Bush: Sing National Anthem In English

New Spanish Translation Debuts, Causes A Stir; Listen To An Excerpt

(CBS/AP) 
Bryanna Bevens of Hanford, Calif., who writes for the immigration-focused Web magazine Vdare.com, said the remix particularly upset her.

"It's very whiny. If you want to say all those things, by all means, put them on your poster board, but don't put them on the national anthem," she said.

Kidron, a U.S. resident for 16 years, maintains the changes are fitting. After all, he notes, American immigrants borrowed the melody of the "Star-Spangled Banner" from an English drinking song, "To Anacreon From Heaven." (It was sung to that tune as early as 1814, just months after Key wrote the poem, after two Baltimore newspapers noted that the words fit the melody.)

"There's no attempt to usurp anything. The intent is to communicate," Kidron said. "I wanted to show my thanks to these people who buy my records and listen to the music we release and do the jobs I don't want to do."

Kidron said the song also will be featured on the album "Somos Americanos," which will sell for $10, with $1 going to the National Capital Immigration Coalition, a Washington group.

James Gardner, an associate director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, said Americans have long enjoyed different interpretations of "The Star-Spangled Banner," including country or gospel arrangements.

"There are a number of renditions that people aren't happy with, but that's part of it — that it means enough for people to try to sing," he said.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" only became the U.S. national anthem in 1931. There is no official instrumental arrangement of the anthem. The U.S. Marine and Army bands play different versions, often in different keys.

Of the 389 recordings listed at AllMusic.com, none is in Spanish.

Key penned several different versions, and the law making it the U.S. national anthem does not specify the exact words.

Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Perez, said this country was built by immigrants, and "the meaning of the American dream is in that record: struggle, freedom, opportunity, everything they are trying to shut down on us."

"I love my country, and I love my [Mexican musical] heritage, and I try to keep it alive," bandleader Benigno "Benny" Layton of Elsa, Texas, told The Washington Post. "But some things are sacred that you don't do. And translating the national anthem is one of them."