• amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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    9 days ago

    Reminds me, I remember a commie once pointing out that the Star Spangled Banner song doesn’t even sound that good and I still think about it to this day. It has kind of a goofy history too: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/star-spangled-banner

    Some highlights:

    After the hours of bombardment and the fear that the British could overtake the fort and head to Baltimore, Key awoke to a proud display of American patriotism and a symbol that they were not going to stop fighting. That morning he wrote notes for a future poem about this event. Later that week, he finished the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” On September 20, the Baltimore Patriot published “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law set the poem to music, and the combined poem and music were published under the name “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

    In 1929, “House Resolution 14” was presented to Congress to name “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the official national anthem to the United States. There were many objections to this resolution.

    One objection was that the tune of the “Star-Spangled Banner” was taken from the song “To Anacreon to Heaven.” This song was the theme for the Society of Anacreon, which was active between 1766-1791. The Society of Anacreon was a gentleman’s club that meet monthly to listen to music of questionable tastes and to socialize. Ralph Tomlinson wrote the lyrics and John Stafford Smith composed the melody in 1788 and 1780 respectively. The song alluded to alcohol consumption and love in the last line of the first stanza, “I’ll instruct you like me to entwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s wine.” Even though only the tune was used, some members still saw it risqué that the two songs could be intertwined.

    If you look it up, the Society of Anacreon, was a club in London. So a song with lyrics that are about a fight with the British, uses a tune taken from a British song lol. Classic colonizer maneuver.