An Ashgate Book

An Ashgate Book
Brass Bands of the World:

Militarism, Colonial Legacies,
and Local Music Making
This page has been left blank intentionally
Brass Bands of the World:
Militarism, Colonial Legacies,
and Local Music Making
Edited by
Suzel Ana Reily

Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
Katherine Brucher
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA
ROUTLEDGE
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Suzel Ana Reily, Katherine Brucher and the contributors 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Suzel Ana Reily and Katherine Brucher have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Brass bands of the world : militarism, colonial legacies, and local music making. – (SOAS
musicology series)
1. Brass bands. 2. Brass bands – History.
I. Series II. Reily, Suzel Ana, 1955– III. Brucher, Katherine.
784.9–dc23
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Brass bands of the world : militarism, colonial legacies, and local music making / edited
by Suzel Ana Reily and Katherine Brucher.
pages cm.—(SOAS musicology series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-4422-0 (hardcover)
1. Brass bands—History. 2. Band music—Social
aspects. I. Reily, Suzel Ana, 1955- II. Brucher, Katherine.
ML1300.B73 2013
784.909—dc23
2013000818
ISBN 9781409444220 (hbk)
Bach musicological font developed by © Yo Tomita.

Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

List of Musical Examples ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Foreword by Charles Keil xiii
Acknowledgements xxi
Introduction: The World of Brass Bands 1

Katherine Brucher and Suzel Ana Reily
1 Brass and Military Bands in Britain – Performance Domains, the

Factors that Construct them and their Influence 33
Trevor Herbert
2 Western Challenge, Japanese Musical Response: Military Bands in

Modern Japan 55
Sarah McClimon
3 Battlefields and the Field of Music: South Korean Military Band

Musicians and the Korean War 79
Heejin Kim
4 From Processions to Encontros: The Performance Niches of the

Community Bands of Minas Gerais, Brazil 99
Suzel Ana Reily
5 The Representational Power of the New Orleans Brass Band 123

Matt Sakakeeny
6 Soldiers of God: The Spectacular Musical Ministry of the

Christmas Bands in the Western Cape, South Africa 139
Sylvia Bruinders
7 Composing Identity and Transposing Values in Portuguese

Amateur Wind Bands 155
Katherine Brucher
vi Brass Bands of the World
8 Playing Away: Liminality, Flow and Communitas in an Ulster

Flute Band’s Visit to a Scottish Orange Parade 177
Gordon Ramsey
9 From Village to World Stage: The Malleability of Sinaloan Popular

Brass Bands 199
Helena Simonett
Bibliography 217
Discography 235
Index 237
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
4.1 Banda de Música Giulietta Dionesi, 1900. Photos courtesy of

Márcia Lemes 111
4.2 Banda de Música Memória de Dom Pedro II, 1899. Photo courtesy
of the Centro de Memória do Sul de Minas 112
4.3 Campanhense Jazz-Band. Photo courtesy of the Centro de Memória
do Sul de Minas 114
4.4 Corporação Musical Dom Inocêncio playing at an encontro de
bandas in Varginha, Minas Gerais, 2008. Photo by Suzel Ana Reily 119
5.1 Members of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club
pose for a picture before their parade, 3 September 2006. Photo by
Matt Sakakeeny 124
5.2 Black Men of Labor founding members Gregg Stafford (far left)
and Fred Johnson (far right), 3 September 2006. Photo by Matt
Sakakeeny133
5.3 Members of the Black Men of Labor dance in front of the musicians
and second liners, 2 September 2007. Photo by Matt Sakakeeny 134
6.1 St. Joseph’s Christmas Band on parade in Woodstock, 2009. Photo
courtesy of Paul Grendon 146
6.2 St. Joseph’s Christmas Band performing at the Union Competition,
2010. Photo courtesy of Paul Grendon 149
7.1 The statue, Homage to the Musician, Largo do Santo António,
Covões, 2011. Photo by Katherine Brucher 156
7.2 One of the youngest (foreground) and the oldest (background)
musicians in the band in front of the church before the procession
for the Feast of Saint Anthony of Covões, June 2011. Photo by
Katherine Brucher 172
8.1 Intense focus on the music as the SGWM band enters the field, 2008 187
9.1 Banda Los Guamuchileños in 1947 with a wealthy businessman
from Culiacán, sitting. Photo courtesy of Teodoro Ramírez Pereda 202
9.2 Banda El Recodo in front of the church of the village of El Recodo,
1943. Photo courtesy of Rigoberto Zamudio Velarde 204
9.3 Banda El Recodo de Cruz Lizárraga, c. 1963. Photo courtesy of
Isidoro Ramírez Sánchez 205
viii Brass Bands of the World
Table
2.1 Yamada Kōsaku, ‘Shoshun no Zensō to Kōshinkyoku – Nihon

