Was listening to a song today (Recording “Ballad of the 20th Maine” by Ghost of Paul Revere - MusicBrainz) and remembered it was the state ballad of Maine. We have an Anthem Area/Work relationship, would that cover U.S. state songs? A majority of states have one or more songs that are officially recognized as state songs (special shoutout to the official Tennessee bicentennial rap). The Wikipedia page List of U.S. state songs - Wikipedia mentions they are a type of regional anthem. I personally thought they’d fit in that category, but figured I’d double check here.
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Sounds fine to me?
https://musicbrainz.org/relationship/536b4ee4-bb2d-3b6f-a3f1-082f22e5b17d
@reosarevok, if lazybookworm adds this and it’s okay perhaps it would be a good extra example to add to that relationship doc?
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I don’t know about using the Anthem relationship for this, but I do think we should keep this data somehow. perhaps a new relationship type?
looking at the Wikipedia list, some states do have anthems, some have songs, and there’s several other miscellaneous types. because of this, I wonder if there should be a free-text field to say what type of song it is (if specified)…
perhaps an Anthem could be a subtype of this new relationship too…
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My instinct was that a regional ballad would be a subset of an ‘anthem’. A form of anthem for that region.
The dictionary definition here seems to agree:
a song that has special importance for a particular group of people, an organization, or a country, often sung on a special occasion
Different online dictionaries actually vary pretty heavily on this, there’s a select few definitions that specify an anthem as ‘rousing’ which I guess doesn’t fit.
Perhaps this is a United States specific question? In which case I’ll leave it to the US based peeps to figure out…
A more conservative definition of anthem fits for some of the state songs, however it probably doesn’t fit when you get into a state ballad, folk song, rap, or lullaby. I could also see a more liberal definition that defines anthem as a song officially adopted by an area. We’d have to decide which definition to use.
New Hampshire ain’t helping here either with having one official state song and several “honorary” state songs that were chosen by the legislature lol. I’d consider those all official though.
an Anthem has always seemed more “serious” in my mind than most of the state songs on the list. for example, one of West Virginia’s 4 state songs is Take Me Home, Country Roads. when you compare that with an anthem like God Save the King, it just feels like there’s a different tone between those two…
edit: not that Take Me Home, Country Roads isn’t a serious song… lol
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