The national anthem, played by Netza on Sunday at Dodger Stadium, took place in the 1940s when the US government was searching for a version of Spanish that conveyed the values and aspirations expressed in “Star Spangled Banner.”
The official Spanish version of the song by Francis Scott Key, written in 1814, was commissioned in 1945 by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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About the Spanish version of “Star Spagred Banner”
Key was inspired to write “Starspang Banners” after witnessing the war at the Battle of Fort McHenry in Maryland in 1812. The title refers to the American flag that waved the fort at dawn after the United States was feared in September 1814 that it was defeated in the Battle of Baltimore with the British.
The music was borrowed from the official song of the Anacreontic Society, a club of gentlemen’s amateur musicians in London.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” became the official national anthem in 1931, and it was already translated into many languages, including two Spanish versions. At the end of World War II in 1945, the State Department’s U.S. Cultural Cooperation Division, in collaboration with the National Conference of Music Educators, gathered official Spanish version submissions distributed in Latin America to share American values, aspirations and patriotism.
Peruvian-American composer and lyricist Clotilde Arias took on the task of creating a truly easy-to-sing version of the anthem in Spanish, and remained the only official translation of the national anthem that was allowed to be performed.
A letter from the State Department to Arias dated May 16, 1946 mentions a contract granting $150 for a “satisfactory translation.” In a 2012 interview with NPR, Arias’ son Roger recalled her mother’s composition of songs at her Brooklyn home and the challenge of creating a singer-spoken translation that is faithful to the original.
“I was there when she was writing it,” Roger Arias said. “She was singing it in her own way to see if it fits or not, and she would say, ‘How does it sound, Sony?’ And I would say she sounded good to me.
The first documented performance of the national anthem at a sporting event was in May 1862. The song was performed at a pre-game ceremony at a new baseball field in Brooklyn. Playing the national anthem on Gameday became a routine in the early 1900s.
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