by: DAVID HARPER,
World Staff Writer
Tulsa World
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Most adults don't know the words, but a Monte Cassino teacher makes sure a new generation can belt it out.
Oh, say can you sing the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner?"
A recent poll showed that less than 40 percent of Americans know all the words to their national anthem.
However, the first- through eighth-grade students at Monte Cassino School know the lyrics, and they proved it by the dawn's early light Friday, the 193rd anniversary of the day that Francis Scott Key wrote the song that would make him famous.
Key died in 1843, but he has his own unofficial Web site, www.tulsaworld.com/francisscottkey.
It says the song reflects Key's feelings on the morning of Sept. 14, 1814, when he saw the American flag had survived a night of intense fighting with the British during the War of 1812.
However, Monte
Cassino second-grader Kale Keeling already knew all that. The
8-year-old can tell you about the factors that led to the war ("they
were stealing our sailors") and how the Brits burned
part of Washington, D.C., as part of the hostilities.
Kale and
fellow Monte Cassino second-grader Rebecca Franklin said they like the
song, although the words are a little hard to understand.
Befittingly
for a song written by an attorney who practiced almost 200 years ago,
the lyrics are about as easy to navigate as Chesapeake Bay on the night
of the battle that Key immortalized.
Let's face
it, "what so proudly we hailed" rarely comes up in conversation anymore.
The same
Harris Poll showed only 39 percent of those who described themselves as
knowing the words to the anthem answered correctly when asked what
comes after "whose broad
stripes and bright stars."
Correct
answer: "through the perilous fight," not night.
Of those with
a firm handle on the song, 58 percent had at least five years of
musical training in school. That's where Monte Cassino instructor
Joanne Pearson enters the picture. Friday's event, which featured
about
600 students belting out the song, was her idea. In her 24th year
at
Monte Cassino, Pearson teaches music to the
elementary school-aged students there ("I don't teach anyone
taller
than me," she says.).
Pearson said
she was in Washington, D.C., in June for the National Anthem Project
Grand Finale in which more than 1,200 school children stood in the
formation of the United States and sang the song.
She said she
told her students to notice how many adults don't actually sing when
the anthem is played at public gatherings. Pearson said she
challenged
them to be part of a generation that will sing along with
the song, which became the national anthem in 1931.
Of course,
"The Star-Spangled Banner" has its detractors. Some say that it
is no
match musically for "Oh, Canada"and many other national anthems.
Also, many
will tell you that "God Bless America" is easier to sing. Of
course,
"God Bless America" was written by noted composer Irving Berlin.
Key,
on the other hand, was a onehit wonder.
An amateur
poet, his "Defence of Fort McHenry" was hastily written on the back of
a letter and was later set to the music of a popular British drinking
tune, "The Anacreontic Song," according to Key's Web site. Still,
like the flag he wrote about in 1814, it survives and, thanks to the
students at Monte Cassino – and others like them, thrives.
david.harper@tulsaworld.com
Francis Scott Key's Unofficial Website: www.tulsaworld.com/francisscottkey
Copyright © 2009, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved
Photo from Wikipedia, "Woody Guthrie"
