The Evolution of Marching Band. Could they be leaving the drum corps style behind them?

[Sis]

Drum Corps is Marching Band?

The Bands may disagree. The ever changing band community is once again
undergoing transformation, leaving their drum corps "fling" behind.
Change is good, right? Give the people what they want, right?

Drum Corps is Marching Band? Let the Hip Hop commence, G!

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/living/5751123.htm

Jackie

[Dave Burkett]

Did you mean "devolution"?

"Sis" <sist...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3EB0877B...@worldnet.att.net...

[ContraRich77]

I think this is cool.

I saw the movie "Drumline" which I probably would have liked better if it
concentrated more on the story and had NO actual band or drumming footage in it
(I know actual drummers probably shuddered more than I did when they actually
drummed in the movie) but I think it's cool that marching bands are conceiving
their own identity and not skimming off the top of corps style shows.

[Sis]

ContraRich77 wrote:

>I think this is cool.
>

So do I! Imagine that. Evolving into something that doesn't already exist!

Nice concept. Drum Corps should follow!

Jackie

[Big Rich Soprano]

>Did you mean "devolution"?

We are not Drum Corps..... we are DEVO!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic!

- Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law

[Stuart Rice]

This is an interesting article, but not entirely well researched. It
is entirely too early to determine what influence "Drumline" will have
on the American marching band movement as a whole. The statistics we
do have suggest that between the years of 1990 and 2000, pure corps
style marching made enormous gains among high school marching bands,
whose preference for the style grew from 34% to 72% (this increase is
as much a suggestion of how easily band directors are swayed as it is
an indication of their support for corps style). Traditional styles
of marching grew from 16% to 19% in the same period, while "modified"
corps style dropped from 50% to 9%. Figures suggest that bands may
well be influenced to follow recent popular interest in black college
dance bands – the overall trend between 1990 and 2000 finds
corps-influenced styles decreasing from 84% to 81% of high school
marching bands. However, we do not have statistics to determine what
that influence amounts to in real numbers.

We do know that the interest in creative shows is on the rise, as
suggested by the rise in high school marching bands who use the same
show all year – 62% to 77% from 1994 to 2000 (The Instrumentalist,
November 2000). Which style (traditional or corps) will be deemed
"creative" enough to keep pace with this trend remains to be seen, and
will likely be settled at the collegiate level.

Despite what popular opinion may assume, black college dance band
style is not a new phenomenon, nor did it develop with high-stepping
in the 1940s, as Greene and Brooks suggest in their article, "Bored by
oom-pah, high school bands march to hip-hop"
(www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/living/5751123.htm). The black college
dance band style of marching band, as demonstrated in the movie,
"Drumline," was developed as early as the 1920s by schools such as
FAMU (then FAMC) and developed independent of the novelty of
high-stepping, which it absorbed later (Steppin' on the Blues: The
Visible Rhythms of African American Dance, Jacqui Malone, 1996).
High-stepping is not indigenous to this style, and not to be confused
with the high leg-lifts of the drum majors' show-opening strut (more
likely an article of the cake-walk, a black parody of white
slave-owners ostentatious walk).

The success of Drumline does represent something of a threat to
corps-style marching inasmuch as it represents a de-emphasis on
marching. The ability of drum and bugle corps to prosper in the wake
of this movies' success depend greatly on Drum Corps International's
interest in rediscovering its duties as the "educational and service
arm of the drum and bugle corps activity" (DCI Mission Statement,
1992), and the ability of its governing directors to refrain from
exploring other genre in search of pick-up lines.

For more information on black college dance bands, the following works
may be of interest:

The FAMU Marching 100 (Jacqui Malone), The Black Perspective in Music.

Dilemmas of and Challenges for Black University Marching Bands in the
80's: A Personal View (Lenard C. Bowie), The Negro Educational
Review, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, January 1984.

Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance
(Jacqui Malone), 1996.

Stuart E. Rice
www.marchingresearch.com