Oh, Say Can You Sing? An Anthem of Anthems
[New York Times, 11 September 2005]

By RICHARD MORGAN

If Kofi Annan is ever in the market for a global theme song, he might try ''Model Anthem,'' an abstract composite of scores of national anthems that was to be played on the streets of SoHo yesterday during the Art Parade, an evening of music, dance and performance.

The song starts with the ubiquitous ''oh'' and goes on for 113 words, a typical length among anthems in the mix. The Brooklyn Steppers, a 120-member precision marching band, was to play the tune while a singer belted out nationalistic lyrics like ''arise ye sons of independence.''

The work is the brainchild of Rachel Mason, an artist with Deitch Projects in SoHo, which presented the event. Ms. Mason recruited two friends to design the final product. Eric Jensen, a doctoral candidate in computer science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, formed the lyrics by running 193 national anthems, translated into English, through a language modeling program.

Three days of syntactical analyses later, a kind of universal string of lyrics emerged, although the result needed some tweaking (eerily, the program kept looping the lyrics ''and we will destroy''). Elaine Fefferman, a former music major at Yale and now a freelance composer living in Chelsea, gave the piece a catchy melody with plenty of John Philip Sousa-style brass flourishes. Now if only it could be sung in Esperanto.

''Model Anthem''
Oh, say how to God
All bestowed on the Earth
Long live in the enemy
We are all by the land
United and the fatherland
One national unity

Forever the battle against fear
Against the future generations
Praise be our country
Wonderful the cause
And in peace you will be this homeland

Oh, say be spread all
Where man is the earth
Arise ye sons of independence
Your sons and valleys
Where man works cheerfully
Fatherland sounds from our heroes
Awake men awake
You are in our ancestors
All of the free we are the home
One and all bestowed on high
Women close beside the heroes trod to
Keep her children with

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