Republic or Death!

Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

1. France: The greatest anthem of them all

2. Nepal: Defying convention

3. America: An ad-man's dream

4. Japan: Anthems and conflict

5. Kazakhstan: Anthems in dictatorships

6. Liechtenstein: One song to the tune of another

7. Bosnia and Herzegovina: An anthem in need of words

8. The Islamic State: Anthems in jihad

9. Egypt: Anthems and fame

10. South Africa: Trying to sing the rainbow: one anthem, five languages

11. Paraguay: National operas

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

There are a couple of hundred songs that are sung by millions across the world each day, that school children know by heart and sports fans belt out perfectly even after eight beers. And they aren't pop songs – they are national anthems. These are songs which inspire the fiercest of feelings: for some they are a declaration of nationalistic pride; for others a rallying cry for revolution; and for others still they serve as a shameful reminder of past wrongs. And yet, despite the fact that for many of us they form a fundamental part of our national consciousness, the fascinating stories underlying the creation and adoption of each national anthem have rarely, if ever, been told.

In
Republic or Death!
, Alex Marshall brings the incredible stories of the world's national anthems to life. Taking in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas North and South, he embarks on an adventure that includes cycling the route along which French revolutionaries marched as they first sang La Marseillaise; entering a competition for the best singer of the Star-Spangled Banner; and attempting to bribe his way to an audience with the king of Nepal in order to uncover the story behind the only national anthem written on a Casio keyboard.

In the course of his enthralling and often hilarious travels, Alex encounters everyone from senior politicians and anthem composers to the sports fans and activists for whom these songs evoke such a wide range of emotions. Along the way, he uncovers the fascinating cultural and musical history of the world's anthems, and also asks us to consider what they mean for us today.

If you would like to listen to the anthems and other songs talked about in
Republic or Death!
, please head to
www.republicordeath.com
, where you will find an audio guide to the book.

Educated at Cambridge University,
Alex Marshall
is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about music for over a decade, and who has worked for the BBC, the
Guardian
and the
New York Times
, among others. He has been researching national anthems since 2008.

 

 

To the composers and poets.

KOSOVO IS MORE
beautiful than you could ever hope a former war zone in the Balkans to be. Plains stretch out wherever you look, hills crowding at their edges, suffocated by forests. Starlings always seem to be swarming overhead, chasing your car, and the sky sits low – a luminous blue in daytime and every shade of red at sunset. It's impossible to ruin a landscape like this, although a lot of people seem to have tried, dotting it with factories and the occasional gigantic obelisk in memory of a fallen soldier, some of the latter complete with oversized photos stuck to the bottom which let you see every spot and blemish on the poor man's face.

I should probably be admiring that view now, wondering how a country that was torn apart by ethnic conflict less than twenty years ago now looks like a postcard. Unfortunately, it's hard to pay attention to even the prettiest countryside when you're being driven at 70 miles an hour down the wrong side of a road. Especially when a car's just appeared in the distance and is heading right for you. The driver of the car I'm in doesn't seem to notice we're moments from collision. He's too busy trying to open the ring pull on the beer can between his legs. To be fair to him, he said he didn't want it, but his boss, a fifty-something, craggy-faced man called Jashar, said he'd be a woman if he didn't drink, and being a woman is apparently the worst insult possible here.

Jashar's told me he's a ‘civil engineer', but a few hours ago he drove me around Kosovo's pothole-filled capital, Priština, pointing out businesses he's owned (‘Never get into banking,' he said), so I'm starting to suspect that may not be exactly true. He's certainly the first civil engineer I've met with a chauffeur-driven Audi. Perhaps I should have quizzed him on his knowledge of construction, but I haven't had a chance; all we seem to have done during our time together is drink. We've drunk at his house a few doors down from the American embassy – his children brought us whisky and nuts on silver platters, then one stood in the corner holding a TV aerial so we got a better reception of a football match – and we've just finished drinking in a lakeside restaurant. Four beers each. Three shots of grappa. Some savage local brandy to finish.

‘Aren't we on the wrong side of the road?' I slur from the back seat.

Jashar laughs.

‘Isn't that a car coming?'

Jashar laughs.

‘Won't we get arrested?'

Jashar laughs.

‘Who would arrest us?' he says, turning to face me. ‘You're with the most important man in Kosovo.' From his tone I assume he means himself, but he nods to my left and I look at the person beside me. The most important man in Kosovo is in his mid-fifties, has wiry grey hair and eyebrows so thick they seem to be trying to hide his eyes. He's drunkenly slumped against the window, mouth open, trying to sleep, and he's got a food stain on his top. His name's Mendi Mengjiqi and he's the composer of Kosovo's national anthem.

‘But no one likes his song,' I say stupidly, the drink the only reason I'm being honest.

‘They will,' Jashar shouts back, sounding serious for the first time in hours. Then he throws me another beer. ‘Drink, woman!' he laughs. We're still on the wrong side of the road. God knows where the other car is.

