British music rebel Adam Kidron, who has caused a storm in the United States by recording a Spanish version of The Star-Spangled Banner to show solidarity with immigrants, on Saturday night invited President George Bush to sing along on the next record.
After Bush railed against Kidron’s version of the national anthem, saying it should always be sung in English, the record entrepreneur accused the president of pandering to racists. But he also challenged Bush, who boasts of his prowess in Spanish, to join his pack of rappers and Latin music stars and sing with them on his ”Live Aid-style” rebel song.
”I think we’ll invite Bush to come and sing the one line that we have changed from the original version, as his Spanish is so good,” Kidron said on Saturday night.
Kidron and his tiny independent record label Urban Box Office have suddenly become a lightning conductor in the debate over immigrants’ rights that has split American society and sparked a fierce political battle and huge protests.
Many services and businesses across the country will be paralysed on Monday as millions of immigrants and supporters of their cause for more rights boycott work and take to the streets.
Dubbed ”A Day without Immigrants”, it is intended to show how much essential cheap labour and public service is done in the US by undocumented immigrants. Three million are expected to demonstrate in Los Angeles alone. Many businesses will close and thousands of restaurant kitchens, factories and nannies’ jobs will be abandoned for the day, while fruit is left unpicked, rubbish uncollected and streets, offices and hotels uncleaned.
At the same time, conservative Republicans led by Senator Lamar Alexander of Texas plan to introduce a resolution in the Senate designed to ”give senators an opportunity to remind the country why we sing our national anthem in English”, he said.
But Kidron, a 46-year-old Londoner who has lived in the US for the past 16 years, was unapologetic on Saturday night and proud that his Spanish version of The Star-Spangled Banner had put him head to head in confrontation with Bush.
More than 300 000 people downloaded the song he calls ”nuestro himno [our anthem]” from the internet when it was launched on Friday. It will be on sale in record shops across the US on May 16.
”Are we going to back down? No. Are we going to apologise? No. Are we going to pull the record? No. Our anthem is passionate, reverential, beautiful and patriotic and it just happens to be in Spanish,” Kidron said from New York.
Kidron came up with the idea and one of his Latino producers, Eduardo Reyes, translated the lyrics, to be sung to the traditional tune.
It is faithful to the English version, except for one line. Instead of the line: ”And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air”, Nuestro Himno has: ”Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada [To fight with strength, inspired by liberty]”.
Kidron explained: ”We just did not want to speak about celebrating bombs.”
This is the line Kidron has tauntingly invited Bush to come and sing alongside his line-up of rap and Latin music stars, such as Wyclef Jean, from Haiti, rapper Pitbull, Gloria Trevi, from Mexico and Don Omar, Carlos Ponce and Olga Tanon, from Puerto Rico.
Bush stood in the White House Rose Garden on Friday and threw fuel on the flames of the immigration debate when he said The Star-Spangled Banner does not have the same American ”value” sung in Spanish as in English.
He added: ”And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English. And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.”
But Kidron argued that although new immigrants learn English as fast as they can — as an economic as well as a cultural necessity — it often takes a while, and those people and older immigrants who only speak Spanish should be able to understand the traditional anthem.
With its final lines ”O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”, the anthem is a rallying point from official functions to local baseball games. ”I want the anthem to be more easily understood by Spanish-speakers and it is a mark of solidarity by Latin immigrants that they are prepared to share in this America and we all appreciate it,” Kidron said.
Since the song was released, he said has received hate mail from people saying that Mexicans should be sent home ”in a pine box” if necessary.
”Bush made his glib statement … He probably is not a racist but the idea that Americans can only speak one language is very intolerant and the problem is that people who are racist will take it as a signal to say things like ‘send them back in a box’. It panders to those people,” he said.
Kidron now plans to record a second Spanish version of The Star-Spangled Banner — with or without Bush — that changes many more of the lyrics in order to reflect immigrants’ hard work and contribution to the economy.
The US Congress recently failed to pass compromise legislation that would make it easier for immigrants who entered the US illegally many years ago and live in legal limbo to be allowed on to the path to citizenship. — Guardian Unlimited