Whitney Houston sings the nationwide anthem on January 27, 1991, at Super Bowl XXV throughout the Persian Gulf War. Michael Zagaris/Getty Images
When NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden visited the White House in August 1945, no sitting president had ever attended knowledgeable soccer sport. World War II was coming to a detailed and the commissioner offered President Harry Truman with a golden go to any sport on any day.
Pro soccer was nonetheless in its infancy. The NFL was barely 25 years outdated, and each baseball and boxing have been extra common. So Layden made a promise that may encourage headlines and maximize his publicity stunt. The wartime observe of taking part in “The Star-Spangled Banner” at each sport would proceed without end.
“The taking part in of the nationwide anthem needs to be as a lot part of each sport because the kickoff,” he proclaimed.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key in September 1814, after the Georgetown lawyer witnessed the stunning and profitable protection of Baltimore from British assault throughout the War of 1812. He didn’t write a poem, as most have been taught, however crafted a lyric to suit an already well-known melody. His creation is and has at all times been a tune, an alloy of phrases and music to encourage hearts and alter minds.
Key’s aim was to unite a divided nation.
Country star Faith Hill performs the nationwide anthem throughout the 2000 Super Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia.
Brian Bahr/Getty Images
A pregame ritual
For the primary time in 22 years, the Super Bowl anthem this 12 months can be sung at a time when the nation just isn’t formally at battle.
America’s troops have returned from Afghanistan. Yet army motion brews in Ukraine, and battles at dwelling are waged over public well being mandates, voting rights, schoolbooks and the worth of American lives Black, white, brown and blue. American democracy is by definition a chaotic experiment, but many Americans right now could also be united much less by patriotism than by a shared nervousness – a sense that the nation is in disaster, the worry of a breaking level.
In the e book “O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’” I discover U.S. historical past by means of its nationwide anthem. Chapters in my e book look at Key’s authorship, life and relationship to slavery; the origin of the tune; its long-standing use in protest and the way it grew to become the rallying cry of the Union. As I clarify in my e book, the Civil War sanctified Key’s tune, making it the one viable alternative because the nation’s anthem when in 1931 Congress lastly received round to declaring it so.
The first documented efficiency of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at an American sporting occasion occurred throughout the U.S. Civil War. On May 15, 1862, a brass band performed Key’s tune earlier than a baseball sport to dedicate Brooklyn’s new Union Base-Ball Grounds. The tune was uncommon within the early days {of professional} baseball, as solely opening day or a championship merited the expense of hiring a band to play it. At the primary World Series in 1903, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was performed twice in a single sport.
World battle raised the stakes of patriotic rhetoric for professional sports activities. During World War I, baseball executives argued that their enterprise was important to morale on the house entrance and that professional athletes needs to be exempt from the army draft. Their arguments failed. Baseball was declared “nonessential,” participant rosters have been decimated and the 1918 season reduce quick.
At the beginning of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that baseball proceed, and in that second patriotism and the enterprise of sport grew to become without end linked.
A logo of protest
Playing the anthem at each sport grew to become a flashpoint within the Sixties. Interestingly, the controversy arose not throughout a soccer sport however throughout the Olympics, when, in 1968, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their Black fists on the medal podium to protest racial injustice. By 1973, the U.S. Olympic Committee tried to skip the anthem at a qualifying meet to keep away from controversy.
The backlash was rapid.
American sprinters Tommie Smith (heart) and John Carlos increase their fists and provides the Black Power Salute throughout the U.S. nationwide anthem on the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
Bettmann/GettyImages
When the Vietnam War ended and the nation celebrated its 2 hundredth birthday in 1976, protests across the anthem subsided. By 1977, the NFL might safely break its promise. Super Bowl organizers that 12 months featured “America the Beautiful” as a substitute of the nationwide anthem, and no controversy ensued.
In 1991 Whitney Houston’s celebrated Super Bowl XXV anthem marked a turning level, each musically and socially. Her signature association added a beat to every bar, permitting her voice to broaden and soar.
Whitney Houston’s 1991 Super Bowl XXV anthem is commonly cited because the tune’s greatest-ever efficiency.
Her rendition was an ecstatic gospel ballad, a sacred hymn to the nation. Radiating a second of optimism because the U.S.-led army of Operation Desert Storm dominated Iraqi forces within the Persian Gulf, Houston’s voice activated a renewed wave of patriotic pleasure. As she sang, tens of hundreds of individuals packed into the stadium waved miniature American flags.
A divided patriotism
Today, the NFL’s promise to play the anthem at each sport cuts each methods.
As a lawsuit boils over the hiring practices for Black coaches, the anthem has once more turn into a flashpoint, expressing tribal affiliation as a lot as unity. When in 2016 Colin Kaepernick knelt in protest over racial injustice and President Donald J. Trump attacked the gesture as un-American, the anthem ritual not solely served as a platform for protest however grew to become a divisive instrument of the tradition battle.
Before the beginning of this 2016 sport, San Francisco 49ers Eric Reid and Colin Kaepernick (#7) knelt throughout the nationwide anthem in protest of racial injustice.
Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images
For Super Bowl LVI, three songs carried out by 4 Black American feminine vocalists will supply a musical suite of unity within the face of division.
The gospel duo Mary Mary will sing the Black nationwide anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Promising to “march on until victory is gained,” the 1899 lyric by civil rights activist and poet James Weldon Johnson affirms his enduring perception, regardless of the lived expertise of racial segregation and injustice, within the dream of a nation based upon the rules of freedom and equality.
Neo-soul stylist Jhené Aiko will carry out “America the Beautiful.” The tune has preceded the Super Bowl anthem since 2009. Its peaceable melodic strains and pastoral, seemingly uncomplicated opening lyrics are most well-liked by some because the nation’s musical signature.
In this 2021 {photograph}, nation star Mickey Guyton performs onstage throughout a tree-lighting ceremony.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Finally, the Texas-born nation singer Mickey Guyton will supply “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Her very presence upends assumptions on each side of right now’s tradition battle. She is a uncommon Black feminine star in a traditionally white conservative style. Her unlikely 2020 hit “Black Like Me” obtained little radio play however grew to become common on social media. Embraced by critics, the tune made Guyton the first-ever Black lady to obtain a Grammy nomination for greatest nation solo efficiency.
In my view, this 12 months’s try by the NFL to engineer a feel-good anthem for all is a idiot’s errand. No political gesture right now can please everybody. Yet soccer stands out as the one remaining establishment that also brings Americans collectively throughout the political barricades. It is every year’s most-watched tv occasion and I, like lots of its anticipated 100 million different viewers, nonetheless cherish the annual Super Bowl anthem.
For me, the anthem just isn’t a worn, unchanging icon however a recent act of citizenship. Every efficiency is a dwelling expression of neighborhood, one renewed again and again by musical artists who can elevate lyric and melody to satisfy the second and share a collective perception within the nation’s promise. In tune anew, that promise once more turns into the duty of us all.
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Mark Clague obtained a “Public Scholars” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2016 to help his anthem analysis.
