The Australian‘s sports editor Wally Mason reckons our gold medal-winning Olympians are just not patriotic enough, as neither Kyle Chalmers nor Mack Horton performed a rendition of Advance Australia Fair while accepting their gold medals to Mason’s satisfaction.
“Meanwhile the athletes of other nations sing their anthems loud and clear, signalling their national and personal pride.”
But we humbly suggest to Mason that there might be a very good reason for our athletes’ reticence to sing out lustily, and that is that our song, well, it sucks. Not every nation can have as rousing an anthem as La Marseillaise, but Advance Australia Fair is a particularly weak choice. Maybe the Parliament should do its actual job and allow a free vote on marriage equality, freeing up the planned $160 million plebiscite to instead ask Australians if they want to change their national anthem.
In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Bob Carr publicly advocated for Waltzing Matilda to be used for winning athletes. Carr declared it “1000 times more melodious” than Advance Australia Fair and “more likely to make Australians swell with pride or bring a tear to their eyes”. Waltzing Matilda is not necessarily the answer to our lack of anthem inspiration, but surely we can find a tune that brings a tear to the eye and actually inspires our athletes to sing.
Shame ! – What’s wrong with
“Girt by sea”
No one can afford the water views.
Girt was OK but she was susceptible to seasickness.
The biggest problem with singing our National Anthem is the vocal range required to sing it.
Few people can manage the range effectively so merely mouth the notes they cannot reach.
The Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner require even greater vocal ranges, but the tune of AAF doesn’t inspire anyone to belt it out. Australians mumble it even before any vocal challenges arise.
One of the few things that makes me “proud to be an Aussie” is the fast-dying non-patriotic tradition. From diggers who refused to salute, scorning of flag-waving and not even pretending to know the national anthem, the Australian unpatriotic tradition stood out in a world full of mindless, unhealthy patriotism.
I still chuckle when I see those odious idiots in Reclaim Australia and the like cloaked in the flag in a way you would never have seen in Australia before Howard and his culture wars. If anything, it’s a very American style of patriotism …
Hear! Hear! Not to mention that the “Australian Flag” is not really Australian at all but something borrowed from the British Royal Navy with a few stars tacked on. I can imagine people anywhere in the world where Australian troops are posted looking at their shoulder patches and interpreting them as just second-tier Brits. The Aboriginal Flag by contrast, now that’s a real Australian flag.
Not lip syncing the anthem at assembly as a kid is UnAustralian, IMHO.
For people that claim to defend the National Culture, they really import a lot of global issues. It seems to be a thing worldwide. The other day a German fellow was showing me stuff about the NSU scandal and I was struck by the mention of a German branch of the KKK. Yes. Really. Though I guess I shouldn’t be shocked when racists used the swastica here.
We have a dual problem: our anthem is a dirge, and musical participation is weeded out of most school curricula early on as it doesn’t contribute to us becoming efficient economic units.
Until 1984 the official anthem played for Australian winners of gold medals was “God save the Queen”. We move slowly in this country.