Indivisible: The Nation and Its Anthem in Black Musical Performance

Oh! how shall I speak of my proud country’s shame Of the strains on her glory, how give them their name? How say that her banner in mockery waves— Her star-spangled banner—o’er millions of slaves?

—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “Eliza Harris” (1853)

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free I wish I could break all the chains holdin’ me I wish I could say all the things that I should say Say ’em loud say ’em clear for the whole wide world to hear.

—Nina Simone, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free” (1967)

On July 1, 2008, Denver, Colorado, hosted its annual State of the City address. This typically pro forma occasion was, in this year, a high profile event for the city and the nation at large; in addition to celebrating the nation’s independence, that year’s address served as a prelude to the city hosting the Democratic National Convention at which the Democratic Party would announce its presidential nominee. Wavering, as it was in this moment, between two viable candidates—an African American male and a white American female—the party’s decision was eagerly anticipated. Denver’s heightened function in ushering in the nation’s future made the performances staged that day all the more significant, and it was in recognition of that profile that the mayor’s office chose jazz musician and performance artist René Marie to sing the national anthem. After an introduction by City Council President Michael Hancock in which he mistakenly identified her as “René Martin,” Marie approached the microphone. As she sang the B flat note to announce “The Star Spangled Banner,” her text deviated, as she sung not “Oh, say can you see” but, instead, “Lift ev’ry voice and sing.” In this deconstructed and hybrid performance, which combined the melody of “The Star Spangled Banner” with the lyrics of the Negro National Anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” Marie set a new tone for discussions of race and patriotism at the dawning of a “postracial” America.

Marie’s performance, which left city representatives “as surprised as anyone,” is a dynamic example of how our racial present continues to be informed by considerations of past political struggle (Osher 2008). Her use of the lyrics of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” signals a reconfigured citizenship that grapples with the lived experience of race through a national anthem emblematic of liberty built by settler colonialism and chattel slavery. One generation after the end of slavery in the United States, W. E. B. Du Bois famously articulated the plight of the nation’s Negroes as “double consciousness,” an identity tug-of-war between race and nation that is never fully reconciled in spite of its constant negotiation. Marie’s performance signals Du Bois, yet it moves through and beyond it by way of a sonic praxis in which she constructs an alternative national genealogy of political engagement and allegiance. As Hazel Carby rightly argues, Du Bois’s judgments in The Souls of Black Folk ([1903] 1996) “reveal highly gendered structures of intellectual and political thought and feeling” (1998, 12). Patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny are reproduced and informed by these structures of gendered difference that are installed and exposed in quotidian scenes of intellectual and art making as well as more spectacular displays by the state. Marie’s composition negotiates these gendered structures and highlights the complicated roles that black women play in popular culture and the (black) public sphere, two locations of impact that find intersection within the bodies of black performing artists.

While I am concerned here with the music of and performances by the African descended in the United States, I resist the impulse to critique or evaluate the technical success of Marie’s performance; musical taste and preference is not of concern so much as the vision and impact of the music produced that day. The importance of her performance is first recognizable by its ability to create a public debate that unearthed the tensions that underlie national...