Star Spangled Banner offers special meaning to immigrants

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Cheryl Warfield moves her arms in time with the music, cuing the 25 singers in front of her, all of them standing with their hands placed firmly over their hearts.

“O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light.”

Warfield smiles as their voices come together, joining in with them as they bring Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner” to life.

Warfield, an opera soprano herself, isn’t directing the next great singing group sensation. Instead, it’s a group of adult students at the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center performing one of their final rehearsals before taking it in front of an audience. How they do with the crowd is important, but for these singers, there’s a much bigger goal in mind: improving their English-speaking skills with a touch of American History on the side.

That’s because these singers are immigrants, and English isn’t their first language. They chose to come to America seeking a better life, and look to song not only to help them celebrate the songs that define America, but to help improve diction as well.

“’The Star-Spangled Banner’ is difficult musically as well as poetically,” Warfield said. “If we are saying, ‘O’er the ramparts we watched,’ what does that mean? That’s actually the dugout. The entire anthem is about witnessing a battle, and so that’s why you hear ‘the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.’

“If you don’t dissect that, you really don’t understand the words. The (English as a Second Language) students digest that and they embraced the words.”

Even natural-born Americans sometimes take “The Star-Spangled Banner” for granted, Warfield said, forgetting the lyrics discuss the War of 1812.

But there are other interpretations of the songs, too. Taveras, an immigrant who withheld her full identity because she’s undocumented, said for her it represented, “Freedom. Pride. Respect.”

She is improving her English for her son, she explained, so she can help him with everyday things like homework.

For Jesika Reyes, learning the song and the history behind the lyrics was another way to improve her language skills. Reyes, who is documented, worked in human resources when she lived in the Dominican Republic. Because of her limited speaking skills, Reyes was not able to find a similar job in the United States.

However, she expects to put her improved English speaking skills to work this summer when she becomes an office assistant with the community center’s sexual assault survivors program Changing Futures.

To Reyes, stronger language skills also mean being able to have a conversation with medical staff if she has to take her son to the hospital, something she wasn’t able to do when her child was born.

“It’s great when you can understand the people that (are) talking to you,” she said.

The goal of the eight-week class is to help students reduce accents and improve pronunciation. Words starting with the letters “th” are sometimes the most difficult to pronounce, Warfield said. Singing makes saying them easier and builds confidence.

Over the last several months, the group took an intermediate level English level course, which Warfield’s class enhanced. It’s her second year teaching the course as part of her residency with the Bronx Opera Company.

The program is a partnership between the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center and the Bronx Opera, funded by the New York City Council for the past three years, according to the Bronx Opera website.

Nearly 45 percent of Kingsbridge Heights residents are not born in the United States, according to City-Data.com statistics, while another 23 percent don’t speak English well or at all. The website collects and analyzes data from both government and private sources.

“If other Americans had an opportunity to just spend just one day in a class like this,” Warfield said, “no one would ever question that immigrants belong here and deserve a chance that we all do.

“They are not trying to get ahead of us or take from anyone. It’s just that they’re pursuing the American dream. And, the real American dream is to give opportunity to all.”

Cheryl Warfield, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Star Spangled Banner, Lisa Herndon

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