national anthems

those ppl who do things like start blogs reviewing every national anthem for every nation ever

My friend is doing this. What are 'those people' meant to be like? How is doing this worse than 'Popular' (which, by posting on ilx, you are giving tacit approval to)? How is starting a blog on it worse than starting an ilx thread?

― emil.y, Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:01 (11 months ago) Permalink

that spanish anthem sounds like it could be in a movie: man comes home after having suffered through hard times, walks up triumphantly towards his wife and kisses her, spanish anthem starting as he approaches his wife, roll credits.

― Jibe, Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:03 (11 months ago) Permalink

tbf most national anthems sound like they could score moving moments of movies or whatever

― Jibe, Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:03 (11 months ago) Permalink

man comes home after having suffered through hard times, walks up triumphantly towards his wife and kisses her = ferdinand and isabella uniting spain after the reconquista

― too cool graham rix listening to neu (nakhchivan), Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:06 (11 months ago) Permalink

Uruguay's is fairly buoyant:

Laibach's album where they reinterpreted various national anthems was good in parts.

― Temporarily Famous In The Czech Republic (ShariVari), Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:07 (11 months ago) Permalink

ftr i haven't actually seen any blogs reviewing national anthems, it is just something that would obviously already exist in several iterations because ppl would have noticed all these anthems, for all these countries but there is a finite number so they can all be listed and rated in some grandly positivist undertaking

apart from the maybe 10% of anthems that are notable outliers, it seems that most anthems are designed to sound like every other anthem to foreigners who seldom hear them and don't know the language, while efficiently touching on the most efficient national archetypes / metonyms for domestic consumption

― too cool graham rix listening to neu (nakhchivan), Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:21 (11 months ago) Permalink

too many efficiencies there

so,'deutschlandleid'

this is really gorgeous imo

― too cool graham rix listening to neu (nakhchivan), Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:27 (11 months ago) Permalink

lyrics by sedar songhor.....

Senegal, you the son of the lion's froth,
Sprung from the night to the gallop of horses,
Give us, oh! give us the honour of our ancestors,
Splendid as ebony and strong as muscle,
We say it clearly – the sword has no flaw.

Senegal, we take on your great work:
To shelter the chicks from the falcons,
To make, from east to west, north to south,
Arisen, one single people, a people without seams,
But a people turned to all the winds of the earth.

― too cool graham rix listening to neu (nakhchivan), Saturday, 16 June 2012 12:53 (11 months ago) Permalink

la marseillaise or gtfo

― cissymanwhore (k3vin k.), Saturday, 16 June 2012 13:29 (11 months ago) Permalink

the ne plus ultra of old school anthems but the lyrics are a bit overripe

Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They're coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons and women!

― too cool graham rix listening to neu (nakhchivan), Saturday, 16 June 2012 14:48 (11 months ago) Permalink

La marsellaise will always be number one for me but i'll admit i havent really listened to them all. I remember being like 9 and hearing midi versions of mostly every anthem in my encyclopedia britannica cd.

I find the lack of lyrics in the spanish one sort of lazy (which fits their culture, actually) but seeing masses of drunk spaniards attempting to sing along to its melody is a thing to behold.

― Moka, Saturday, 16 June 2012 15:21 (11 months ago) Permalink

The German national anthem written by Haydn is quite good too, specially in stripped, chamber music form.

Also the swiss anthem is slightly melancholic:

I like the American national anthem when played in one instrument or acapella, it makes for some haunting, cinematic moments.

― Moka, Saturday, 16 June 2012 15:44 (11 months ago) Permalink

I never realized how totally gory La Marseillaise was until I saw the Serge Gainsbourg biopic and they had the lyrics as captions. Star-Spangled Banner admits some bloodshed but not until the third verse:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

When I was a kid I thought it would be cool to learn all the neglected additional verses, which I would sometimes read from the hymnbook while sitting around in church, but the song is just too tedious.

― Word of Wisdom Robots (Abbbottt), Saturday, 16 June 2012 15:55 (11 months ago) Permalink

the swiss one is excellent, though it sounds more russian-liturgical than central european

― dis civilization and its contents (nakhchivan), Saturday, 16 June 2012 15:56 (11 months ago) Permalink

I also like the last verse of SSB because it ends with this:
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
It's like one of those Beetle Bailey Sunday strips that could have been three panels, but they fill seven panels with a bunch of junk, and the last panel finally has some semblance of a junk. Key seems to have run out of steam by the end of the song. "What the hell do I do with this last couplet? I guess I'll just throw in our motto."

― Word of Wisdom Robots (Abbbottt), Saturday, 16 June 2012 15:59 (11 months ago) Permalink

In sixth grade I listened to MIDIs of *all* the national anthems from an Encarata CD-ROM and I concluded they were 99% the same.

― Word of Wisdom Robots (Abbbottt), Saturday, 16 June 2012 16:00 (11 months ago) Permalink