Curious History of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'

This past July, the Atlantic Monthly commissioned New Orleans musician and Late Show with Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste to record a new version of Julia Ward Howe’s legendary Civil War song, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Using only a piano and what he had in his pockets (which included a worn paperback of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and a tuning fork) Batiste’s record radically reimagines the hymn for 2017. For those only familiar with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s triumphant rendition of it, Batiste’s interpretation is jarring. It brims with the soaring sounds of African American spirituals and gospel, the rhythms of bamboula drums, the staccato snares of a military march, and beneath it all, the hymn’s somber melodic line. But Batiste’s remix of our unofficial national anthem is less an update of the hymn than it is a musical recollection of the complex transatlantic history that made the song possible in the first place.