Even on this side of the Atlantic such songs as Old Folks at Home, The Yellow Rose of Texas and Yankee Doodle are or were reasonably well known, but less familiar will be My Michigan, Hail! Minnesota or Rhode Island March Song. Ignorance can hereby be remedied: official and unofficial songs of each state are included with words and music. Most have texts in English (for Hawaii and New Mexico we are given the local vernacular), and there are notes on the authors and composers of each song together with some account of why and when each was adopted by its state.
I have to report that most of these songs are truly dreadful with banal sentiments expressed in limping rhythms and false rhymes, in fact very similar to most national anthems of the world, but with those you can at least take comfort from the thought that something might be lost in the translation. Not so here, alas. The editors have cleaned up the more obviously racist phrases so that when in Kentucky the “darkies” used to be gay, now it is the “people” (all of them?) who are.
The actual melodies, however, are on the whole of a better standard and generally well calculated to moisten the eye and bring a lump to the throat of the exile even when sober. That said, I fear this compilation will be of only local interest. (The publisher points out that this is simultaneously issued as Music Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 6, Nos. l/2.)