no Kodomo no Tame’ (Early Spring Prelude and March – for the
Children of Japan) 76
List of Musical Examples
2.1 ‘A Band With Drawn Swords’. Used with permission of Zen-On

Gakufu61
2.2 ‘Gunkan Kōshinkyoku’ (Battleship March: opening of trio)
(reduced transcription). Used with permission of Zen-On Gakufu 64
2.3 ‘Lion Dance of Echigo’ by Yoshimoto Mitsuzō, clarinet excerpt.
Used with permission of the Osaka City Band, photo courtesy of
Kokusho Kanko Kai 66
2.4 ‘Aikoku Kōshinkyoku’ (Patriotic March) by Setoguchi Tōkichi
Used with permission of Zen-On Gakufu 73
2.5 ‘Early Spring Prelude and March’ as performed by the Tokyo
College of Music Symphonic Band 75
Notes on Contributors
Katherine Brucher is an Assistant Professor of Music at DePaul University,

Chicago, Illinois. She received her PhD in Musicology from the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has published on the music of Portugal and the
Portuguese diaspora, music and migration, global wind band traditions and ethnic
music traditions in Chicago. She is currently working on an ethnography about
community wind bands in rural Portugal and their role in establishing musical and
cultural ties to Portuguese diaspora communities.
Sylvia Bruinders is a Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the South African

College of Music at the University of Cape Town, where she teaches African
and African diasporic musics. She completed her doctorate at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2011. Her primary research interest is to investigate
processes of cultural transmission within certain marginalized communities in
the Western Cape of South Africa. Through her research on Christmas bands she
investigated the subjectivities of members of the bands and explored how social
and political processes impact community practices in the Western Cape.
Trevor Herbert is Professor of Music at the Open University. He has worked

extensively on cultural and musical aspects related to brass instruments. He is
a contributor to New Grove, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and
the World Encyclopaedia of Popular Music. His publications are extensive
and prolific and include The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History
(Oxford University Press, 2000), The Trombone (Yale University Press, 2006)
and (with Helen Barlow) Music and the British Military in the Long Nineteenth
Century (Oxford University Press, 2013). He holds honorary fellowships from
Leeds College of Music and the Royal College of Music, has an honorary chair in
music at Cardiff University and was awarded the Christopher Monk Award of the
Historic Brass Society in 2002.
Charles Keil was born in Norwalk, CT (1939) and raised in Darien, and always
wanted to find out where the grooviest music was coming from and why. His MA
thesis at the University of Chicago, Urban Blues (1966/1992), is still in print.
Tiv Song (1979) describes interrelationships among ‘the arts’ in an egalitarian
society. Other book collaborations include Polka Happiness (1992), My Music
(1993), Music Grooves (1994), Bright Balkan Morning (2002), Born to Groove
(2005, on the web) and Polka Theory (forthcoming).
xii Brass Bands of the World
Heejin Kim is a Research Professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South

Korea. She completed her doctorate in Musicology at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include the study of transnational
musical processes. Her doctoral research investigated these processes in relation
to US and South Korean military music.
Sarah McClimon earned an MA and a PhD in music at the University of

Hawai‘i, Mānoa. She studied Japanese koto performance and musicology
at Tokyo University of the Arts with the support of the Japan Foundation and
the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
(Monbukagakusho). Her research interests focus on music, emotion and politics
in the traditional and modern music of Japan. She currently resides in Northern
California, where she teaches music education at Humboldt State University and
music at Fortuna High School.
Gordon Ramsey was awarded his PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast in 2009 for
his work on loyalist bands in Northern Ireland. His monograph Music, Emotion
and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands: Flutes, Drums and Loyal Sons (Peter
Lang 2011) is based on his doctoral research. Forthcoming publications include
contributions to The Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland, and papers focusing on
the anthropology of music and on the anthropology of tourism. He is currently
teaching anthropology and ethnomusicology at Queen’s University.
Suzel Ana Reily is a Reader in Ethnomusicology and Social Anthropology

