When Anthems Go Awry
Spectator sports are dramatic affairs, pulling emotion from athletes and fans alike. Euphoria. Dejection. Pride. Anger. And that’s just while the anthems are being sung.
The ritual, designed as a moment of oneness, now and then becomes a moment of agitation. Or bewilderment. Or both. A recent case in point happened at a Fed Cup tennis match between the United States and Germany, played in Hawaii in February. The German anthem, set to music by Haydn, sounded fine, except the words sung were from a version that was banned after World War II because of its association with the Nazis.
The Germans were furious. The Americans apologized.
The Times’s Victor Mather pointed out a litany of such blunders, some historical, many geographical. The anthem of Niger, which is not Nigeria, was played before a Nigerian soccer game at the Olympics last year. Chile’s national anthem instead of Uruguay’s at the Copa América. The Isle of Man’s instead of El Salvador’s at a soccer friendly. Canada’s instead of New Zealand’s at a rugby match. Uzbekistan’s instead of Ukraine’s at the world gymnastics championships.
It’s not just national sensibilities being offended. Mr. Mather recounted how the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus set up to lip-sync to its recording of the American anthem at a baseball game last year, only to hear a woman’s voice singing through the speakers. Racial tension is never far away either, as when an anthem from South Africa’s apartheid era played at a field hockey game in Britain in 2012.
And there is the continuing saga of Colin Kaepernick, the National Football League quarterback who started a national argument last season by kneeling, instead of standing, during the American anthem in silent protest against racism and police brutality. Mr. Kaepernick, who led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl four years ago, is now out of a job after deciding to offer his services to other teams but, so far, finding no takers.
The Times, examining both his statistics and his politics, asked in a headline: “Colin Kaepernick Is Unemployed. Is It Because of His Arm, or His Knee?”
Given how fraught such matters are, Americans find it hard to comprehend the transformation of what has become the unofficial anthem of British rugby: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The Times described it as “one of the most cherished of 19th- century African-American spirituals, its forlorn lyrics invoking the darkness of slavery and the sustained oppression of a race.” Across the Atlantic it has become a drinking song, used to rowdy- up the crowd.
How that came to pass isn’t exactly clear, but accounts through the years have tied it to a memorable victory in 1988 and the performance of Chris Oti, the first black player on the English team in nearly a century.
John M. Williams of the Center for the Sociology of Sport at the University of Leicester in England, said he could understand if Americans were unsettled by the appropriation. “The only thing I could give them as a kind of strange reassurance is that I suspect the vast majority of people singing it have no idea where it came from.”
He added: “The typical crowd that goes to watch the English national rugby team is not likely to be an audience that’s going to think hard about these types of questions.”