Why there needs to be more Black Lives Matter anthem protests

This weekend, an American footballer, Colin Kaepernick, refused to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner. Here is an amazing picture of him sitting:

Which apparently makes for huge news in the States, especially after he said this afterwards:

I am not going to stand up to show pride for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting away with murder.

I was genuinely shocked when I heard the news. Not because of what Kaepernick did, but because he’s the first.

The Star-Spangled Banner is something I’ve been expecting Black Lives Matter supporters to have long used in protests or to have protested against. I mean, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? That hardly seems to ring true at this moment, does it? I’ve also long been expecting an athlete – black or otherwise – to realise the symbolic importance of the anthem. I was sure one would do something during an Olympic medal ceremony.

[Kaepernick turns out to have been doing this for a few games without anyone realising, so maybe others have, but…]

Another potential flashpoint is the song’s third verse which talks about how “no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”. Those lines are referring to the Americans defeating British soldiers, who included a handful of ex-slave regiments. Some commentators are now looking at those words as meaning the anthem’s racist, especially as its author was a slave owner although, personally, I think that’s going too far. (The songwriter, Francis Scott Key, was a lawyer who tried to free slaves as well as keeping them, so his history’s complex, and the anthem is a vehemently anti-British song, not an anti-black one. Then there’s the fact no one realised there was a third verse until recently!).

So, why has it taken so long? I worry it’s because being labelled “unpatriotic” in the US has become so stigmatising – far more so than in other countries – that tackling the anthem is seen as too risky. That shouldn’t be the case. National anthems are there mainly to unite and inspire, yes, but they’re also there to reflect a nation – and that means they can and should be used to criticise it.

Kaepernick is in a long line of people who’ve used anthems to make political points (see my book to learn about the many Japanese who use theirs to protest right-wing politics, for instance, or just think of Hendrix doing his Star-Spangled Banner covers). I hope he’s not the last.

Kaepernick’s protest did make me realise one other thing: I haven’t written about Lift Every Voice and Sing, the so-called Black National Anthem, on this blog. The words were written back in 1900 for a group of school children, which probably explains why its message is so clear:

Lift every voice and sing

Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty

It was given a tune in 1905, but didn’t take on its current status until 1919 when the NAACP – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – named it the “negro national anthem” and started pushing it. Here’s an amazing video of Ray Charles singing it in 1972:

Is it right for now? The message, yes. But, musically, obviously not. I’m also the sort of person who thinks every protest movement should write its own music.

The best black American protest song I’ve heard lately is YG and Nipsey Hussle’s FDT (F*ck Donald Trump), which has the benefit of being an utter banger as well as having a message. Enjoy below or, er, give Ray Charles another spin!

Memories of a revolution that failed: the fifth anniversary of Tahrir Square

The Tahrir Square protests in 2011 with Egypt’s flag. Samia Jaheen is in there somewhere!

A year ago, I was in Egypt doing research for my book on the stories behind national anthems. While there, I met Samia Jaheen – one of the main revolutionaries who filled Tahrir Square in 2011 to call for the resignation of the country’s then military ruler, Hosni Mubarak.

It was one of the most emotional interviews I did in all my research.

Since today’s the fifth anniversary of the start of those protests, I thought I’d put up the section of my book about Samia. Please read it to the end.

 

Samia Jaheen, bulgingly pregnant, is propped up on a sofa in her Cairo flat. She’s the daughter of Salah Jaheen, one of Egypt’s greatest ever songwriters, and she’s been chatting animatedly for the past half-hour about Egypt’s anthems past and present. But for the last few moments she’s drifted into melancholy, staring into the middle distance like I’m no longer there, as if she’s picturing somewhere else entirely. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I can get lost thinking about it – remembering that there was a moment when we were just sitting in Tahrir, not afraid of what would happen, just singing, chanting. How happy everyone was. It feels like it was another lifetime.’

It’s 28 February 2015, the fourth anniversary of Egypt’s most recent revolution – the day the Arab Spring succeeded here, when protestors in Tahrir Square brought down Hosni Mubarak, the general who’d ruled the country since Anwar Sadat’s death in 1981. It was on that day that Egypt’s anthem ‘Bilady, Bilady’ was sung in celebration louder than ever before, including by Samia who was one of the most vocal figures there (there were dozens of ‘songs of the revolution’, but everyone agrees the anthem was in the top handful). But, as Samia says, that day now seems like very long ago. During the last four years, Egypt has experienced government under the Muslim Brotherhood, a military coup, the election of the man who ran that coup (Abdel Fattah al-Sisi), and then a severe crackdown on all opposition, including multiple death sentences (Samia, who now works as a human rights activist, says she’s been threatened with prison many times, her father’s name the only reason she hasn’t been locked up).

