national anthems

those ppl who do things like start blogs reviewing every national anthem for every nation ever

maybe with a photo of a bit of ebay kitsch bought for each nation, and then scores out of twenty under different facetious categories

those ppl

anyway, eschewing completeness and minimizing kitsch, it might be a good idea to talk about national anthems

it will be observed that there appears to be no prior national anthem thread on ilx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOAtz8xWM0w

a lot of anthems are like this -- sententious lyrics, stirring if slightly cloying strings, repetitive and dispirting

nonetheless, in the right context it does convey some things -- russia is big, its people are purported to be dreamily maudlin, they have spent 800 years fighting other people, mostly successfully

I always liked Holger Czukay's reworking of the Chinese national anthem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGHhSlPJRCI

I love the formlessness of "The Star-Spangled Anthem" -- a buncha metaphors about rockets, dawns, and proudly hailing.

Best version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73ZsDdK0sTI

lol BANNER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lc9bcN7ecQ

this seems important, a non-european nation that announces difference in vitalist terms far removed from the parade-ground stodge of its forebears - 'an intense dream, a vivid ray of love and hope' - and sounding lithe and animated while using more or less the same musical language

note also reference to 'star spangled banner'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYbuY-epYho

no lyrics but plenty of credibility from spain here, a lumpen intro gives way to a neat descending figure suggestive of folksong innocence

there were probably falangist execution squads who had this jaunty little number in their heads while they went about their work

those ppl who do things like start blogs reviewing every national anthem for every nation ever

My friend is doing this. What are 'those people' meant to be like? How is doing this worse than 'Popular' (which, by posting on ilx, you are giving tacit approval to)? How is starting a blog on it worse than starting an ilx thread?

that spanish anthem sounds like it could be in a movie: man comes home after having suffered through hard times, walks up triumphantly towards his wife and kisses her, spanish anthem starting as he approaches his wife, roll credits.

tbf most national anthems sound like they could score moving moments of movies or whatever

man comes home after having suffered through hard times, walks up triumphantly towards his wife and kisses her = ferdinand and isabella uniting spain after the reconquista

Uruguay's is fairly buoyant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovHoqlRvi9o

Laibach's album where they reinterpreted various national anthems was good in parts.

ftr i haven't actually seen any blogs reviewing national anthems, it is just something that would obviously already exist in several iterations because ppl would have noticed all these anthems, for all these countries but there is a finite number so they can all be listed and rated in some grandly positivist undertaking

apart from the maybe 10% of anthems that are notable outliers, it seems that most anthems are designed to sound like every other anthem to foreigners who seldom hear them and don't know the language, while efficiently touching on the most efficient national archetypes / metonyms for domestic consumption

too many efficiencies there

so,'deutschlandleid'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdpJ2l-3JFo

this is really gorgeous imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXyLMGwj5IU&feature=related

lyrics by sedar songhor.....

Senegal, you the son of the lion's froth,
Sprung from the night to the gallop of horses,
Give us, oh! give us the honour of our ancestors,
Splendid as ebony and strong as muscle,
We say it clearly – the sword has no flaw.

Senegal, we take on your great work:
To shelter the chicks from the falcons,
To make, from east to west, north to south,
Arisen, one single people, a people without seams,
But a people turned to all the winds of the earth.

la marseillaise or gtfo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU

the ne plus ultra of old school anthems but the lyrics are a bit overripe

Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They're coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons and women!

La marsellaise will always be number one for me but i'll admit i havent really listened to them all. I remember being like 9 and hearing midi versions of mostly every anthem in my encyclopedia britannica cd.

I find the lack of lyrics in the spanish one sort of lazy (which fits their culture, actually) but seeing masses of drunk spaniards attempting to sing along to its melody is a thing to behold.

The German national anthem written by Haydn is quite good too, specially in stripped, chamber music form.

Also the swiss anthem is slightly melancholic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v7FLLxnHks

I like the American national anthem when played in one instrument or acapella, it makes for some haunting, cinematic moments.

I never realized how totally gory La Marseillaise was until I saw the Serge Gainsbourg biopic and they had the lyrics as captions. Star-Spangled Banner admits some bloodshed but not until the third verse:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

When I was a kid I thought it would be cool to learn all the neglected additional verses, which I would sometimes read from the hymnbook while sitting around in church, but the song is just too tedious.

the swiss one is excellent, though it sounds more russian-liturgical than central european

I also like the last verse of SSB because it ends with this:
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
It's like one of those Beetle Bailey Sunday strips that could have been three panels, but they fill seven panels with a bunch of junk, and the last panel finally has some semblance of a junk. Key seems to have run out of steam by the end of the song. "What the hell do I do with this last couplet? I guess I'll just throw in our motto."

In sixth grade I listened to MIDIs of *all* the national anthems from an Encarata CD-ROM and I concluded they were 99% the same.

Well I never.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/supreme-court-asks-government-to-consider-regulating-playing-of-national-anthem/articleshow/61185908.cms

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHAJGzyX4AAc3TM?format=jpg

oh
my
god
lithuania

officially the spanish NA now has NO words (since they dropped the lyrics franco liked)

Turkey hmmmmmmm

the moldovan is the most fancypants intellectual, the dutch is the most niche

please tell me the Dutch national anthem is not a Smiths tune

A Smits tune.

William of Nassau, scion
Of a Dutch and ancient line,
I dedicate undying
Faith to this land of mine.
A prince I am, undaunted,
Of Orange, ever free,
To the King of Spain I've granted
A lifelong loyalty.

sounds like Morrissey tbf

ok wait, to the king of spain i've granted WHAT? do they still sing this bit?

(i mean it probably made sense before the 30 years war)

Noting here about cutting that bit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmus

In fact it seems like its one of the only bits they don't cut

In nearly every case the 1st and 6th stanza (or repeating the last lines), or the 1st stanza alone, are sung/played rather than the entire song, which would result in about 15 minutes of music.

Yes You

Turkey hmmmmmmm

Buck Dharma wrote the Turkish national anthem?

They didn’t spell it Blüe Öyşter Çült for nothing.

There are so many national anthems which have parts which are, shall we say, anachronistic, not just the Dutch one hailing the king of Spain. The Polish one contains the following, for example:

"With Bonaparte by our side we will never be defeated"

It also makes reference to "fighting with the Swede" - nobody's been doing that since Swedish neutrality became a thing in the C19th.

Nothing like an international football tournament to rekindle one's interest in anthems - I wondered if the Spanish anthem was the only one without words. Looking into it there are three more, all in Europe (Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina and San Marino being the others).

...which then made me wonder if the Kosovan anthem was the only one with a composer who is still alive. Turns out the South Sudan anthem also qualifies -- it was written by a bunch of music students from the University of Juba!

our national anthem has references to slaves, it's just in the verses nobody sings anymore

We need a new national anthem

honestly, a national anthem without words sounds pretty good and makes the people that decided on that seem like they had enough foresight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K-5RkFEagc