Lyr Add: National Anthem: Arise! Arise! (Rohe)

Subject: Lyr Add: National Anthem: Arise! Arise! (Rohe)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 03:35 PM

I've been meaning to post this. I hadn't encountered it until we included it in the Rise Again Songbook. I really like it, aut I don't know much about it. Anybody know of Jean Rohe or the song? Can you give us some background information?

NATIONAL ANTHEM: ARISE! ARISE!
(Jean Rohe)

Lyric (with gratitude to Dr. Martin Luther King and Abel Meeropol, via Billie Holiday)

Atlantic and Pacific flow
The Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico
The land between sustains us all
To cherish it, our tireless call

CHORUS
Arise! Arise!
I see the future in your eyes.
To a more perfect union we aspire
And lift our voices from the fire.

We reached these shores from many lands
We came with hungry hearts and hands
Some came by force and some by will
At the auction block, in the darkened mill

CHORUS

We died in your fields and your factories
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
With an old coat hanger in a room somewhere
A trail of tears, an electric chair

CHORUS

Our great responsibility
To be guardians of our liberty
'Till tyrants bow to the people's dream
And justice flows like a mighty stream




https://jeanrohe.bandcamp.com/merch/national-anthem-arise-arise-sheet-music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay1iC1zt24A&list=RDMM

https://www.riseupandsing.org/songs/national-anthem-arise-arise

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: National Anthem: Arise! Arise! (Rohe)
From: cnd
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 10:41 PM

You can read more about Jean here: https://www.jeanrohe.com/#about-section

        Jean Rohe writes one-of-a-kind narrative songs, concerned as much with the internal world as with the external. Her latest record as a bandleader, Sisterly, produced by longtime collaborator Liam Robinson, is a collection of songs about communication and missed connections, and tackles topics from love, lust, and longing to prisons, police violence, and migration. Sisterly won best Adult Contemporary Album at the Independent Music Awards in 2019.

        She is perhaps best known for her much-covered 2012 video single, “National Anthem: Arise! Arise!” an aspirational alternative national anthem performed with choir and brass ensemble. Her award-winning 2013 release Jean Rohe & The End of the World Show was hailed by an Elmore Magazine reviewer as “enchanting” and “remarkable in so many ways I can think of no comparison.”

        Jean tours regularly with Robinson & Rohe, her rootsy songwriting duo with Liam Robinson, and continues work on a performance memoir, The Odysseus Agreement, for which she's received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, and others. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.