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By MEERA MAHESWARAN
Guest Essayist
Shakespeare once said, “If music be the food of love, play on....” And, indeed, people need music as much as they need food. Music is more than a social and cultural activity; music is a mellifluous stream of beauty that sweeps through souls and opens eyes to a deeper realization of their world - a world of joy and universality of music. It may not be essential for life; yet life without it is unimaginable. This power of expressing and inciting strong feelings is the power that makes music a major source of national pride.
Nationalism is a people’s sense of belonging together. It is a sense that lifts up the human spirit to experience such feelings as loyalty to the nation and pride in its culture and history. One way of expressing these profound sentiments is through music.
Music has existed in some form in all regions of the world since the early days of man. Much of a nation’s history can be seen through its traditional and popular music. One of the most important times when music is used as a crucial element is during the time of war. Then music’s skill of lifting up the human spirit to feel national pride helps the country get the help of its people.
During the American Revolutionary War, when the colonies were fighting to gain independence, the first distinctively native songs, “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, “Paul Jones’ Victory” and the “Springfield Mountain” arose as part of the growth of an independent American culture. The very first native composer, the urban Francis Hopkinson, was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence, thereby he unknowingly forged a link between American music and the struggle for freedom that has never since been broken.
Later in American history, slavery caused the ascent of Negro spirituals and other Negro music such as work songs, ballads and “shouts” which evolved on the southern plantations during the Civil War; the words of God and salvation, along with the slow, beautiful tune of the black spirituals, gave the tired slaves the hope that heaven was waiting to free them.
During the War of 1812, while watching the bombs burst in the air over Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key
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