Cairo today doesn’t exactly feel like a place of celebration as it was back then. The huge teardrop-shaped Tahrir Square is now surrounded by coils of barbed wire, ready to be pulled across the roads if needed; tanks sit outside the Egyptian Museum on its northern side, ready to roll into action, almost daring tourists to try to take a photo of them; while newspapers are filled with warnings about extremists and the ‘foreign forces’ behind them (that explains why people think I’m a spy). You only have to be in this city for a few moments to realise everything the Arab Spring hoped to achieve has failed.

It’s because of that fact that Samia drops into a reverie whenever I ask her about Tahrir – even when I just ask if she sang ‘Bilady, Bilady’ while protesting there. ‘Of course we sang it then. Every day. Many times,’ she says. ‘And when we sang it, it actually meant something, for the first time I think. I used to sing it all the time in school and it never meant anything, but singing it then when people were sacrificing their lives for the country – getting killed by the police – it felt different.’

‘Didn’t you feel like you were singing the anthem of the very government you were protesting against?’ I ask.

‘Yes, of course,’ she says. ‘But we were singing it to re-own it – to say “This is our country; not yours.” We didn’t sing it the gentle way they sing it. We sang it like “BILADY, BILADY, BILADY”.’ She shouts every word at me. ‘We were taking it to a different place. Sometimes it felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest when I heard everyone sing it, or my father’s songs. But that’s all another time now; that’s the sad part.’

I ask how she feels about the anthem today. ‘When it comes on the radio, we turn it off. Not just the anthem; all the songs we sang at Tahrir. We don’t want to listen to them. That’s how bad things have got.’ She takes a deep breath as if to steady herself. ‘This is not my country any more and this is not my anthem. Maybe you’ve caught me on a bad day, but I don’t feel romantic about it now. I’m too hurt to feel that way.’

Samia Jaheen – yes, I should have taken one without her smiling!

Samia knows that the majority of people don’t feel as she does – about the country, or the anthem – even those who have every right to share her views. Earlier this morning, I’d got talking with the young owner of a washing machine shop, his gigantic beard and the deep prayer bruise on his forehead indicating he was a devout Muslim. He would have once been the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood’s target audience. ‘Things have changed since 2011,’ he said. ‘We’ – he pointed at his beard – ‘are looked on differently now. We’re not to be trusted. But whatever happens, I’ll love my country. I can’t stop doing so. You want me to give you reasons, like ‘one, two, three, four, five’? I can’t explain it like that. I’ll always love Sayed Darwish’s songs too,’ he added. ‘His music was about the normal people like me.’

A photo of grafitti put up in Tahrir Square during the protests and featuring Sheik Emad, who was murdered and who Samia knew. She has this in her living room

I tell Samia about this man, but she just says that for her things have become ‘too personal’ to think like him. I ask how many of her friends were killed during the revolution. She stares off into the middle distance again. ‘These weren’t close friends,’ she says, ‘just people I got to know, that I respected.’ She takes another deep breath.

‘There’s Mena, Ahmed . . .’ a slight smile comes across her face as if she’s just recalled something funny one of them did, ‘. . . Karika, Ali . . .’ I look down and suddenly realise she’s counting each person off on her fingers. ‘… Sheik Emad – that’s his picture over there, they graffitied him on to one of the walls around the Square . . .’ I can’t look away from her hands. ‘. . . Mohammed, the son of a friend of mine . . .’

The list goes on.

The year’s greatest football – and musical – protest

Back in June, Hong Kong football fans started booing – and I mean booing – China’s national anthem as a way of protesting that country’s rule of the province.

FIFA, being FIFA, decided to fine the Hong Kong FA for those boos and demanded they never happened again.

So how did Hong Kong fans react last month? By doing this:

Yes, amazing!

FIFA has unsurprisingly launched an investigation.

Recently, I met a student from Hong Kong at one of my book talks who told me that many people there actually consider their ‘national anthem’ to be a cheesy pop song called Below the Lion Rock (rather than China’s March of the Volunteers).

Performed by Cantopop legend Ramon Tam, it’s the theme tune to a 1970s TV show and it has the sort of appalling lyrics you’d expect of the theme tune to a 1970s TV show (“In life we’re sometimes glad / But we’ll also be sad”) so it’s somewhat surprising it’s become a rallying cry, especially for pro-democracy protesters.

But if you don’t believe me, here’s a video of said monstrosity set to a montage of last year’s Hong Kong student protests. I hope someone re-edits it to cut in those kids holding up the “Boo” signs!