star-spangled

Monday’s show, which lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes, began as “Cowboy Carter” does, with renditions of Beyoncé’s churchy “Ameriican Requiem” and the Beatles’ “Blackbird”; then she sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a giant video screen behind her flashed a message: “Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.”

Just two games into the 2025 playoffs, the free-reed musical instrument has become the Kings’ unofficial postseason good luck charm — thanks to some memorable pregame performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” played by a group representing the Koreatown Senior and Community Center.

Kwanil Park, the center’s executive director, suggested that the harmonica group reprise its performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the game.

Canadian fans have been booing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before hockey and baseball games.

If one believed that the star-spangled banner flapped “o’er the land of the free,” then protest during its veneration – not against it, as was deliberately misconstrued – is precisely the affordance that the ritual symbolizes.