Canada often seems to be auditioning for a role as the world’s benign, benevolent schoolteacher, the politest people in the world. Who would have believed that the globe’s second largest country now actually needed to morph into “the true North strong and free”?
That rather lovely line about the “true North” comes from Canada’s national anthem, “O Canada”, an uplifting, unifying song which exhorts Canadians to exhibit “true patriot love” while they “stand on guard” for their country. Life imitates art, as Canadians now take guard against American impositions and impudence.
Like Canada’s, all country anthems are meant to bind citizens together with a sense of common purpose and shared values. So too are flags, heroes, cute local animals and symbols, but none of them includes an emotional, sing-along component.
Few people read Ernest Renan anymore, but he artfully concluded that “the essential conditions to form a people” were “to have done great things together, to want to do more”. Renan tactfully noted that a few lies, a dose of amnesia and selected embellishments were often inserted in such records of “great things together”. Nowhere is that as true as in the lyrics of national anthems – the more stirring, the more tendentious.
All anthems try hard to galvanise those people who own the song. A bit like Pavlov’s dogs, we are meant to respond automatically, standing to attention or joining in the chorus.
Who would recognise the French in the blood-stained, bellicose words of “La Marseillaise” (1792)? The point, though, is that the French do recognise themselves, and continually celebrate themselves, in that song. A bedraggled band of provincial volunteers defined a spirit (of resistance to Austrian invasion), an ethos (of revolutionary defiance) and, finally, a nation in arms. There may be no more dramatic and poignant rendition of an anthem than the moment when “La Marseillaise” drowns out a Nazi marching song in the 1942 film, “Casablanca”, to be greeted with tears and whoops of joy.
China, too, sings along to a march of the volunteers, or, more precisely, “March of the Anti-Manchukuo, Anti-Japan Volunteers” (1934), a commemoration of battles won decades ago meant to imbue a martial brand of nationalism still thought to be essential. Armed nation-builders also take centre stage in Ireland. A tech geek working in a low-tax IT park outside Dublin might feel baffled when invited to declare: “soldiers are we/Whose lives are pledged to Ireland” (“The Soldiers’ Song”, 1910).
Ireland’s government, sports organisations and nationalists, all living in a country dedicated to neutrality, have felt obliged to supplement those bellicose sentiments with an alternative, picayune anthem (“Ireland’s Call”). In the same spirit, if rather more elegantly, Australia and Canada have done minor cosmetic dental flossing to their anthems, substituting “one and free” for “young and free”, and “all of us” for “all her sons” respectively, at no cost to either lyrics or melody. The wartime lyrics of Germany’s anthem required more drastic pruning.
To be fair, Ireland’s anthem is the only one to include and thank foreigners (or, at least, the Irish diaspora) in its celebration of nationhood. Mingled with local fighters, “some have come from a land beyond the wave”. Timor-Leste’s anthem does the reverse, taking aim against the foreign villains of colonialism and imperialism. On a higher plane, Tuvalu and South Sudan do invoke God, with Tuvalu citing “God’s great law” as a point of reference, while South Sudan invites God’s blessing on a “land of great abundance”.
Those are exceptions. Usually anthems are meant to encourage, bind and inspire one nation alone. Some lyrics might seem better suited to comic opera or music hall, but, after all, the words of Christmas carols and Christian hymns do not bear much close examination either. For all three types of song, the second verses are often shockers. All anthems try hard to galvanise those people who own the song. A bit like Pavlov’s dogs, we are meant to respond automatically, standing to attention or joining in the chorus.
Sometimes, watching that call-and-response can be particularly touching. At any sporting event in the United States the crowd will – sincerely and fervently – clasp their hands to their hearts, doff their baseball caps and join in “The Star-Spangled Banner”. The same brand of unfeigned enthusiasm is evident at cinemas throughout India when the national anthem (an oddity, written in Bengali by a poet: 1911) is played before the film. When the apartheid regime collapsed in South Africa, genuine rejoicing could be heard through the plangent strains of “Nkosi sikelel Afrika”.
Anthems can only go so far. Few dare to ape Horace in proclaiming: “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, that it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country. Instead, they try to instil a sense of why it matters to live in and for your country. We’ll share a dream and sing with one voice, those are the guiding thoughts.
Nations evolve, even though Iran uses three synonyms (“enduring”, “lasting” and “eternal”) to describe how long the Islamic Republic will survive. By and large, anthems do not: songs are stubborn things.