at Queen’s University Belfast. Her publications include Voices of the Magi:
Enchanted Journeys in Southeast Brazil (University of Chicago Press, 2002),
the editorship of Brazilian Musics, Brazilian Identities (2000, British Journal
of Ethnomusicology 9.1) and The Musical Human: Rethinking John Blacking’s
Ethnomusicology in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate, 2006), and the production
of a website/CD-Rom based on John Blacking’s ethnography of the Venda girls’
initiation school.
Matt Sakakeeny is an Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University. His

publications include Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Duke
University Press, 2013) and articles in Ethnomusicology, Black Music Research
Journal, Current Musicology and other journals.
Helena Simonett is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Associate

Director of the Centre for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University. She holds
an MA in Musicology from the University of Zurich and a PhD in Ethnomusicology
from UCLA. Her main publications include Banda: Mexican Musical Life across
Borders (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), En Sinaloa nací: historia de la música de
banda (Sociedad Histórica de Mazatlán, 2004) and The Accordion in the Americas:
Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More! (University of Illinois Press, 2012).
Foreword
Charles Keil
May there be many volumes of post-militarist, post-colonial analyses asking the

question: how can brass bands best define and serve their local communities? I
remember Max Ciesielski1 telling me that the Polish-American tailors of Buffalo,
NY, though working in a variety of different shops, had a brass band representing,
defining and serving Polish immigrants in the wider community. This was just a
hundred years ago and there were dozens of brass bands in Buffalo criss-crossing
many community lines defined by guild, union, ethnicity, neighbourhood and
class. So, see me in your mind’s eye bowing, hands together in prayer, saying
‘Arigato’ in many different languages to everyone connected with this brass band
work in the century of ‘Great Transition’2 to local food, local energy, local music-
dance-celebrations and a rebuilding of local communities.
Yes to the Dionysian blown and beaten! Outdoors. In public. In Nature. Wild.
Happy to be ignoring the Apollonian strung and sung. Indoors. Domesticated.
The blown and beaten are (in my mind anyway) prime, primitive, primary
communication.3 Drumming we have been doing since before we separated
1
See Charles Keil and Angeliki V. Keil, Polka Happiness (Philadelphia, 1992),
pp. 32–5.
2
See the new economics foundation (nef) in the UK and the New Economics Institute
in the USA.
3
Ever since attending a Ray Birdwhistle lecture in the early 1960s, I’ve been
enthusiastic about kinesics, paralanguage, proxemics, synchronics, ‘participatory
discrepancies’ – the (culturally relative) 80 to 93 per cent of human communication that is
flowing in over a dozen overlapping non-verbal channels. More recently (this century) I’ve
realized that most of the verbal 7 to 20 per cent of ‘secondary communication’ in our culture
is worse than nonsense: lies, spin, ‘infotainment’, advertising, ideology, propaganda, small
talk, trivia, TMI (Too Much Information) most of the time. Certainly most of the ‘tertiary’,
‘virtual verbal’ or perhaps ‘terminal communications’ of the media where 8–18-year-old
addicts now spend over 11 hours a day on average (Tamar Lewin, ‘If Your Kids Are Awake,
They’re Probably Online’, New York Times, 20 January 2010), is part of a techno-cocooning
