August 11, 2008 | Lists,Music,Sports
For those of you who have missed your Amnesty International “urgent-action” mailings for the past eight years, the Olympics recently took place in Beijing. Athletes from around the world came to demonstrate their athletic superiority over millions – that is in the case of sports that people actually give a damn about like basketball or foot-racing. The same cannot be said for sports kept alive by Olympic amateur athletic life-support and played with any level of dedication only by the 61 people who receive such funding, like, say, badminton or synchronized swimming. [This number diminishes significantly for Winter Olympics events, particularly the luge. Only about 18 people are involved in this; they use figures carved out of balsa wood and stuffed in winter jackets to pull off the illusion of more].
Of all the events on the Olympic roster, these two might just take the cake for the most ridiculous. Synchronized swimming could give out points to the competitor whose eyes show the greatest tolerance to chlorinated water and be just as legitimate a sport as it is now, and badminton is tennis minus the skill or athleticism played primarily by drunks at cottages who have tired of pelting beer cans with rocks. It’s a mystery why these events have survived, when others that are also better suited to the beer-cooler crowd have been cut, like the tug of war, or the motorized water sports event of 1908, an Olympian feat in sloth that couldn’t be topped unless go-karting making it onto the Olympic program.
But regardless of the sport and whether an international gathering of its devotees could be held in a phone-booth, all winners get to hear their national tune when they’re up on the podium and receiving a medal that they may or may not pawn in the lean years to follow. Canada, our home country, has quite possibly the most namby-pamby anthem around (though it’s a toss-up between that and “Advance Australia Fair”).
Far more evocative and interesting, if also jingoistic and violent, are the songs on this list, those primarily born out of revolution and bloodshed, that nonetheless give the people something to be fired up and shake their fists for during international sporting competitions.
Here then are the Top Five Most Violent National Anthems of All Time!
5) Turkey: This one beseeches each faithful citizen of Turkey to: “Render your chest as armor and your body as a trench!” Ouch! Why? The anthem goes on to explain: “For soon shall come the joyous days of divine promise… Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow? Perhaps even sooner!” Perhaps even sooner! You never know! Maybe next Wednesday… Possibly Labor Day.
This one wins the prize for pure intensity with one of its closing quatrains, describing a citizen so full of love for his nation that HIS TOMBSTONE prostrates a thousand times in ecstasy because things are going right in Turkey.
Choice Lyrics:
For only then, shall my fatigued tombstone,
if there is one, prostrate a thousand times in ecstasy,
And tears of fiery blood shall flow out of my every wound,
And my lifeless body shall gush out from the earth like an eternal spirit
And now, a child singing the full version of the anthem. Actually, we’re just guessing on that. She might just be reciting the traditional couple of quatrains typically saved for public performance, and the rest is a rant on the declining quality of Turkish Saturday morning cartoons, we’re not sure.
4) Mexico: Latin America has more than its fair share of bloody national anthems — see Uruguay and its national tune featuring the catchy refrain “Nation or the grave!” — but Mexico’s gets a place here for its Rambo-like obsession with blood — blood in the fields, blood on the flag, bloody noses that don’t stop when you pinch your nostrils and tilt your head backward… Well most of that anyway. This is another one with extra verses that are never sung in public. That’s for the best as we’re guessing it would be enough to frighten those with less violent anthems from daring to compete.
Choice Lyrics:
War, war! Let the national banners
be soaked in waves of blood.
Oh Fatherland, ere your children, defenseless
bend their neck beneath the yoke,
may your fields be watered with blood,
may they leave their footprints in blood.
3) Vietnam: A country that has overcome so much in the past half century, not the least of which was having its name associated with an obnoxious Robin Williams movie of the 1980s, to become one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing economies. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In this anthem we learn that the road to prosperity is paved with the corpses of the enemy, and also that gunfire provides a nice backbeat:
Choice Lyrics:
Our hurried steps resound on the long and arduous road.
Our flag, red with the blood of victory, bears the spirit of the country.
The distant rumbling of the guns mingles with our marching song.
The path to glory is built by the bodies of our foes.
And here we have further proof of a universal truth concerning national anthems: they sound better when sung by a bunch of drunk people in a bar.
2) Romania: One of the few songs we can ever recall hearing that manages to work in a mention of the “knout”, a leather (though often adorned with metal, particularly hooks) whip popular in czarist Russia for strapping serfs. And then it gets violent.
Choice Lyrics: (Full Anthem)
Priests, lead with your crucifixes! Because our army is Christian,
The motto is Liberty and its goal is holy,
Better to die in battle, in full glory,
Than to once again be slaves upon our ancient ground!
1) France: Home to Paris, the city of love, and Le Marseilles, a Valentine to violence disguised as a national anthem. Composed in revolutionary France, this ditty doubles as a nice all-purpose theme-song for the guillotining of noblemen, and the expelling of the foreign hordes.
Choice Lyrics:
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!
And the best anthem sung in a movie scene ever:
CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE TOP 10 MOST VIOLENT NATIONAL ANTHEMS!
Told you. It's them Gauloises as makes 'em so mean.
There is one more which really tops all of these, the Flemish anthem. This region of Belgium has its own anthem, and although only the first two parts are sung in official occasions, the entire anthem has lyrics somewhat like this:
He tears, destroys and crushes
Enveloped in blood and mud
And triumphantly he looks upon
the enemy’s trembling corpse