*

How does someone find themselves trapped in a car with the composer of Kosovo's national anthem? In my case, it's all a rapper's fault.

One recent summer, I was interviewing rap's next big thing for a British newspaper. He was sitting on the roof of his record label's offices, London spread out before him as if he were about to conquer it. He had just sold a few million copies of his debut single in the US and was supposedly trying to break Europe, although when I arrived his main concern appeared to be using his new-found fame to get the record label's secretaries to sit on his knee.

When he was ready to chat, he didn't wait for a question, but just started talking about his single, telling me it – a song about being a ‘lonely stoner' – was important. Really important. Over and over, he said it. For a while I thought he was going to spell it out for me in case I'd missed his point: ‘I-M-P-O-R-T-A-N-T.'

I sat there struggling to see how a song about smoking dope was as life-changing as he said it was, then gave up and started trying to think of songs that actually were. Not ones that people had fallen in love to, or had played at their wedding, or which made them think of their children. I wanted songs that had changed the world; songs that people had fought over and protested against; songs that had made people wake up and decide to build a barricade. The only ones I could think of were anthems.

Right at that moment, I realised I knew nothing about them. I couldn't tell you who wrote my own anthem, ‘God Save the Queen', for instance. I couldn't have sung most of it if the rapper had asked (unlikely, I grant you). I couldn't tell you who wrote America's, Germany's or France's either, or what those musicians had been like, whether they were upstanding citizens or bigamists, racists or criminals. But I was pretty sure that anthems were important – and I-M-P-O-R-T-A-N-T at that. I mean, people had won wars singing them, hadn't they? People had brought down governments with them, right? Somewhere in the world, anthems were being sung in life-changing situations right that minute, weren't they? I wanted to know the answers to those questions, and I wanted to know them more than anything this rapper could tell me. The interview didn't turn out to be my best; I was already trying to work out where I'd need to go to find out if my hunch was right.

*

The song that can claim to be the world's first anthem was written around 1570. No one knows exactly when. It's called ‘Het Wilhelmus' (‘The William'), and today it's the anthem of the Netherlands. It's slow and steady, the sort of tune you imagine farmers whistling while they plough fields. But in the sixteenth century, it had the impact of punk. The King of Spain, Philip II, ruled the Netherlands at the time and made a fortune collecting taxes from the country and its traders and merchants. But, not satisfied, he decided it was a good idea to step up the persecution of anyone there who wasn't Catholic. The Dutch responded by rioting and so the king executed their leaders and had their heads sent to him in Madrid, neatly packed in boxes. At one point, he sentenced the entire population of the Netherlands to death for being heretics. Literally everyone – even the Catholics. Unsurprisingly, the rioting turned into full-scale rebellion.

That rebellion's leader was a German-born, French-speaking aristocrat, William of Orange – neatly bearded and never seen without a ruff around his neck. He was better known as William the Silent, which hardly suggests he was the most inspirational leader that's ever lived, but it's him that ‘Het Wilhelmus' is about. Whether he commissioned it in a fit of egotism or someone wrote it in admiration is unknown, but it's a bizarre song, fifteen verses long and all of them sung from William's point of view. None of those verses are exactly what you'd call anthemic, either. None are a call to arms, demanding people grab their pitchforks and stab a Spaniard in the back. None tell people not to worry, that William and his men will soon win the day. None are even really in praise of the Netherlands, with William rhapsodising about the country's natural beauty, its beer or its canals.

Instead it starts with William all but begging for his life. ‘A prince of Orange / am I, free and fearless,' goes the first verse, before quickly adding, ‘The King of Spain / I've always honoured' – an attempt to prove William's objection was with Philip's local administrators, not Philip himself. By the end, William is on his knees promising, ‘I've never despised him.' It reads like someone who knows he's in trouble and is trying his best to get out of it – a desperate schoolboy running through excuses. Even when he's not trying to show his loyalty, the song's scarcely more rousing, largely him asking God to ‘save me from disaster'. But something about the song clearly worked at the time. Everyone sang it: soldiers, maids, farmers, even butchers sweeping blood into the gutters. It made them believe in a cause and want to fight for it; made them realise they'd tried being reasonable, but now had no choice but to stand up to this foreign ruler and kill his men. Within ten years, William had led the Dutch to an (admittedly perilous) independence and created arguably the world's first nation state. Just try to ignore the fact he was assassinated – shot on his doorstep after Philip put a 25,000-crown prize on his head – in 1584.

*

‘Het Wilhelmus' was a success – it was sung for decades after William's death as the Dutch and Spanish kept fighting, and it became so associated with the country that it was used by foreigners to welcome Dutch leaders – but national anthems didn't catch on at first. Maybe it was because the idea behind them – that one song could represent a ruler or their people, create hope and defiance – was too revolutionary for most to take in.