AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts saturday morning 109
“THIS IS AMERICA”: JIMI HENDRIX’S TWO-YEAR FASCINATION
WITH THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL ANTHEM
Mark Clague
University of Michigan
Jimi Hendrix’s August 18, 1969 performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” elicits either
hagiographic praise or disgust. It is not only the climactic icon of Woodstock, but is arguably
the most powerful symbol of rock’s potential for protest. The Hendrix Banner is rock. Long
before it was posted to YouTube or videogamers could relive the experience on Guitar Hero
2, the performance was ingrained in America’s living cultural memory, propelled by commemorative
recordings as well as the 1970 documentary film Woodstock. Yet its very status as
legendary also serves to obscure, resulting in both an exaggeration of the Woodstock Banner’s
influence as well as a fundamental misunderstanding, and possibly a gross underestimation, of
the political potential of Hendrix’s art. Hendrix’s Banner is so well known as to be unknown.
Its reputation has propelled the event far beyond the bounds of history into the realm of legend
with its attendant misinformation and misrepresentation.
By revisiting the Woodstock Banner not as a single, ecstatic improvisation, but as a particular
realization of an ongoing two-year relationship with the song, the full range and subtlety
of Hendrix’s artistic engagement with the anthem, both musical and political, comes into
better focus. Rather than a single explosive event, the Hendrix Banner should be thought of
as a simmering process of celebration and commentary brought forth in more than fifty performances,
beginning in August 1968, over a year before Woodstock, and continuing through
August 1970, shortly before Hendrix’s death on September 18, 1970. This broader analysis
reveals the Hendrix Banner to be an ongoing reframing of the anthem’s symbolism in a flexible
rearrangement deployed most frequently in live concerts but also in studio recordings
to depict the United States of America and thus reify its tensions to make them more vivid
and thus inspire attempts at resolution. For Hendrix, “The Star-Spangled Banner” might be
thought of as a kind of sonic national snapshot, taken repeatedly and often to catalog the state
of the nation and suggest the need for change.
Based in over forty surviving recordings (most from underground audience recordings),
this paper mines the little-known Hendrix performances of the anthem for evidence that
helps locate their meaning. Using formal analysis of the broad variety of arrangements combined
with contextual evidence including the guitarist’s stage banter and the position of the
Banner within his set repertoire, I conclude that Hendrix’s Banner operates on three competing
levels: musical showmanship, social critique, and patriotic hope. I dispel several myths
surrounding the Hendrix Banner, including that it was a singular, improvisatory event, that
it is a solo (in fact, it is a duet with drummer Mitch Mitchell), and that it is meaningless (a
claim made at times by Hendrix himself). The historical and aesthetic trajectory of Hendrix’s
Banner enriches not only our understanding of a compelling and highly original work of art,
but offers a case study in the political power of music.