Arts & Culture
O say can you sing?

Damla Yesil (left), Bekuochukwu Uzo-Menkiti, Zeb Jewell-Alibhai, and Grace Hur.

Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff, Photo courtesy of Zeb Jewell-Alibhai, Photo courtesy of Damla Yesil, Photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff

Eileen O’Grady

Harvard Staff Writer

December 15, 2025 5 min read

Athletics, arts collaboration riffs on anthem that inspires patriotism and ‘personal flair’

“The Star-Spangled Banner” — with its wide vocal range spanning an octave and a half and numerous leaps between notes — famously presents a challenge for singers.

Audience expectations around the song only add to the pressure, according to sophomore Bekuochukwu Uzo-Menkiti — one of several students performing the national anthem this year at Harvard games as part of a new collaboration between the Office for the Arts and Athletics.

“The national anthem is something that you’ve heard at the Super Bowl. You’ve heard the Whitney Houston version, you’ve heard the Lady Gaga version. It’s hard for people to hear someone sing the national anthem and not expect some kind of personal flair,” Uzo-Menkiti said.

Bekuochukwu Uzo-Menkiti.
Videos by Maureen Coyle and Niles Singer/Harvard Staff

If that weren’t daunting enough, knowing how many people feel a deep personal connection to the song can raise the stakes even more, said senior Damla Yesil, who performed last month at a men’s ice hockey game. Reflecting on her parents’ experience as immigrants from Bulgaria and Turkey helped her prepare.

“Once I got up there, all the nerves went away because I was like, ‘Oh, this is not about me,’” said Yesil, a neuroscience concentrator from New York with a secondary in global health and health policy enrolled in the Harvard-Berklee Joint Studies Program. “I have to make people feel like America is their home. It’s a special moment for people.”

Damla Yesil.

Video by Nate Gardner

For junior Zeb Jewell-Alibhai, who moved to the U.S. from Portugal at age 8 and secured citizenship in January, his saxophone rendition to kick off the women’s basketball home opener felt personally symbolic.

“This is the first time I’ve played it since becoming an American,” said Jewell-Alibhai, a double-concentrator in government and music enrolled in the Harvard-Berklee Joint Studies Program. “Music has a place in every part of life, and there’s no exception when it comes to basketball games.”

Zeb Jewell-Alibhai.

Video by Josh Randall

Office for the Arts Director Fiona Coffey offered similar sentiments, calling athletics and music “complementary forms of self‑expression” rooted in creativity, discipline, and heart.

“Harvard students are remarkably multifaceted: artists, athletes, and scholars, who fluidly move among disciplines with talent and passion,” Coffey said. “Many of our students embody this artist‑athlete intersection, modeling how each pursuit deepens the other, and their scholarship.”

Nineteen acts, including solo musicians and two a cappella ensembles, were selected from auditions held in October to perform at games, matches, and meets throughout the year, including some halftime shows.

“Bringing student musicians into our game‑day traditions has been inspiring for our teams and our fans,” said Hannah Miller, director of fan engagement for Harvard Athletics. “These performances remind us how powerfully the arts and athletics can come together to create moments of pride, belonging, and community at Harvard.”

Sophomore Grace Hur, an electrical engineering concentrator from Alabama, sang at two women’s ice hockey games this semester while simultaneously performing the American Sign Language interpretation of Francis Scott Key’s famous lyrics.

“I wanted to take this opportunity to make the anthem a bit more inclusive, and I felt using American Sign Language while also singing it could help me connect with more people of both worlds,” said Hur, who in high school directed an ASL-translated play that featured actors and “shadow signers” side-by-side onstage.

Grace Hur.
Videos by Maureen Coyle and Niles Singer/Harvard Staff

“The national anthem is a song that sends the message of underrepresented groups that can belong, uniting people together,” Hur said. “There are many different ways of signing the same lyrics, because American Sign Language is a meaning-based language rather than a word-to-word translation. Everyone translates and interprets it differently, and so as I’ve gotten to do this, I’ve learned how diverse this one song can be for different people.”

As to the difficulty of the song, Uzo-Menkiti — who will perform at the Feb. 14 men’s basketball game vs. Yale and the Feb. 28 men’s ice hockey game vs. Quinnipiac — has some advice for beginners: Practice makes perfect.

“Repetition is key,” said Uzo-Menkiti, a human developmental and regenerative biology concentrator who sang frequently for football and baseball games at her Utah high school. “If you practice singing a song over and over again, then you get muscle memory. The voice is a muscle, so if you keep training it in one particular exercise, like the national anthem, then inevitably you’ll get better at it. Your pitch will be better, your riffs will be cleaner, and you will be able to reach the notes with ease because you’ve done it so many times.”