Abstract
There is a commonly held belief that national anthems have a unique power over people. They are examples of unisonance, which is a situation where people, wholly unknown to one another, utter the same verses to the same melody. This unisonance effectively and efficiently allows “each” person to sing the music of the “whole” nation with “all” other citizens. National anthems are now a single – but powerful – part of the paraphernalia of national packaging, alongside flags, currency, or postage stamps, the iconography that many of us inherit and which we come to regard as both normal and normative. Yet although the words of these songs are often banal and their tunes mediocre, simultaneously singing an imagined sound seems to bring people together. Thus national anthems constitute a serious business, and that is why they are played and sung at the most solemn moments dedicated to performing a nation’s spirit, as singing and listening to them generates raised feelings of pride and patriotism. And although music often acts as a unifying factor in social contexts and is often flaunted as being a universalizing phenomenon, it also often serves as a rallying point for expressing personal and group identities, thereby exaggerating rather than minimizing differences. This is the case with national anthems.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, B. (1992). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, B. (2004). Recorded music and practices of remembering. Social & Cultural Geography, 5(1), 3–18.
Billington, R., Strawbridge, S., Greensides, L., & Fitzsimons, A. (1991). Culture and society: A sociology of culture. London: Macmillan.
Bohlman, P. V. (2002). World music: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bristow, M. J., & Reed, W. L. (Eds.). (2002). National anthems of the world (10th ed.). London: Cassell.
Bryson, B. (1996). “Anything but heavy metal”: Symbolic exclusion and musical dislikes. American Sociological Review, 61, 884–899.
Buch, E. (2004). Beethoven’s Ninth: A political history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cerulo, K. (1984). Social disruption and its effects on music; an empirical analysis. Social Forces, 62(4), 885–904.
Cerulo, K. (1989). Sociopolitical control and the structure of national symbols: An empirical analysis of national anthems. Social Forces, 68(1), 76–99.
Cerulo, K. (1993). Symbols and the world system: National anthems and flags. Sociological Forum, 8(2), 243–271.
Cerulo, K. (1995). Identity designs: The sights and sounds of a nation. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Clark, C. (1997). Forging identity: Beethoven’s ‘ode’ as European anthem. Critical Inquiry, 23(4), 789–807.
Cook, N. (1998). Music: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cowen, T. (1998). In praise of commercial culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Csepeli, G., & Örkény, A. (1997). The imagery of national anthems in Europe. Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, XXIV(1–2), 33–41.
Daughtry, M. (2003). Russia’s new anthem and the negotiation of national identity. Sociology of Music, 47(1), 42–67.
DeNora, T. (2003). Music sociology: Getting the music into the action. British Journal of Music Education, 20, 165–177.
Durkheim, E. (1995[1912]). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press.
Eyck, F. G. (1995). The voice of nations: European national anthems and their authors. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Feinstein, M. M. (2002). Deutschland über alles?: The national anthem debate in the Federal Republic of Germany. Central European History, 33(4), 505–531.
Felsenstein, F. (2012). England’s Other Israel. The Jewish Quarterly Review, 104(2), 323–331.
Folkestad, G. (2002). National identity and music. In R. A. R. MacDonald, D. J. Hargreaves, & D. Miell (Eds.), Musical identities (pp. 151–162). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Fox, J. E., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2008). Everyday nationhood. Ethnicities, 8(4), 536–563.
Gilboa, A., & Bodner, E. (2009). What are your thoughts when the national anthem is playing? An empirical exploration. Psychology of Music, 37(4), 459–484.
Jahoda, G. (1963). The development of children’s ideas about country and nationality: National symbols and themes. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 33(2), 143–153.
Johnson, J. (2002). Who needs classical music? Cultural choice and musical values. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kater, M. H. (1989). Forbidden fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich. The American Historical Review, 94(1), 11–43.
Kater, M. H. (1997). The twisted muse. Musicians and their music in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kennedy, M. C., & Guerrini, S. G. (2013). Patriotism, nationalism, and national identity in music education: ‘O Canada,’ how well do we know thee? International Journal of Music Education, 31(1), 78–90.
Kolsto, P. (2006). National symbols as signs of unity and division. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(4), 676–701.
Kong, L. (2006). Music and moral geographies: Constructions of “nation” and identity in Singapore. GeoJournal, 65, 103–111.
Latham, A. (Ed.). (2002). The Oxford companion to music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mach, Z. (1994). National anthems: The case of Chopin as a national composer. In M. Stokes (Ed.), Ethnicity, identity and music (pp. 61–70). Oxford/New York: Berg.
Nauright, J. (1996). “A besieged tribe”?: Nostalgia, White cultural identity and the role of rugby in a changing South Africa. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 31(1), 63–77.
Rekha, S., & Taj, H. (1995). National integration through value-oriented activities. Psycho-Lingua, 25(1–2), 73–77.
Rippon, T. J. (2005). Do national anthems educate for a culture of peace or a culture of war? Culture of Peace Online Journal, 1(1), 34–39.
Smith, A. D. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. London: Blackwell.
Smith, S. J. (1994). Soundscape. Area, 26, 232–240.
Smith, S. J. (1997). Beyond geography’s visible worlds: A cultural politics of music. Progress in Human Geography, 21(4), 502–529.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Deane Root, Editor in Chief). http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/. Accessed 11 Aug 2017.
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Waterman, S. (2020). National Anthems and National Symbolism: Singing the Nation. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_102
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_102
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02437-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02438-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences