Soul, swagger and spectacle: America's black marching bands – in pictures

[A Lark Ascending]

Thought this might be of interest to some:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/jan/12/african-american-black-marching-bands-in-pictures

[JSngry]

Thanks for sharing this.You're right, it is of interest. It's a fascinating tradition that runs deep, especially in the American South.

Have experienced not a little of this tradition first (or nearly first) hand. Our local school system fully integrated in 1969, and our new high school band director had been serving as the band director of the Black school as well as working in the lower grades of the White schools. When he took over the now-one High School in 1970, the first thing he did was put the African-American drummers in charge of parade cadences other non-competitive maneuvers. That caused some people to undergo a reassessment of what "marching" was all about, and also to confront "swing" more directly than they had before, and probably have since.

Of course, before that, the Grambling marching band was well known to locals of all races, and as time went on and people starting realizing how much of "this" there was (and had been)...Jarvis Christian College was in the immediate area, and the DFW area had HBCUs as well, and if you went to a football game, you saw the bands. And as social circles expanded, so did a realization of where all this was, and ...yeah, a rich heritage indeed, and still not completely vanished as America's attempts at integration have resulted in plenty of de facto segregated schools in the urban areas. It's still there, just go to a football game or an MLK Day parade.

The thing about most of these bands is that they play...loud. LOUD. It's a joyous sound usually, but it's always LOUD. At some point, I looked back on the sounds of the horn sections for The Ohio Players, early Kool & The Gang, The Counts, all those bands that had roots in playing frat parties (another world largely unknown to the "general population"), and I'd lay dollars to donuts that if they were playing frat parties, they were also playing in some college's marching band. The horn sections on those band's records play like the marching bands play - loud, strong, they gonna be heard, perfect tuning and such things be damned, they will not go unheard!

Funny how in some cultures, marching is associated with military proclivities, standardization, "stiffness", precision, execution, and in other cultures with parades and parties, being loose and moving ahead with an air of bon-vivance, the march as one more form of dance...life as a dance! I still think fondly upon Gerome Holmes and Harry Glenn Sutphen, the two drummers who Buzz Mezzner put in charge of instilling that into our high school marching band. Truly a lesson that has lasted a lifetime.

 

[JSngry]

Ohio, kids in the park. Not marching, just drumming. But the marching bands...this is what they get, this is their drummers.

 

Shaw recognize: http://www.east-cleveland.k12.oh.us/12/Content/132

Warrensville, not so much.

http://www.warrensville.k12.oh.us/warrensvilleheightshighschool_home.aspx

Shaw, bringing the LOUD.

 

 

[optatio]

ink drawing on cardboard - untitled [New Orleans Marching Band] - Marion Brown 1992 - 56,7 x 76,0 cm

 

 

Edited January 13, 2016 by optatio

[clifford_thornton]

That's pretty damn cool.

Looking forward to reading the article and Sangrey's point to the tradition and volume of these outfits rings true.

[danasgoodstuff]

I did a staff Suggestion For Purchase, with a link to the Times article; we'll see if Multnomah County Library gets it.

[JSngry]

I love these drum line battles. It's as if the spirit of Max Roach inhabits all of them, knowingly or otherwise, just as spirits from before inhabited Max, Big Sid, Baby Dodds, it just goes on, forward and backward..Milford Graves, Shannon Jackson, unbroken. It's jsut kids, high school kids, who knows if in 5 years any of them will still be playing, and yet, for these moments, there they are.

 

 

 

[JSngry]