The Star-Spangled Banner and the Decline of Musical Culture in the U.S.

On August 22, 1954, my father took my brother and I to our first baseball game. It was a Sunday doubleheader at Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn. I was 9 years old and my brother was 6. There were many things I saw that day that I'll never forget. First there was the sight of the green grass as we got to the end of the ramp into the grandstand. Televisions and newspaper photographs were all in black and white back then so my first glimpse of a major league field in living color was a revelation. Then there was my first look at my heroes -- Jackie, Pee Wee, and all the others. And then there was the music which was provided by Gladys Gooding who was the organist at Ebbetts Field and also at Madison Square Garden. The p.a. announcer said: "And now ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the singing of our national anthem." We stood, the organ played and we sang. More than thirty thousand people singing with gusto. What a thrilling sound! The memory of it brings tears to my eyes.

America's musical culture reached its high point shortly before that day when I saw my first game. The ability to sing, the knowledge of a widely shared repertoire of songs, and the enjoyment of singing them were a birthright for people of my parent's generation. My generation, people born in the U.S. during World War II and the boomers born in the post-war years, have lived in a society whose music culture has been in continual decline.

People no longer think of singing as a natural act that everybody can do. They are right. Most people today cannot sing, and do not know any songs. How many times have you been in a restaurant when a group of people at another table tried to sing "Happy Birthday" to someone? Do you cringe as I do when you hear their tone deaf shouting? And what do we hear now at sports events? The Star-Spangled Banner is still sung, but not at all by the spectators. Usually one person is called on to sing the anthem a cappella while the crowd stands impatiently. Sometimes, a good singer is found and the anthem is sung well. (Thank you, Larry Harris.) All too often, unfortunately, the anthem is desecrated by atrocious singers with no sense of rhythm who obscure the melody beyond recognition with excessive ornamentation. The impatient crowd starts cheering before the belabored rendition concludes and mercifully drowns out the ending. This is what we've come to.

Last night, I listened to the beginning of a basketball game between the Knicks and the Nets. The Star-Spangled Banner was sung by a young man from the Harlem Boys Choir who has a good tenor voice. He sang it in the key of E and had no trouble singing the high B on the word "free". Unfortunately, he sang two wrong notes. In his key, "dawn's early light" should be E G# A# B. The same notes occur on the words "perilous fight". Both times the singer, whose name I needn't mention, sang an A natural where it should have been an A-sharp. At Ebbetts Field in 1954, not one of the thousands of people singing did that. We all knew how the song goes.