Maryland, my meh song

[struggle4progress]

Relatively few states are blessed with official songs that merit much attention, let alone affection. For every "My Old Kentucky Home," so familiar to the general public as the anthem played before the Kentucky Derby each year, there's a "Utah, This Is The Place," which one can only assume was a leftover GPS instruction for Brigham Young. Tennessee chose the democratic route: It has 10 state songs including "The Tennessee Waltz," surely the only state anthem penned by Pee Wee King, the Gene Autry contemporary most closely associated with the Golden West Cowboys and the Grand Ole Opry.

Maryland's state song is famously an embarrassment. It was based on a poem written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall, a journalist and poet whose close friend was shot by Union troops marching through Baltimore, which provides the first clue that something might be amiss. The second clue is the first verse to "Maryland, My Maryland:" "The despot's heel is on thy shore," a reference to President Abraham Lincoln. And it just goes downhill from there with lyrics asking Marylanders to avenge the "patriotic gore" of that encounter in Charm City. Even the city's statue of Confederate generals recently judged inappropriate at its present location doesn't actively foment rebellion the way Mr. Randall's song does.

Now steps forward the General Assembly, which has once again mounted an effort to rewrite the state song, demoting the current version to "historic state song." The intention is good, but the alternative offered is the kind of underwhelming pablum one might expect from a song written by committee. (It is, in fact, an amalgam of Mr. Randall's less offensive lyrics and a poem written in 1894 by John T. White, a Frederick County educator). In removing all the pro-Confederate material, the song is, let's face it, boring. Historic, but boring ...

Here's an idea. First, let's stop singing whatever state song Maryland adopts to the music of "O Tannenbaum." That's just lazy — and a bit too much like Christmas. Perhaps an original composition would be better. Surely, it can't be any more boring than a traditional German holiday song about a fir tree. Let Florida ("Florida, My Florida&quot , Michigan ("Michigan, My Michigan&quot or Iowa ("The Song of Iowa," believe it or not) keep it ...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-state-song-20160315-story.html

Florida, My Florida was Florida's state song from 1913 until 1935, when it was replaced by Swanee River -- the racist lyrics of which were revised in 1978 and finally expunged in 2008