The man who sang the US national anthem at the NFL game at London’s Wembley last week said he’d politely decline an offer to perform for Donald Trump at the White House.
Opera star Noah Stewart sang Star Spangled Banner for 90,000 American football fans while players from Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens protested on Sunday.
Many of them took a knee while others linked arms in protest at US President Trump’s insistence that any players protesting the stars and stripes flag or the anthem should be fired by team owners.
The protests started last year when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the anthem at a pre-season game in protest at discrimination and police violence against black men in America.
Stewart said he was proud to sing the anthem in London and he’d be delighted to perform it again at an NFL game - but says he wouldn’t be rushing to the White House while Trump remains resident.
"What I wanted to do last Sunday was unite people"
"I would decline, gracefully decline. No, I wouldn’t be doing that any time soon," said the New Yorker, who grew up in a single-parent family in Harlem in the late seventies and early eighties.
"Wembley was such thrill; 90,000 screaming fans. The anthem singer has such a great responsibility - what I wanted to do last Sunday was unite people.
"The United States had suffered three massive hurricanes that have left hundreds of people without food, shelter, medicine, water. What I wanted to do was, perhaps, share a bit of strength and hope with them.
"I didn’t know that the protest was going to take place, my responsibility was to remember the words, stay in key, stay professional and not make it about me. What was most important was to make it about the people because over the last year, people have been facing a tough time in terms of divisions in our country.
"There was a rough election, gun violence has been rampant in America, it’s a tough conversation, but it has opened up the discussion to all people about human rights - an issue that affects us all," said Stewart, speaking exclusively to RTÉ Sport.
When asked would he preform the anthem at another NFL game knowing that players were likely to protest, eh said: "Oh, yes! It’s like a hymn, a folk song, and it also gets the players pumped up.
"I think we take it for granted because we sing it all the time, but it unites us. Music is the number one universal language in the world and I’ll sing it to the day I die.
Tenor Noah Stewart will perform Opera Pops on Saturday night with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra at the National Concert Hall along along with soprano Cara O’Sullivan with conductor David Heusel and presenter Liz Nolan. The show gets under way at 8.0pm. Tickets returns only.
