Our national anthem is the cacophonous noise of our free speech – What a great toon, and a great tune! All rise to protest the healthcare repeal, all kneel for the racist anthem our Dictator is demanding you stand for.
Cool. Could be a frenetic player piano study of Conlon Nancarrow. A link below to one of my favorites. Can you figure how the piece is configured? I have a complete collection of his studies, and can’t listen to much at a time. Same thing with Trump’s Tweets.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2gVhBxwRqg
These days, digital could translate this into a piece, too. What Nicolas Slonimsky might have done with it!
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s 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.
In other words, Key was saying that the blood of all the former slaves and “hirelings” on the battlefield will wash away the pollution of the British invaders.
The slaves in stanza three were fighting for the British because they were hoping to be set free. The Brits outlawed slavery on English soil in 1732, and then throughout the rest of the Empire in 1833, almost 30 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Freedom is a powerful incentive, especially if you are enslaved. American slaves working on sugar plantations in St John in the US Virgin Islands, tried to escape to the British Tortola by swimming and many of them drowned while attempting escape. Francis Scott Key believed lock, stock and barrel in slavery, which is well documented for those who want the facts.
Mr. Blawt over 6 years ago
Our national anthem is the cacophonous noise of our free speech – What a great toon, and a great tune! All rise to protest the healthcare repeal, all kneel for the racist anthem our Dictator is demanding you stand for.
emptc12 over 6 years ago
Cool. Could be a frenetic player piano study of Conlon Nancarrow. A link below to one of my favorites. Can you figure how the piece is configured? I have a complete collection of his studies, and can’t listen to much at a time. Same thing with Trump’s Tweets.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2gVhBxwRqg
These days, digital could translate this into a piece, too. What Nicolas Slonimsky might have done with it!
Radish the wordsmith over 6 years ago
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 wash’d out their foul footstep’s 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.
In other words, Key was saying that the blood of all the former slaves and “hirelings” on the battlefield will wash away the pollution of the British invaders.
twclix over 6 years ago
The slaves in stanza three were fighting for the British because they were hoping to be set free. The Brits outlawed slavery on English soil in 1732, and then throughout the rest of the Empire in 1833, almost 30 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Freedom is a powerful incentive, especially if you are enslaved. American slaves working on sugar plantations in St John in the US Virgin Islands, tried to escape to the British Tortola by swimming and many of them drowned while attempting escape. Francis Scott Key believed lock, stock and barrel in slavery, which is well documented for those who want the facts.