Is anybody out there as worried as I about the future of marching bands?
I know, I know…Along the spectrum of things to worry about — Little Rocket Man, where we’re headed on medical insurance, mass murder from on high — the future of marching bands doesn’t rank very high on “the things we worry about” list.
Nevertheless, if you’re a marching band fan, like I am, you’ve got to be tossing and turning at night, just a bit.
Reason is, of course, the decline in popularity of football — the bedrock of marching band-om.
If parents continue in growing numbers to refuse to allow their children to play competitive football, the game will atrophy from the inside and could, eventually, go the way of boxing and horse racing, that is, consigned to the margins of organized sport.
As regular readers know, I’ve sworn off football. I don’t watch it and don’t read about it…other than seeing a few scores as I look at other parts of the sports section. Last year, I swore off pro football but continued following college football, mainly because I enjoyed going to University of Kansas games to hear the KU Marching Band.
But this year, I wiped the slate clean. The main impetus was news of a study of 111 former football players’ brains that showed all but one exhibited signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E.
I haven’t missed the football at all. But I sure have missed watching the KU band perform at halftime, and I’ve especially missed hearing them play “Home on the Range” at the conclusion of home games.
With the crack in football’s foundation starting to grow, I got to wondering if any leaders of college band programs had begun envisioning a day when college and pro football were no longer headline-grabbing attractions. So, first I put in a call to the associate director of bands at KU. I didn’t get him but another staff member picked up and dutifully took down my name and number and the reason I was calling. (She also got my email address, perhaps thinking that would be an easy way for the director to blow me off, if he wanted to.)
Then I called the director of bands, Brian A. Silvey, at the University of Missouri. “Silvey” said the voice on the other end of the phone.
He was happy to talk about the subject, but, as I suspected would be the case, he wasn’t too worried about the immediate future of marching bands.
He said he thought the tradition would “continue on as it has for the last 100 years,” with college football being the “prominent showcase” for marching bands.
Marching Mizzou, at “Homecoming 101” in 2012
At the same time, he readily acknowledged the growing threat to football’s popularity and said that if it got to the point where the marching-band tradition also faltered, he envisioned aspiring marching band members swelling the ranks of a non-profit organization called Drum Corps International, based in Indianapolis.
About 5,000 young people participate in Drum Corps International each year, with the competitive season starting in mid-June and culminating with the DCI World Championships in Indianapolis the second weekend of August.
Now, that was eye-opening information for me. In the first place, I can’t tell you how relieved I was to here that if football fades away, the marching-band tradition will likely continue to prosper, albeit perhaps in more modest settings than massive college football stadiums.
And second, I’ve discovered a possible new vacation venue: Indianapolis, second weekend of August.
Road trip, anyone?
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim, from the time I was in eighth grade until my junior year at Mizzou, I was in a marching band. For two years I was drum major of the Hickman High School Marching Band in Columbia and in Marching Mizzou for two years before J-School crowded out band.
People who have not been in band may not know, it resembles being on a sports team, practicing daily to get ready for the big game. Some of the best times at Marching Mizzou (1966-68) was performing in opposing universities’ stadiums or hosting the band from the visiting university. Our director Alexander Pickard was a taskmaster and we were always ready. I have played at Lawrence, Lincoln and Boulder back in the day when Mizzou was in the Big 8. Each time we out-performed the home band. Our performance of “Night on Bald Mountain” at Boulder in 1967 or ’68 was so good the Denver Post wrote about it in the Sunday paper, saying something to the effect, “Colorado may have won the game, but we lost the halftime show.”
I’ll never forget when the Iowa State Band visited Columbia and did their share of the the halftime performance first. The crowd of 50,000 gave them a polite reception. As the Cyclone band finished, the Mizzou crowd came to its feet as we lined up and the roar in anticipation of our share of the show was thunderous. Our drum major got excited and set the tempo much faster than what we had practiced. We were prepared and up for it although exhausted after we were done.
I hope the bands survive in one venue or another. Hundreds of high school and college students can participate in meaningful way that demands excellence just as major college sports do. Marching bands are a real asset and great representatives of their schools.
So I am a 69-year-old who streams marching band music and Sousa Marches on I-Tunes. Nice Post. Keep the bands.
That’s not only a great story, Tom, but a wonderful testament to the enduring appeal of marching bands…Marching Mizzou is outstanding year in and year out, but I have to say, in my humble opinion, “Missouri Waltz” is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard! (Harry Truman didn’t like it, either.)