process that Andrew Kimbrell describes accurately in his ‘Cold Evil: Technology and Modern
Ethics’, Twentieth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures (Salisbury, CT, 28 October 2000),
available at http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/publications/kimbrell_00.html [Accessed
5 September 2011].
xiv Brass Bands of the World
from the chimps, bonobos and chest-whomping gorillas. To their eternal credit,
drummers have never been accepted and co-opted as musicians, not really.4 Flutes
have been with us for a long, long time, and double reeds and reeds are the most
powerful of voice disguisers – all the blown instruments are way more thrilling
than strings. The blown sound comes from the interior of the human body, breath,
and through the mouth, teeth, lips. Strings are manipulated by finger tips, requiring
delicate hollow bodies to resonate. Bagpipes at funerals, not string quartets, bring
tears to the eyes of mourners. All this opening praise of the primitive, just to be
clear about my bias for prime brass bands, drum and bugle corps, fife and drum,
bagpipers, Tibetan monastery ‘traffic jams’ and two-trumpet polka bands. And
then there’s my corresponding but non-dialectical deep prejudice against guitars,
singer/songwriters at the piano, lounge music, all that ‘classical’ and ‘acoustic’
hokey-folkie, plus that over-amplified rock ’n’ roll stuff. Haven’t we had enough
of manipulative fingers, stringiness and amplification?
Personal preferences aside, it was Nietzsche’s very dialectical use of the
Apollonian/Dionysian forces that inspired some of my best scholarship,5 as well as
an impassioned call for a resurgence of brass bands in the over-developed world.6
These powers of creativity – embodied energy/feeling vs. perfected dream/form
– once worked themselves out in Greek ‘goat-song’ or tragedy, and will hopefully
play out as comedy in every thriving local commons this century.
A hundred years ago, in the era before the First World War, and back into the
late nineteenth century when ‘Booth led boldly with his big bass drum’, many
people were part-time musicians and many musicians ‘doubled twice’:7 cornet and
violin, trombone and cello, tuba and string bass, in addition to holding another job
or ‘day gig’. A piano in every parlour; an accordion in every bar; big banjo and
mandolin clubs everywhere. And a brass band for every public rite of passage! I
imagine the nineteenth century to be an era of both conviviality and virtuosity,
of intimacy and vibrancy, when small bands and orchestras were at their peak
within Western ‘civilization and progress’,8 just before the mass media took over
and straitjacketed so much of our consciousness. I believe that I wouldn’t have
4
See Rob Boonzajer Flaes, Brass Unbound: Secret Children of the Colonial Brass
Band (Amsterdam, 2000), pp. 47–51, for a great example of drummers not accepted as
musicians in Ghana.
5
Charles Keil, ‘Peoples’ Music Comparatively: Style and Stereotype, Class and
Hegemony’, Dialectical Anthropology, 10 (1985): 119–30.
6
Charles Keil, ‘Applied Ethnomusicology and a Rebirth of Music from the Spirit of
Tragedy’, Ethnomusicology, 26/3 (1982): 7–11.
7
Charles Keil, ‘When Everyone Doubled Twice’, Allegro, 107/6 (June 2007),
available at http://www.local802afm.org/publication_entry.cfm?xEntry=81364664
[Accessed 27 January 2012].
8
See Stanley Diamond’s In Search of the Primitive (New Brunswick, NJ, 1974), p. 1,
where the first sentences read, ‘Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at
home. Each is an aspect of the other’.
Foreword xv
developed as a human being or have had a 30-year career as staff ethnomusicologist

