Marshall - Republic or death!: travels in search of national anthems

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Epub ISBN: 9781473507531
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Published by Random House Books 2015

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Copyright Alex Marshall 2015

Alex Marshall has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Random House Books

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781847947413

Contents

To the composers and poets.

An almost overwhelming number of people helped me write this and, if I had space, I would thank everyone I met or spoke to over the years researching it, from those who gave hours of their time to tell me the stories of these songs to those who just gleefully sung me their anthem after I cornered them in the street (then ran away in case I tried to get them to do anything else). But clearly I owe the biggest thanks to the people who wrote these songs the poets and composers for making anthems so intriguing that I wanted to investigate them in the first place. I am grateful to every one of those people that I met, as well as to their families and descendants.

I should also apologise to those I spoke to, but was unable to fit in to the final book: Kenrick Georges, who wrote and composed Saint Kitts & Neviss O Land of Beauty!; Jean-Georges Prosper, who wrote the words to Mauritiuss Motherland; Henri Lops, who wrote the words to Les Trois Glorieuses, the anthem of the Peoples Republic of Congo from 1970 to 1991; Pa Benedict Odiase who wrote the music for Nigerias Arise, O Compatriots and sadly passed away in 2013; Sota Omoigui who co-wrote the words to Nigerias anthem; and Mido Samuel who helped write South Sudan Oyee!, and spoke to me in pitch darkness a few days before his country gained its independence, as he had no electricity. You all played a huge part in my thinking.

I also owe enormous thanks to my sister, Jenny, and to Peter Robins, who happily read every chapter of this book even when it looked like itd be nothing but a vanity project; and to Dominic Curran, although he was lucky enough to get away with only reading about a quarter of it. They all gave fantastic suggestions and dealt with a stream of annoying queries, although I owe them most simply for their encouragement without which I would never have got to the end.

Im grateful to all my friends and family for their encouragement too, especially those Kensuke Takaoka! who ended up acting like a hotel, translation and problem-solving service, somehow without complaint. Thanks to Alex and Claire Whittaker, Tom and Ele Perkin-Brown, Paul and Caroline Hailey, Tricia Mundy, Ed Yong and everyone else from Pembroke, Ben Musgrave, Mark Willingham, Anthony Dhanendran, Seb Skeaping and the rest of the City journalists, Simon Evans, Francois Le Goff and Margaret Curran for their help with the Swiss anthem entry, and Alan and Tricia Marshall who for some reason let me steal their lives for the Nepal chapter.

Some people went out of their way to help me in each of the countries I visited, especially the many interpreters who worked for me seemingly more because they were interested in the subject than for any other reason. I would recommend the following to anyone: Dragan Markovic in Bosnia; Miki Wada, Izumi Kano Guisando and Yukiko Sadaoka in Japan; Artur Lyubanskiy in Kazakhstan; Ram Tiwari in Nepal; Aldo Lpez, Silvia Terol and Silvia Snchez di Martino in Paraguay; and Mariana Gimnez and Frederico Casal in Uruguay. Other people I am particularly indebted to include Chika Yoshida at the Foreign Press Centre in Tokyo for securing so many interviews; Aleck Skeie for his help in Sera; the Nashville Sounds for letting me audition; and Ati Metwaly and Reem Kelani for so many contacts in Egypt.

I am also, of course, indebted to my agent, Jon Elek at United Agents, for seeing the strength of this idea in the first place, and to my editor, Harry Scoble-Rees, and everyone else at Random House Books, for doing so not long afterwards and then working so hard on it. I also owe Harry enormously for all his suggestions that have much improved the book, for his enthusiasm and, probably most of all, for not insisting I went to the Islamic State to give that chapter more of a travel narrative!

Finally, thanks to you for reading it. This book is a snapshot in time; please visit the countries mentioned and explore them for yourself.

Anthems are one of historys most neglected subjects, many historians seeming to have decided they are simply a novelty. That means much of the information in this book comes from interviews not just with the people mentioned, but countless others who generously gave me their time. I could not be more grateful for their help, but any errors in here are entirely mine. However, there are some books, articles, websites and radio programmes that I found particularly useful and here are some of those, arranged by chapter.

De Bruin, Martine, Het Wilhelmus Tijdens de Republiek, Volkskundig Bulletin, 24 (1998), pp. 1642

Malcolm, Noel, Kosovo: A Short History, 1998

Jobbins, Sin, The Welsh National Anthem: Its Story, Its Meaning, 2013

Association Louis-Luc pour lHistoire et La Mmoire de Choisy-le-Roi, Rouget de Lisle et la Marseillaise

Carlyle, Thomas, The French Revolution, 1837

Leconte, Alfred, Rouget de Lisle: Sa Vie, Ses Oeuvres, la Marseillaise, 1892

Schama, Simon, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, 1989

Tulard, Jean, Napolon et Rouget de LIsle, 2000

Hilton, Isabel, Royal Blood, New Yorker, 30 July 2001, pp. 4257 the source for many of the details of the royal massacre and the events surrounding it

Hutt, Michael, Singing the New Nepal, Nations and Nationalism, 18 (2) (2012), pp. 30625 the source for many details of the anthem competition

Whelpton, John, A History of Nepal, 2005 the only real English-language history of the country and source for much about the Maoist uprising

Ferris, Marc, Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of Americas National Anthem, 2014

Hildebrand, David, Broadside to Anthem: Music of the War of