Very soon, I will be finishing my two years of stay in the US and very recently I discovered two things: The Star Spangled Banner and Marvin Gaye.
Till a couple of weeks back, I was not aware of the Star Spangled Banner and its lyrics. As someone who has made a very deliberate effort to understand American culture, I am not sure how I took so much time to know what the national anthem of America was. It was created in 1814 by Francis Scott Key and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution in 1931. Although it has 4 stanzas, only 1st one is sung in general.
My interest in The Star Spangled Banner initiated after I listened to its famous rendition by Marvin Gaye in 1983 NBA All Star Game( Bravo Youtube!! One professor called Dennis Rook is talking about Marvin Gaye in the class and reminiscing that day when Marvin Gaye sung the Star Spangled Banner and a student says:" Probably, the video will be on Youtube". If I ever had any doubts that Youtube will soon be dead with all the law suits, this was one more proof that the real strength of the site is this kind of lost content!!) In fact, I discovered Marvin also very recently. As one of the original voices at Motown records, Marvin was a master of soul and R&B. While tracks like Whats Going On were about social issues there were others like Sexual Healing which were about the simple aching of getting down with his woman!!! His father, who was a priest and with whom he was living in 1984, killed him.
Coming back to the national anthem that he sung in his distinct style in 1983... Star Spangled Banner is incredibly difficult to sing and people before Marvin had tried to do different things with it. Jimi Hendrix was booed at Woodstock for playing it on guitar. Even for Marvin's version, and I find it absolutely fascinating, there seems to be a divided opinion. Stevie Wonder thinks that Marvin got no television after that performance till he died because "Because all the network executives couldn't handle a black man singing a sexy soul version of the National Anthem". Others seem to think that they have never heard anything more wonderfully done and only Marvin could have done it so beautifully.
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
1 comment:
absolutely agree with ur comment. having the data is one thing and being able to make sense of it is entirely another. In fact, a lot of this information about how this data is being used is closely gaurded by the companies. Different companies have their own processes and algorithms. In fact, in the future we will definitely see more companies coming up as specialists in such marketing related web analytics. Anyway, just the fact that marketers can track people so finely is very exciting- for now.
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