Like that famous beat, the search for a Maryland state song goes on.
The newest proposal is “The Heart of Maryland.” It’s a little bit country, a little bit politics, with a whole lot of heart.
Together we stand, in the heart of this land
With steel and stone, we call this place home
Through the cannon roar and the battle cry
Maryland waved against the sky
From the harborside to the mountain stream
We built our home to chase our dreams
When Jayla Elise Diggs sang it a capella before a state Senate committee in Annapolis this month, the 23-year-old from Cambridge got a standing ovation. She asked lawmakers to approve a bill making it the state song.
“OK, we’re definitely breaking new ground,” said Sen. Brian Feldman, the committee chair. “That’s a unique bit of testimony. We haven’t had that happen in this committee ever. I think this is, again, fantastic.”
On Monday, the music died.
“The Heart of Maryland,” written to promote this year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, didn’t get a vote by crossover day.
There will be reprises through July 4, but this was the real finale for another state song contender.
“We did the song out of good faith,” said Diggs, who performs as Jayla Elise. “We didn’t know how well-received that the song would be.”
If you just arrived, or if you’ve forgotten, Maryland is one of two states without a song to call its own. The other is New Jersey.
Legislators dumped “Maryland, My Maryland” in 2021 after decades of complaints.
Its words were written by James Ryder Randall, a Maryland poet living in Louisiana at the time of the 1861 Baltimore riot. Southern sympathizers attacked troops headed to Washington at the outbreak of the Civil War.
People died. Randall was inspired.
The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!
Yeah, yeah. Abraham Lincoln was a despot. We get it. Set to the tune of “O Tannenbaum,” it was a Confederate Top 40 hit.
Maryland! My Maryland!
Lawmakers in Jim Crow Annapolis adopted it in 1939, just as “Lost Cause” nostalgia reached its peak with the release of the film “Gone with the Wind.”
Silence replaced it. And that was OK.
Hardly anyone sang “Maryland, My Maryland,” except for the swells and drunks at Preakness every year. Most never missed it.
Yet people keep trying to replace it with something new.
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote an alternative. The committee that recommended dumping “Maryland, My Maryland” offered suggestions, most 100 years old or more. The poet laureate of Annapolis tried his hand.
Singer-songwriter Jimmy Charles of Ocean City gave it a shot, debuting “It’s a Maryland Thing” at Springfest 2022.
In 2024, Del. Susan McComas of Harford County proposed a task force to pick one. Her idea fell flat — even though she wanted to include an opinion columnist on the panel.
Then the Maryland 250 Commission, hoping to build excitement for the nation’s quarter-millennia birthday on July 4, connected with Diggs.
She wrote “The Heart of Maryland” after Dorchester County adopted her “Dorchester Dreams” last year as its official anthem. Its 250 committee got behind her new song.
Her music is a production of Barzini Family Music, a collective that works in schools and communities on the shore. Diggs has performed it publicly more than 400 times since it debuted in May.
“People connected with it,” she said.
Among them were state Sens. Benjamin Brooks of Baltimore and James Rosapepe of Prince George’s County, who co-sponsored the bill to make it the state song.
“State symbols should reflect who we are and what we aspire to be,” Brooks told the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee. “And this song honors Maryland’s history while looking forward to its future.”
Former first lady Katie O’Malley, a retired judge and Maryland 250 co-chair, testified for the song, to no avail. Maybe the last lines didn’t help.
Here in Maryland
Leave no one behind
A noble sentiment, but it’s Gov. Wes Moore’s catchphrase.
Even those who plan to vote to reelect him this year might choke on being asked to sing something so partisan.
Great state songs aren’t something we’re told is good for us, like kale salad. A state song should be something we want to sing.
Many states get theirs by adopting popular artists.
Kentucky still loves Stephen Foster. Alabama has Lynyrd Skynyrd, Georgia has Ray Charles, and Colorado and West Virginia split John Denver.
Listen to a few Maryland songs, though, and you begin to see the problem.
Nina Simone’s “Baltimore” is transcendentally beautiful but hardly uplifting, and how would The Avett Brothers’ “Pretty Girl from Annapolis” unite anyone in Cumberland?
“Good Morning Baltimore” from “Hairspray” is great, but R.E.M.’s “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” might not even play in Rockville.
Don’t go back to Rockville
And waste another year
I hate to say it, but “The Heart of Maryland” is no “Maryland, My Maryland.”
It takes talent to sing it. That’s the only charm the old state song had. It was an earworm.
“We didn’t really know what requirements needed to be met for a state song to be approved,” Diggs said.
She’ll sing it through Independence Day, notably at the Sail250 Maryland air show in Baltimore, and then move on to less political songs.
We’re not New Jersey, but we’re not ready to pick a new state song yet. Maybe “The Star-Spangled Banner” can stand in until we are.
It’s about Maryland ... well, Baltimore. A guy from Frederick wrote the lyrics, although he studied law in Annapolis.
People sing the first verse with its “rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” mostly at ballgames, and ignore the unfortunate later lines, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave.” There’s usually a lot of humming.
It’s even got a Maryland spin if you hit the “O!” on the second “O say” with enthusiasm and forlorn hope for the new Orioles season.
Nah, that’ll never work.
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