National Anthem on my mind

Since I heard the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra play the (new) Nepali national anthem Thursday, it’s stuck on my mind. It’s weird how most of them from my generation doesn’t even know the words of the national anthem. It’s new but most of us haven’t made an effort to memorize it.

With monarchy being replaced by a republic, the country has gone through many changes–the names attached with the former kings have been changed and the country got a new national anthem that doesn’t praise the monarchs and their superiority.

As children, in schools, we were made to sing the national anthem every morning. And for that reason, the old national anthem is something that will always be with us. And now, when we don’t have to sing the national anthem every day, it seems difficult to memorize the new one. (Maybe people should play the national anthem before every movie in theaters like in India…that was a surprise for me). But it feels good to be a part of the change, the generation that has two national anthems!

And if the old national anthem is something stuck to us, the new one should too because it’s different, unique. And I blogged about this for SAJA Forum in 2008.

During the Beijing Olympics 2008, Nepal’s national anthem was among the 10 best from 205 others. The Guardian‘s Alex Marshall picked out the Top 10.

…there are only a dozen anthems that are musically worth listening to – and that most of the countries these belong to do not have a hope of winning a gold in Beijing.

Marshall writes there are anthems which are truly unique because they “make the effort to be different.”

…there are a handful of anthems that do stand out – either because they use non-western instruments, scales and tunes, or because they take a western anthem and then toy with it, making it solemn or funny, and entirely their own. Most of the “Stans” of central Asia have anthems that sound like they could not have come from anywhere apart from former Soviet states. They trudge along in minor keys, filled with imposing strings and booming drums, as if written to accompany armies clambering into battle.

Then there are Nepal’s, Senegal’s and Nigeria’s, all of which make use of local instruments.