Why I Love a Parade - Drums & Bugles

Do you love parades?

Don't miss all the videos of marching bands and corps around the world, below, including South Korea.

Whether it's a military review, the field entrance of many drum and bugle corps at the opening of competition week, or a New Orleans funeral procession moving down the boulevard with a Dixie Land Band, the music and the movement entrance me. Each event is like a river of music that fills the street and transports me to a different place.

The first parade I recall as a child was a televised Thanksgiving Day Parade with Santa Claus. In animate floats and balloon characters did not make much of an impression on my young mind, but the performances of scenes from popular thearical productions strongly grabbed by attention. Then, the marching bands appeared and placed me into a complete state of awe. The music, the counds of the various instruments, and marching feet and the flash of twirled trumpets, batons, and drumsticks would not release me. In the 5th grade, music teachers suggested I learn to play a violin or a clarinet, but only the brass section and drums resonated with me. Finally, I was able to gain band membership in the 7th grade.

Since that time, I have most enjoyed local summer performances of military bands, including the US Navy Band, in our city's Music In the Air series. Discovering the innovative, energetic marching band world of the colleges featured in the film Drumline has been a big treat as well. At the same time, the groups that grab my attention most firmly are the drum and bugle corps, of which The Phantom Regiment is one of my favorites (see video below).

Our middle school band together asked our music teacher if we might learn how to march as a musical unit and he agreed. He took us out onto the grassy land beside the school and taught us how to march in time in formations to drum cadences we had heard on national television during funeral processions of leaders of state in the previous months. Somehow, the lead drummer strapped the heavy orchestra bass drum to himself and managed to lead the tempo and formation. He was only 13 years old. The event was a unique learning experience that had never before been offered in the school.

In high school, I was given the opportunity of participating in the marching band and awarded a position as first chair and soloist on cornet/trumpet. I also learned to play a bit on French Horn, which I adore, but I could not manage a trombone - and to this day, I can only make a clarinet sqeak and squeal, but I can play some tunes on a flutes.

We learned a number of John Phillip Sousa Marches to perform during high school football half time shows, in parades, and in concert. Annually, several of us in the band and orchestra looked forward to participating in a huge citywide spring music festival. Not only did we perform and listen to other high quality high school bands, orchestras, choral groups; but we also were treated to professional jazz bands in which our teachers performed. Outshining all of this, hwoever, was the excellent performance of a choir containing two hundred Kindergartners. This was not the usual off-key nursery rhyme with hand movements, but the performance of an entire hgiher-level song with melody and harmonies. How the magician of a woman leading that group worked such a wonder, I will never know.

Since that time, I have most enjoyed local summer performances of military bands, including the US Navy Band, in our city's Music In the Air series. Discovering the innovative, energetic marching band world of the colleges featured in the film Drumline has been a big treat as well. At the same time, the groups that grab my attention most firmly are the drum and bugle corps, of which The Phantom Regiment is one of my favorites (see video below).

Another corps, although I have forgotten their name, kept me transfixed one stormy night, however. On a national competition night, this Southern US drum and bugle corps had presented itself smartly and begun a high precision, very entertaining show. Shortly after beginning their performance, a tremendous storm began and the power went out completely in the stadium. Not one of them so much as flinching, the members of this corps completed their entire marching perfromance - even forming pictures with their formations - to a standing ovation and the heavy downpour stopped after their last note. The crowd roared! (Note that there was no lightning to endanger the corps). Those of us not under cover did not leave, but remained, got drenched, and rose to applaud their spirit.

Now THAT'S a good marching "band"!

Armies at war have long been drummed into battle by a drummer boy and I believe that this was the simplest beginning of the modern marching band, aside from possible artistic and military units of ancient times. Drumming set time for rowers of ancient Egyptian barges. Drummers also set cadences for Asian military drills. I think the drum is the foundation of it all.

The battle drum was joined by a fife and the national colors (flag) and a marching section was born of war.

Additional musical instruments were added to the fife and drum to produce an American military band in 1798: The President's Own United States Marine Band (see photo above). All other branches of the military followed with their own bands and many began choral units as well, which perform with the bands and on their own around the country and the globe. The the bands began marching and performing in military reviews and then in public parades, followed by outdoor and indoor concerts.

Colleges and high schools began producing marching bands as well as student concert bands and orchestras, and the drum & bugle corps became a specialized version of this outgrowth. The corps is often a community group open to youth from middle and high school through age 21 or so and they depend on charitable giving to maintain their existence. The successful corps is full of hard working players and families, full of indomitable spirit, and dedicated to improving the community through music.

They are heroes to me.

Pernell Briggs, Gerald Tharrington, Timothy Bryant & Daryl Spellman in 1982.

In the video offered to the right, we have the 4 young adults that changed Black high school and college drumlines across America. In fact, some white drumlines have learned their style as well. Even S. Korean Military bands caught the idea (see below). All from Durham, NC they all went to Hillside High School, followed by North Carolina A&T State University, the school on which that in the film Drumline is based.

In 1982, these 4 people and their drumming performance won 2nd Place in an all-white talent show in Greensboro. Music can transcend race and age issues, thankfully.

These 4 men joined the A & T Marching Band of 1984-1985 and offered their skills to the Cold Steel Drumline. With the rest of the drumline, they together developed the techniques and style enjoyed by large crowds today. The worlds of the marching band and drum and bugle corps owes them a major never-ending debt.