Capri Everitt is an 11-year-old girl with a big voice. She set a Guinness World Record earlier this month when she sang the National Anthem before a Washington Nationals baseball game . For nearly a year, you see, Capri and her family have traveled around the world to 80 countries so she could sing 80 different anthems in 41 different languages.Washington D.C. was the final stop for Capri, in a tour that required her to learn a lot of songs and master the pronunciation of many foreign tongues.
“And a lot of the time, I got people that are native to the country to help me with the national anthem – to help me learn it and pronounce it right, ” Capri says.
Some people use national anthems to divide people. Some, like Capri, would rather use them to bring people together.
Her tour raised money for a charity called SOS Children’s Villages, which provides homes for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children in 134 countries.
“There is so much bad news on television and in newspapers that we thought, ‘How can we create a good story? How can we do something with our daughter because she loves to sing,’” Tom Everitt, Capri’s father. has told journalists. “But we wanted to be something that would be really, really positive, so we got her to practice some national anthems.”
Capri’s anthem tour is documented on the family’s website AroundTheWorldIn80Anthems.com.
Sing, Capri! Colin Kaepernick can sit it out if he wants.
I was thinking to myself… I don’t know a whole lot of anthems. They aren’t the kind of thing that you think about often.
What do I know? The obvious… My own, “Oh Canada”, “The Star Spangled Banner” (although I honestly don’t know more than five words past ‘gleaming’), I was thinking to myself… Do you know any others? I sarcastically assumed “God Save The Queen” was Britain’s… And then was blown away to find out that it really was. Alas Frère Jacques was not actually Frances’.
So I went Antheming. It’s… interesting… To see what countries included in their anthems, what they thought was important, and all the history involved. It’s cathartic to take a couple of minutes and listen to this girl, she obviously spent a lot of time and energy getting it right.
Boy, they must really love the Sex Pistols.
I’ll show myself out.
Wait—you didn’t know that “God Save The Queen” was the Canadian anthem until 1980, and is still the royal Canadian anthem?
Born in 1985, knew the song was over 100 years old, assumed it had always been the anthem. I learned something today.
That’s the objective! By teh way, the U.S,’s back-up anthem was long “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee,” which is sung to the melody of “God Save The Queen.”
Wonderful story, superb young singer! If not anything else, her world tour confirms the popularity of nationalism among peoples around the globe.
No kidding. Did Angela Merkel try to ban her from entering Germany?
Great project and really good voice for a little girl!!
This might be a little petty:
I know she’s only 11 years old and she’s not a professional; however, you’d think that someone, somewhere, would have spent a little time with her to stop the distracting arm movements; that kind of non-professional stuff would never get by me when I directed shows, it detracts from where you want the focus of the audience to be.
Okay; I’m done being petty now.
It’s not petty, but is easily fixed, and will be, I’m sure. There is also some virtue, at that age, of not looking “slick.”
A much better idea than entering her in Britain’s Annual 11-year-old Female’s Amateur Warbling and Gymnastics Contest.
Hope she didn’t have a direct translation of La Marseillaise. I remembered it was pretty bloody but hadn’t checked it out since high school, I think. Full version is five minutes long and has no less than seven militant verses, ending in one especially written for her age group:
(Children’s Verse)
We shall enter the (military) career
When our elders are no longer there,
There we shall find their dust
And the trace of their virtues (repeat)
Much less keen to survive them
Than to share their coffins,
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or following them.