Best Song for a Brave New World

Francis Scott Key could not have envisioned a time when his “Star-Spangled Banner” might be fused with the state song of, say, Namibia; in those days, it would have been impossible to foresee John Guillot’s World Anthem Project. The local producer used a computer system called Experiments in Music Intelligence to sample 192 national anthems and create a compositional whole. The anthem debuted this past New Year’s Eve in Denver, providing a sonic backdrop for the rockets-red revelry.