Our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, is the epitome of American patriotism. It symbolizes our country as a whole, and everything the country has been through to become what it is today. Written by Francis Scott Key during the midst of the war of 1812, a time of chaos and war, it is a song to be sung to express our love for the nation.

People use this patriotic song to bring awareness of problems our country is facing. They bring up national challenges to show to the general public, who would listen to the national anthem.  For example, during the 1968 Olympics, two African American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their hands during the entirety of the national anthem. They did so to bring awareness of the mistreatment of African Americans. A similar event occurred when NFL players took a knee during the national anthem.

Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock national anthem performance was far from traditional. Various conflicts were happening that rocked the nation. Many lives were lost due to the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated the previous year in Memphis. Just as these events rocked the nation, Jimi Hendrix rocked his electric guitar, playing his variation of the national anthem. At first notice, it might sound like nonsense in the middle of the Star-Spangled Banner. However, “it was, among other things, an act of protest whose power and convincingness were inseparable from its identity as a ercely nonconformist act of individual expression”, as stated in The New Yorker article. Jimi Hendrix experienced many tragedies, as a soldier in the Vietnam War, and a black man during the Civil Rights Movement, in parallel to the experiences of Francis Scott Key when writing the song experiencing the disastrous War of 1812. His song and performance in Woodstock was his way to portray the way he felt and what he experienced to the audience of Woodstock, as well as the general public and everyone in the United States who believe in what our national anthem stands for.