‘Goosebumps’ as young boy plays Star-Spangled Banner on his trumpet at San Diego protest
16 June 2025, 15:33
The Star-Spangled Banner took on new meaning at US protests this weekend.
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As ‘No Kings’ protests took place all over the weekend in the US, a young trumpeter moved a San Diego crowd with a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.
The young boy, sitting on his older brother’s shoulders, played the US national anthem on a trumpet with a sign hanging from the instrument that read: ‘LET FREEDOM RING!’
As he played, other protestors sang along with him and erupted into applause when he finished.
The video was filmed by host of the ‘Revolutions of Our Time Podcast’, who happened to be in the right place at the right time. After being posted on TikTok, the clip garnered over eight million views, with nearly 15,000 comments expressing their reactions to the moment.
“All my life I’ve HATED the national anthem because it’s never felt real to me,” one person wrote, “Today? That changed. Now I know what it’s supposed to feel like. I have goosebumps all over and tears falling down my face.”
Read more: Music in protest: 9 powerful images of music’s role in times of conflict
Boy at protest performs The Star-Spangled Banner on a trumpet
Music has always been central to protest, political action and times of conflict, war and resolution.
From Brahms’ Triumphlied, that was written to celebrate the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to This Little Light of Mine, which became an anthem of the during civil rights movement in the 1960s, music has set the tone of important political moments and expressed the feelings that words could not.
The Star-Spangled Banner has its origins in political resistance, too. The lyrics come from a poem written by American lawyer Francis Scott Key, Defence of Fort M’Henry.
Key was inspired to write the poem after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. After the battle had finished, Key was in shock to see that an American flag still stood strong over Fort McHenry, meaning that the British had not won.
Read more: What are the lyrics to the US National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner?
This moment in San Diego, then, felt like more than a sweet performance from a child: it became a chance for those around him to unite and express their hope and resistance.
The ‘No Kings’ marches took place across the US over the weekend, on the same day as the US Army’s 250th Anniversary Parade and US president Donald Trump’s 79th birthday, in protest of Trump’s policies and actions during his presidency so far. This has included what has been described as an ‘authoritarian agenda’, with large scale immigration raids and cuts to Medicaid and other social services.