We had Warren Bass! The most awesome Drum Major ever! He could toss that baton way into the sky! And the fans went wild! Oh, what great Marching Mizzou memories.
Here’s a great story about Warren Bass (whom I’d never heard of, Marsha) from the “Mizzou” magazine.
http://mizzoumagarchives.missouri.edu/2011-Fall/features/rah/warren-bass/index.php
The story says: “With his 100-foot-high baton tosses, under-the-leg throws and energetic high struts, he thrilled Mizzou football crowds during pregame and halftime performances. The show-stopping, two-time U.S. National Baton Twirling champion got his start by twirling a broom for two hours a day in the alley behind his St. Louis home.”
You Chicken Hawks were deprived!
Charles Emmons invented the “Missouri Waltz “ arrangement for marching band — a way of marching in 3/4 time. I agree with Pres. Truman by the way. Also saw the great Warren Bass’s first appearance at Mizzou football as a High School student. Also was in the last Marching Mizzou band to play Dixie.
Geez…Dixie. Hard to imagine now.
Marsha — For the record, I am not, was not and never will be a Jayhawk. I’m a Knight — Bellarmine College, Louisville, Ky. I just went to KU games because I liked the marching band and Lawrence is just an hour away.
They can play for the soccer teams as they take over the football stadiums and eliminate the need to have 300 lb monstrosities on campus who never go to class.
Yeah, I guess the bands could play before the start of “stoppage time.”
They have halftime.
Weirdly, it sounds like you’re suffering an autumnal case of both weltschmertz and sehnsucht.
I say weirdly because usually there’s a specific German word for most every affliction. I’ve posted a couple of emails to friends still living abroad to see if I’ve just forgotten the proper phrase…
No one can send me running to the dictionary (or Google) faster than Mr Notb (unless it’s Mr Altevogt).
At first blush, I thought Dr. Will was practicing quackery, but upon further consideration, he might be on to something…Like you, I’m sure, Gayle, I had never heard of either of the diagnoses Dr. Will propounded, but consider…
Weltschmertz: 1) mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state; 2) a mood of sentimental sadness
Sehnsucht: Yearning; wistful longing
Being Irish and a liberal, of course I’m a likely candidate for either of the illnesses.
…But regarding Mr. Altevogt’s vocabulary, Gayle, try to restrain yourself; he just makes shit up.
Please folks, please folks. May I have your attention please?
Attention please?
I can deal with this trouble, friends, with a wave of my hand,
This very hand
Please observe me if you will
I’m Professor Harold Hill
And I’m here to organize a River City Boys Band
Oh think my friends, how could any pool table ever hope to compete with a gold trombone?
Ra-da-ra-da-da-da-da-ra-da
Remember my friends what a handful of trumpet players did to the famous fabled walls of Jericho?
Oh billiard parlor walls come a’tumbling down
Oh a band will do it my friends, I mean a boys band, yes indeed
I say River City’s gotta have a boys band and I mean she needs it today
But Professor Harold Hill’s on hand
And River City’s gonna have a boys band
As sure as the Lord made little green apples
And that band’s gonna be in uniform
Johnny, Willie, Teddy, Fred
And you’ll see the glitter of crashing cymbols
And you’ll hear the thunder of roaring drums
The shimmer of trumpets
Ta-ta-da!
And you feel something akin to the electric thrill I enjoyed when Gilmour, Liberate, Pat Conway, the Great Creator, W.C. Handy, and John Philip Sousa all came to town on the very same historic day.
With a hundred and ten coronets close at hand
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos
The cream of every famous band
Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun
With a hundred and ten coronets right behind
There were more than a thousand reeds springing up like weeds
There were horns of every shape and kind
There were copper-bottom timpanies and horse platoons
Thundering, thundering all along the way
Double-bell euphoniums and big bassoons
Each bassoon having his big fat say
There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery
Thundering, thundering louder than before
Clarinets of every size and trumpeters who’d improvise a whole octave higher than the score
Seventy-six trombones hit the counterpoint
While a hundred and ten coronets blazed away
To the rhythm of harch, harch, harch all the kids began to march
And they’re marching still right today
They’re marching still right today
Now that’s a band.
Oh, Jim, you amaze me — how could you forget the politicians who appear en masse at parades, and need the discipline of a marching band to keep them in step? On Saturday the Sarcoxie Marching Bears will be on parade at the Maple Leaf Festival in Carthage, MO — and I won’t be there, Drat!
You never get it right. According to Grammarly I have a larger vocabulary than 97% of Facebook users. However, my grammar and punctuation suck. That said, it’s not my fault this blog has a lousy copy editor