 Harmony for an Official State Song:
A Proposal for Rotation, Marketing and Term Limits
by John Weingart
The New York Times, New Jersey
Section, Op Ed page
November 24, 2002
NEW JERSEY likes to talk about a state
song but doesn't seem to really want to choose one (``Oh, Say, Can We Get an
Official State Song,'' Nov. 17).
The deliberations over the last 40
years, dominated by Red Mascara's crusade on behalf of his song ``I'm From New
Jersey,'' represent a New Jersey problem that can be solved. Let's create a
process to select a state song but limit the designation to a specified term.
Every five years, the New Jersey Council on the Arts could sponsor a
competition and make a selection. The winner would receive publicity, honor and
a stipend of, say, $10,000. The council could also choose a dozen additional
entries and include them with the winner on a CD that could be sold around the
state and distributed more widely through the internet.
There are already many good songs
about the state, but the competition and resulting recording would encourage
more writing while also helping to bring the better songs and musicians to the
attention of wider audiences. The CD, of course, would also help promote New
Jersey and perhaps even earn enough money to provide a small return to both the
state and the songwriters.
Having the responsibility to choose
enough songs for the CD would also enable the Arts Council to honor songs that,
for example, portray one part of the state but may not seem an appropriate
representation of the state as a whole. Candidates might include some great
older songs like ``The Long Branch Branch of the Red Bank Bank,'' ``I Found a
Peach in Orange New Jersey in Apple Blossom Time'' or ``Paddling on the
Rahway.''
It's fun to talk about a state
song, but who wants to risk being stuck for all time with a clunker? Moreover,
what music fans can say their favorite song about any topic is never going to
change? Maybe it would have been fitting for ``Born to Run'' to have been New
Jersey's anthem in the early 1980's (when a bill to that end was introduced in
the Legislature), but 20 years later it's hard to remember why.
This year, my nominee would be
``The Garden State Stomp,'' a song whose only words are the names of 80 New
Jersey towns, from Allamuchy and Piscataway to Egg Harbor and Double Trouble.
The words are amusing and arguably educational to hear, and a term as the New
Jersey State Song would be a nice tribute to the song's writer, Dave Van Ronk,
the folk and blues musician, who died in February. The song might be
appropriate for a five-year term but would be an unacceptable choice for the
hundreds of towns not mentioned if we continue to try to agree on only one song
to represent the entire state forever.
The trouble with our periodic
bursts of interest in this subject now is that they fall under a cloud of
failure. Selecting a term-limited state song would enable New Jersey to turn
our past hesitancy into virtue. Twice a decade we could have a statewide,
spirited, light-hearted discussion about the song candidates knowing that a
winner would be chosen and that, no matter how disagreeable or even
embarrassing some might consider the selection, the next one might be more to
our liking.
This proposal should be considered
by the Legislature early in the new year as members prepare to complete a
record of accomplishment from which they can run for re-election in November.
While a number of bills on the subject have already been introduced as they have
been every year for decades, a new bill should be prepared that establishes
that every five years the Arts Council will select a new New Jersey State Song.
I suggest that the bill stipulate
that the first state song, for a term of three years, be ``I'm From New
Jersey'' to reward Red Mascara at least for his persistence and his name if not
for the song itself. The three-year designation would give Mr. Mascara at age
80 the recognition he has long sought while also giving the Arts Council ample
time to design a good process for the subsequent competitions. The law should
state that while a new song will be selected every five years, the previous
winners gain emeritus status and are forever after considered ``one of New
Jersey's official state songs.'' The songwriters, including Mr. Mascara, will
thus be protected and able to enjoy whatever limited career boost and
immortality their creation engenders.
By taking action now, legislators
will be able to claim credit for solving a minute but seemingly intractable
problem. As an added benefit, those who believe that term limits for
officeholders diminish the competence and capabilities of legislative bodies
will be able to claim that they nevertheless do support such limits when they
make sense.
*****
John Weingart is associate director of the Eagleton
Institute of Politics at Rutgers and host of “Music You Can’t Hear On The Radio”, New
Jersey’s oldest program of folk music and bluegrass, on WPRB-FM and WPRB.com.
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