National Anthem
By Ryan Fyfe,

A national anthem in general, is a patriotic musical compositionthat is recognized formally by a country’s government as theircountry’s official national song.

This idea of identy came about during the course of the 19th and20th centuries, with the rise of the national states. It was atthis time when most countries adopted a national anthem, whichoften times coexisted with other commonly sung patriotic songs.For example, Although Canada’s official national anthem is “OhCanada”, another widely recognized national song is “The HockeySong”, due to Canada’s strong history in the sport of hockey.

Typically, anthems will try to acomplish the goal of reflectingthe unity of a nation by galvanizing the history, traditions andstruggles of its people within the song. In the nineteenthcentury as anthems first rose to prominence in Europe the styleof music common then has continued to be used in almost every nationalanthem. Even where western orchestral music was a foreignnotion, like in nations of Africa and Asia, the national anthemis still usually in European style. Some countries havechallenged the dominance of dated orchestral music, likeAustralia for example. “Advance Australia Fair” has been thenational anthem of Australia since 1984, but there is muchsupport for the folk ballad “Waltzing Matilda” as a nationalsong. Some even considerate a candidate for the national anthem.This is much like the example I mentioned above with Canada and”The Hockey Song”

National anthems have in the past and will continue in thefuture to be an important part of the history of the countriesof the world.

About the author:Feel free to reprint this article as long as you keep thearticle, this caption and author biography in tact with allhyperlinks.

Ryan Fyfe is the owner and operator of NationalSpot - http://www.national-spot.com, which is the best siteon the internet for all national related information.

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