Anthem "switcheroonie" angers leaders

DENVER — The jazz singer, invited to perform the national anthem before the Denver mayor's annual state of the city address, stood at the microphone and let loose her voice.

What came out were the lyrics of the song known as "the black national anthem" set to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Lift ev'ry voice and sing/Till earth and heaven ring," belted out Rene Marie, as the faces of city officials on the podium behind her grew puzzled.

It was, Marie later said of Tuesday's unpaid gig, an artistic expression about being a black American and a decision she made months ago to no longer sing the national anthem. But instead of telling the mayor's office beforehand, "I pulled a switcheroonie on them," Marie said.

Now elected officials and residents are chorusing their outrage: Gov. Bill Ritter called her actions disrespectful; Mayor John Hickenlooper accused her of deceiving the city for the purpose of a political statement.

"We all respect artistic license and support freedom of expression," he said. "But in a tradition-laden civic ceremony ... making a personal substitution for the national anthem was not an option."

Even Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, campaigning this week in Colorado, weighed in.

"We only have one national anthem," Obama said Thursday.

"And so, if she was asked to sing the national anthem, she should have sung that. 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' is a beautiful song, but we only have one national anthem."

She did not return a call seeking comment, but wrote on her Web site: "I am an artist. If I wait until I am asked to express myself artistically, or if I must ask permission to do it, it would never get done."

Marie, 52, said as a child raised in the segregated South, she sang both songs. But she grew to feel the sentiments of freedom expressed in the national anthem weren't a reality "for black folks living in a town with Jim Crow laws, where the flag often hung from buildings they could not enter," she wrote.

At the same time, "nobody but black folks found comfort in 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,' " penned by James Weldon Johnson in 1899 to commemorate President Lincoln's action freeing the slaves.

So she decided to meld the two in what she describes as a love song to her country.