost.

But the pride, the flags, the anthems – the standing up straighter and brighter eyed when you accomplish a gold medal for your own country – that is something peculiar to the Olympics – and it is therefore truly weird that they’ve adopted “Imagine” as a sort of “hey we’re for world peace” song – I mean, seriously? Here you have a parade of countries with bunches of proud athletes representing them and waving their flags – and then they get hit with a tune that says, “imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do”? It LITERALLY is hard to do right now, being faced with the evidence of their existence, and not just that but with the pride of their existence – every Greek is there for Greece, every Norwegian for Norway, every Burundian for Burundi, every Japanese for Japan, and let us not even talk about the thunderous USA!USA!USA! that resounds around the hundreds of athletes wrapped in the stars-and-bars. Now imagine there’s no countries. WHat are they all even here for, then?…

Instead, let’s pick another universal – “Anthem” from the musical Chess.

“My land’s only borders lie around my heart.”