The Land of The Free
The young high school girl waited on the stage, twisting her long blond hair between her fingers, shifting her blue-jeaned legs back and forth, back and forth, as she waited for her cue to begin. With a nod from the principal, she grabbed the microphone in a death grip and began to sing The Star-Spangled Banner. As part of the audience, I quickly rose to my feet.
When the first notes sailed out hesitantly across the auditorium, I cringed, not because she was off-key, but because I knew from experience, she would be in trouble later in the song.
This is not going to be pretty, I thought.
Sure enough as she approached the climax of the song, I could see the strain on her face. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. She took a deep breath, raised her eyebrows until her face looked like a failed Botox experiment, and belted out the highest note, the note that the best singers often use to showcase their skills by soaring into the upper echelon of the musical stratosphere, causing the audience to go wild.
She did not make it.
Her voice cracked, the ending fizzled, and she left the stage with her head down to the sound of mediocre applause.
Singing The Star Spangled Banner as a solo is not for the faint of heart.
In fact, The Star Spangled Banner is one of the hardest national anthems to sing. With a range that stretches beyond an octave and a half, it is no wonder that even some professional singers struggle to hit the low or high notes. If you ask any professional who dares to sing the anthem a cappella, they’ll tell you the beginning is the most critical, because if you start wrong (i.e. too high), you’ll never survive the ending. So, they practice the beginning of the song over and over, in anticipation of its climax.
Unfortunately for many of us non-professional singers, the note is so high, we struggle to hit it. Our voices crack, we switch to a lower octave, or perhaps just fade out altogether. But I’ll be honest with you -- I love watching people struggle to hit that note. In fact, if I’m singing amidst the chorus of the crowd, I will sometimes stop right before this note is sung just so I can hear how everybody else is handling it.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. What an odd thing to do. Who would enjoy listening to a bunch of folks trying their darndest to hit a high note? Well, the reason I love listening to people struggle to hit the note is because of the word they are singing while they struggle. What is this word that comes at the climax of the song? The word is...free.
The land of the FREE…
And isn’t that appropriate? Isn’t it appropriate that the word that is the hardest to sing in the song is the thing that is the hardest to keep?!
For me, listening to people struggle to sing that word, is the perfect reminder of the ongoing struggle to maintain and preserve our freedoms and liberties. The moment we become complacent, the moment we take our freedoms for granted, is the moment we lose them.
Written by J.D. Mesnard
Take pride in our country all you want, and when you sing its anthem, sing it with pride as I do. But know this: if you stop paying attention, the moment that is intended to be the greatest can easily become its worst. If you let your guard down at the critical juncture, your voice will crack; you’ll miss the most important note, the most important word, and you will ensure a less-than-stellar ending.
So yes, I enjoy watching people struggle to hit that note, and perhaps now you will, too. May it be a reminder that we must never take for granted the freedoms and liberties we enjoy in our great land as Americans.
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The above blog is from my archives, written by my friend and State Representative of District 17 for the Arizona House of Representatives, JD Mesnard. Follow JD on Facebook. He also is a professor at Mesa Community College.