The Star Spangled Banner - Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock 1969: A Performance Art
Jimi Hendrix. Who on earth have never heard of that name? Well, there are few for sure but he was (R.I.P) a musician considerably far ahead of his time back then. I’m not going to turn this post into a biography of Jimi but a number of highlights upon certain things during his short-lived life will probably be necessary in order to get to the details of what the title of this post is talking about.
In 1969, the Vietnam War, involving the United States and of course Soviet Union, was likely at peak. According to documents, the war spanned 20 years across the timeline, between 1955 until 1975. This caused a number of protests in both countries, especially in the US. Ever heard of “hippies”? Yes, they were one of many communities (or cultures, hm?) that stood against the event. One of the most, or probably the most iconic inheritance of their culture is the infamous symbol of peace.
As the war was on its’ peak, so were the movements and protests against it. Now, ever heard of Woodstock Festival, especially the one in 1969? That was one of the biggest exposure platform for music and art at the time and in 1969, the festival transcended beyond materialistic views. At that specific point in time, it became a physical representation of an ideology, a way of life so to speak. Instead of meaningless parties and orgies, people treated that event as a medium for promoting peace around the US, and probably the world, considering its’ huge publicity.
Now that we have a glimpse of the occurring social condition back then, let’s dive into another element of the title, “performance art”. What is a performance art? According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary (hell yeah I love that dictionary so much I use it all the time to find definitions of a large number of words and phrases):
Definition of performance art
: a nontraditional art form often with political or topical themes that typically features a live presentation to an audience or onlookers (as on a street) and draws on such arts as acting, poetry, music, dance, or painting
Let’s agree on this definition and keep it in our minds since it’s going to become undeniably important and useful in a moment.
Moving forward, another element included in the title of this post is the phrase “The Star Spangled Banner”. It is USA’s national anthem, written by David L Brunner and Francis Scott Key. It’s obvious that this song has lyrics, just like every national anthem out there (sorry, I love this kind of “no shit, Sherlock” moment every once in a while). But with Jimi performing this? I bet you’ll soon throw out the word “no” from the phrase “no shit, Sherlock”. Oh, and just in case you’re curious about the song, let me put it down here, cutting down the time required for you to open another tab and search it up on, most probably, YouTube.
Finally, let’s elaborate all of the elements we have gathered and defined prior to this segment of this post. Woodstock 1969, Jimi Hendrix opened his set by performing The Star Spangled Banner instrumentally using only his guitar which was a white Fender Stratocaster, an iconic piece of art which probably even non guitarists have seen somewhere at least once, backed up by noises his band produced to support the vibe along with the message behind his performance. The guitar features 21 frets and a one-way tremolo system (it’s the handle bar that can be pushed inward to lower the strings tension, lowering the pitch, and when pulled back out again, the pitch returns to normal. It’s “one-way” because you can’t pull it out farther then the initial setting). That tremolo system was one of the main keys in this particular performance in order to achieve his desired sound, beside his fully cranked up & distorted amp and the “touch” of his hands of course.
Moving on from his setups, the performance started. Jimi started with a huge E major chord strummed simultaneously with his band’s noise fills, then he went up the neck by sliding, reaching the high pitches. The next thing we’re going to hear is the first line of The Star Spangled Banner. After he delivered a few lines of the song in free tempo (or “stretchy” as they say), he started making noises using his tremolo bar. He did dive bombs, motor-engine noises, sirens, passing-jet noises, and human screams noises with his guitar. Then the noises ended abruptly and the lines of the national anthem started being played again, right from the point after when the song was cut and transformed into noises, carried on like nothing happened before. Few lines and then he started making noises again, then went back into the song like before. He did this kind of switching several times during this performance before the song finally came to an end and followed by the crowd’s cheers.
Now that we have gained an objective description of the performance, we can start making “educated guess” about the context. Let’s recall that definition of performance art. The first keyword of the definition states that it is “nontraditional” in terms of form. Check. It was (and probably still is) considered nontraditional to perform a national anthem that way, I think it’s safe to say that there some US citizens from back then up to today that have watched that performance became enraged in one way or another, and labelled Jimi’s rendition of the national anthem as disrespectful. But here’s when the second and third keywords finally saved the day, “topical” and “themes”. Let’s remember that this performance occurred simultaneously with Vietnam War. With the hippies being the majority of people attending Woodstock at the time, it was clear that the event had a chance to be remembered as a gigantic anti-war and peace oriented campaign. Jimi’s rendition of The Star Spangled Banner featured noises in between its’ lines. The noises represented war sounds, such as human screams, falling airborne bombs, sirens, passing fighter jets, and few others. Together with the song, it was a blunt statement which simply said “they were having fun while somewhere else, others were dying from war at the same time”. The rest of the definition is quite self explanatory, “typically features a live presentation to an audience or onlookers (as on a street) and draws on such arts as acting, poetry, music, dance, or painting”. It was a live music performance on a big-ass stage, easy. Fun fact, at that time, people usually started booing over whoever were performing the national anthem. The fact that the crowd cheered after Jimi’s performance should’ve been enough to give you goosebumps.
Some people still take this particular performance as nothing more than “a presentation of a rather fucked-up musical aesthetics”. Well, they didn’t take their time browsing their internet for any historical elements related to the performance, did they? Oh, and I strongly doubt they have any idea about what a performance art is at all. I mean, it is easy to build an expectation based on subjective aesthetic preferences. It’s even easier to expect that every musician follows a certain guideline of what is considered to be good music. But that is not necessarily right either. They’re confused between “what is good” and “what they prefer”. For example, I consider Jimi’s rendition of The Star Spangled Banner exceptionally good but I prefer the original version. There you go, that’s an honest opinion. Not so hard to tell the difference now, eh? So from now on, I hope that all of us can appreciate performance arts, let it be painting, poetry, music, etc. Judge the content’s quality (is it good or is it bad) and think of pleasure as a bonus, an unexpected surprise (if you like it, good for you, and if not, no problem for you as well). And finally to spread my idealist point of view towards performance arts: Never expect them to be the source of your pleasure, expect them to be the source of your thoughts.
Oh, and by the way here’s the video of that iconic moment in history. Enjoy! (I genuinely almost forgot to link the video, shit)
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