UN-Day, Our Day, Our Anthem...

Quotes

“A soothing anthem for everybody everywhere.” - New York Times

“The World Anthem is a heartfelt, catchy and dignified melody.” – Rocky Mountain News

“The World Anthem melds musical, lyrical ideas into global harmony.” – Denver Post

“The World Anthem is a magnificent piece of music that will touch souls around the world.” – Denver Mayor, Wellington and Wilma Webb

“Best song for a brave new world.” – Westword Magazine

“Imagine the impact on communities around the world by being connected through performing the World Anthem.” – Random Acts of Kindness Foundation

“Stately and inspired, dignified and compassionate. The World Anthem honors the best in humankind.” - Bloomsbury Review

“Stunning, …a brilliant piece of music that means something to us all.” – Kenny Passarelli

“Who would have thought that analyzing the world anthems would lead to a piece of such beauty.” - Dave Hanson, Professor of Music Denver University

“I appreciate the sentiments to share the World Anthem.” - Pope John Paul II




A Soothing Anthem For Everybody, by Julie Lew (New York Times)
Edited from original article by Jean-Paul Halsberghe


Before Sept. 11, John M. Guillot had composed what seemed to many a song of no commercial value. After that day, however, his song, ''The World Anthem,'' seemed to many to be a soothing antidote, and it was recorded by a 48-voice chorus with the Prague Studio Symphony Orchestra.

Now, as numerous groups work on programs to observe the anniversary of the terrorist attack, ''The World Anthem'' -- a high-tech amalgam of the world's 193 national anthems, from ''The Star Spangled Banner'' to China's ''March of the Volunteers'' to the Vatican City's ''Hymn and Pontifical March'' -- is being considered for inclusion in ceremonies by peace groups and television networks and at one point was even being considered by the White House.

The World Anthem Mission

''I knew that I wanted this to be a validated process, and one of the things I was concerned about was people's perception of who is this guy that he thinks he can write a world anthem,'' said Mr. Guillot, a composer and part-time music producer, during a recent interview at his home.

''I didn't want people to say this is some guy's interpretation of what the world anthem should be. I wanted it to write itself. It needed to be a song that was based on the observations and commonalities of all of the national anthems.''

And thus began a mission that has consumed most of Mr. Guillot's spare time and money since 1996, when he was working as a project manager for a compilation CD of 186 world anthems for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

He remembered a Time magazine cover he had seen three years earlier that showed a composite face of humanity representing all the cultures of the world.

''I thought, we can do this with music,'' Mr. Guillot recalled. ''I knew it could be done. I knew that musicologists use formula to analyze music. But because of the immense size of the project, I wanted to link up with a university or a lab that used computers.''


Support: Prof. David H Cope:

He found help from Prof. David H. Cope, who teaches music composition at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Professor Cope, who considers himself a musician first, is also a computer programmer, and has spent the past 22 years perfecting a program he first created in 1980 called, ''Experiments in Musical Intelligence.

'' The program composes music by analyzing a database that Mr. Cope puts into the computer, which then distils it and produces a new piece of music. He has generated four professional recordings with the program.

Professor Cope recalled: ''I was intrigued by the fact that John's need seemed to merge with my program's potential just perfectly. It seemed natural that a computer program that operates in a manner that a mind does was perfect for that sort of unbiased approach.''


Fruit of Cooperation

To put the 193 world anthems into Mr. Cope's program, Mr. Guillot enlisted Stephen Bigger, a Nashville composer and musician with whom he had worked on the Olympics CD, to help him convert the anthems into a format that the computer would understand.

Mr. Guillot also gathered all the lyrics, which took about three months, and sent them to Mr. Cope who then spent several months rewriting the program and putting hyphens between every syllable of all the lyrics in order for the program to work correctly.

Finally, after months of preparation and listening to each of the world anthems several times, Mr. Cope ran the program several hundred times and, in a matter of seconds, received several hundred potential world anthems.

The process was repeated with the lyrics. Mr. Cope sent three candidates of each to Mr. Guillot, and together they picked what they thought were the best.
With the musical skeleton of an anthem, Mr. Guillot and his collaborator, Randy Kartchner, a music arranger in Nashville, developed an arranged version of the song's essence.

After about six months, by spring 2000, Mr. Guillot had his anthem, and continued his task of finding an interested patron.


J.Ed Goodman: CEO Mindshare Institute and Foundation:

Then Sept. 11 happened. J. Ed Goodman a friend of Mr. Guillot's and the executive director and founder of the Mindshare Institute and Foundation in Fort Collins, Colo., a think tank that supports socially conscious ideas, remembered Mr. Guillot's desire to create a world anthem.

Mr. Goodman said, ''What the 11th did was it opened the world's mind to communication with each other in a positive way and this fit in very well with that.''

Mindshare contacted Ted King, an entertainment consultant in Los Angeles.
''My job was to take it from its basic form and create a richer, more beautiful, and more exciting piece of music,'' said Mr. King, who quickly rounded up 16 professional singers including a soloist, Aspen Miller, and the Prague Studio Symphony Orchestra.

''We wanted to give it an international flavor.''

A recording was made in one day through a broadband connection in a local studio that linked the symphony orchestra in Prague and the singers in Los Angeles, allowing them to perform as if they were all in one room, and ''The World Anthem'' came into being

The anthem does not sound like computer-generated music. It is simple enough that it can be marched to.

''I've heard it so many times, but I still like it,'' Professor Cope said. ''I can listen to it and find it interesting in new ways that I hadn't thought of before.''
Mr. Guillot now has a simple dream: ''What I'd like to see is some world-renowned artist perform this.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/31/arts/a-soothing-anthem-for-everybody.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print