Video showing thousands singing 'Star-Spangled Banner' in Kentucky hotel goes viral
The video was captured during the Kentucky Music Educators Conference Feb. 5, but it's just now gaining traction. Several news outlets have picked up the video, and it has amassed more than 500,000 likes on TikTok.
Singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the atrium is an annual tradition for students staying at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Louisville during the multi-day Kentucky Music Educators Conference, Bullitt East High School Choir Director Carrie Ann Gary told The Courier Journal.
In 2022, CBS News reported the tradition started in 1987 after a group of students hanging out in the atrium extemporaneously started singing.
"It was just student-inspired," Gary said. "There's not a person that starts it. There's not a conductor. It's just students joining together."
Gary has gone to the conference with students each year since 2008. She always looks forward to seeing her students experience it for the first time, which was the case for five of her six students who attended this year.
"It really is such a cool thing to be a part of. So, that's kind of why I just like to kind of get their expression," Gary said.
Why it went viral this year? She's not sure.
One reason, she suspects, is that the video was taken from the hotel's 17th floor, giving a unique vantage as she pans from the ground floor all the way up to her floor.
Another explanation could be that people are hungry for "something positive," Gary said.
Whatever the reason might be, she's glad it's resonating with people.
"It's just such a unifying thing that everybody knows, a unifying song, a unifying symbol that everybody's familiar with," she said.
Contact reporter Killian Baarlaer at kbaarlaer@gannett.com or @bkillian72 on X.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Star-Spangled Banner sung by thousands of students at Louisville hotel
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