Miami Boys’ Choir Declines Invitation To Sing US Anthem At Ball Game: ‘Too High’

“And the rockets red glare” and “O’er the land of the free.”

New York, October 13 – A Jewish vocal group of preadolescent youth whose material proved an inexplicable hit on social media over the last month turned down an offer today from a Major League Baseball team to perform The Star Spangled Banner ahead of one of the squad’s contests this fall, citing the song’s notoriously hard-to-reach notes in the middle and end sections of the piece, to which the singing group’s sopranos will struggle to do justice.

Chananya Begun, a spokesman for the Miami Boys’ Choir (MBC) and the son of founder and longtime director Yerachmiel Begun, acknowledged Thursday that the group had declined an invitation to sing the anthem before a game at Yankee Stadium later this month – even though the game on offer will take place in the postseason, guaranteeing massive media exposure – because the lines “And the rockets red glare” and “O’er the land of the free” go so high on the musical scale that few, if any, of the boys in MBC can get that high.

“We appreciate the opportunity for broader appeal,” Begun told the Yankees. “New York is the world’s biggest stage, and Yankee Stadium, especially during the playoffs, makes it even bigger. Unfortunately, Miami Boys’ Choir considers its members unable to sing high enough to hit several of the demanding notes in the National Anthem, and, rather than risk disgracing our great country by missing those notes, we respectfully defer this honor to a more capable party. Thank you, nevertheless, for honoring us with the consideration.”

MBC began in the 1970’s and moved to New York almost immediately, but kept the name. A clip of a 2007 performance by the group made unexpected waves on TikTok platform. The once-niche choir that specializes in “orthodox pop” in Hebrew, English, and a smattering of Talmudic Aramaic found itself thrust into prominence far beyond the familiar confines of the American orthodox Jewish community that until last month accounted for the entirety of the MBC fanbase. Orthodox Jews represent a fraction of a percent of the US population; the TikTok phenomenon has exposed hundreds of millions of users in the US and abroad to an innocent brand of musical performance at odds with the prevailing esthetic of pop music in the wider culture that stresses sexuality, implicit violence, grievance, and cynicism. MBC, in contrast, sings of devotion, hope, ethics, learning, self-control, and other values key to Jewish life. The flashiest element of an MBC performance is the stage lighting.

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