in the American Studies Department of SUNY Buffalo (now called the University
at Buffalo, State University of New York) if it weren’t for the rich cultural residues
of these earlier social formations9 that my mother and Gus Helmecke first passed
on to me.
My mom played some piano daily most of the 92 years of her life (and drum
set in a band at Wheelock College), usually stride piano versions of old Fats Waller
and Ellington favourites. My bedroom in the very small house in a working-class
neighbourhood where I lived my first eight years also housed the upright piano.
I have a photo of me in diapers banging on pots and pans in the backyard, and I
remember boring piano lessons from a bony-fingered old lady who tugged on her
‘cough syrup’ as I tried to do scales and exercises. My mother got the message
early that I wanted to drum and one game we played a lot was ‘tapping songs’,
using fingers to beat out the rhythms of a melody on each other’s arms – can you
name the song just from hearing and feeling the rhythm of it? She also found an
old red barrel drum at an auction, presumed to be Chinese, thick skin heads tacked
down in a mysterious way that has enabled the drum to remain playable for over
65 years! I beat on it when I was 5 or 6 and I still use it during ‘sounding sangas’
today; it has a low mellow tone played from either side.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my first official drum lessons were given to me
by the person then generally acknowledged to be the best bass drum and cymbals
player in the world. August Helmecke had served many years as the highest paid
member and crucial heartbeat of the John Philip Sousa Band. He was in the midst
of a seven-year stint with the Goldman Band when I was born in 1939. My mother
took me to the Saturday lessons programme at Darien High School when I was
7 or 8 and Gus Helmecke must have been in his eighties. We met in the physics
lab for group lessons and it was very physical! We held heavy sticks as high as we
could reach above our heads (I got the same instruction a few weeks ago taking
my first formal taiko lesson in Japan) and when Gus said ‘Shtroke!’, we ‘shtruck’
the stick against the black physics lab tables. We were to stroke with the opposite
hand as the hand that had just struck had to be pushed up to the ceiling again.
Whole arm, whole body involvement, as in taiko drumming. And then whole and
half strokes with each hand to execute the ‘Mama Daddy’ accelerating symmetry
of the long or double-stroke roll. Somewhere in the midst of the basic rudiments,
I was passed along to Russell Spang, retired orchestra pit drummer from New
Haven, who knew the whole range of percussion from sticks to brushes to mallets
on xylophones and marimba. Finally I practised most seriously on the rubber pad
for Tony Chirco and his ‘Adler system’. It was he who informed me that while
the Basie charts were written in 4/4, they were performed in the ‘triplet feeling’ of
12/8. I have been on the ‘12/8 Path’ ever since, and putting my drumming skills
9
‘The residual is the emergent’ is a slogan formulated from reading Raymond
Williams. See Charles and Angeliki V. Keil, ‘In Pursuit of Polka Happiness … and a
Classless Culture’, Musical Traditions, 2 (1984): 6–11.
xvi Brass Bands of the World
into one instrument after another – drum set, string bass, euphonium, electric bass,
cornet, valve trombone and currently sousaphone. I play drums on all of them.
Here’s Papa Jo Jones describing a similar experience:
There, he was transfixed when he heard the sound of the drum played by
August Helmecke, who played with John Philip Sousa. ‘The bass drum hit my
stomach and I never relinquished that feeling’, Jones recalled. ‘That was my
indoctrination to music’. Aunt Mattie then bought the rhythm-addled boy a snare
drum, which he taught himself to play for tips of ice cream and candy around
the neighbourhood.
When Jo was 10, his father was killed in an accident on a barge near Tuscaloosa.
Unable to support the family, Elizabeth Jones enrolled her son at an orphanage
school, where he got his first musical training. He later attended Lincoln Junior
High in Birmingham and an agricultural school near Huntsville, where he learned to
play the trumpet, saxophone and piano. ‘I didn’t think I would end up a drummer’,
Jones later told bassist Milt Hinton. ‘I was trying out all these instruments, but
somehow I played drums on all of them’.10
It’s true that Jo Jones never relinquished that feeling, and wanted to share it
with everyone throughout his life. Al McKibbon, the bassist who personified the
mid-century fusion of jazz and ‘latin’, described hearing Jones playing with Basie
and realized that the outer head of his bass drum was a tympani head tuned so that
his ‘bombs’ or heaviest beats would resonate most powerfully into the stomachs
of others. (McKibbon also described the pleasure of playing with Jones, and just a
few other drummers, who knew how to pedal a bass drum lightly on all four beats
of the measure while blending with an unamplified string bass.) So it is ‘touch’ on a
bass drum that is the foundation of many great grooves in all kinds of brass bands.
I was in my late forties when a pot-peddling poet from Texas called me up for
breakfast at our favourite place on Main Street in Buffalo. Over coffee he described
some of his famous regular customers in New York, and how full of great stories
they were, Papa Jo Jones, by then the most senior jazz drummer in the city, among
them. Did I know that Papa Jo used to take Sid Catlett and Chick Webb and all the
famous jazz drummers to concerts by the Sousa Band? No, I didn’t. And smoke a
little weed first, so they could really dig the bass drummer? ‘You’re kidding, that
was my first teacher!’ I was so surprised by this information because I had always
thought of my first teacher as stiff, Germanic, rudimentary, old fashioned, the last
10
Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians, s.v. ‘Jo Jones (Jonathan Samuel David)’, Tim
Wilkins available at http://www.jazz.com/encyclopedia/jones-jo-jonathan-david-samuel
[Accessed 22 August 2011]. Jo Jones often gets credit for raising the low hat to a hi-hat,
riding the cymbal with a ‘ting-ti-ting’ beat and arranging a drum set to ‘swing’ the swing
era. I love it that we both got our ‘first lesson’ from Gus and that I learned that fact today,
8 August 2011. The first time I saw Jo Jones play was on TV trading fours with Chatur Lal
of India, an early tabla hero in the West. I could relate.
Foreword xvii
person in the world who hip black drummers would go to hear. I went home and
got on the phone to retired Luther Thompson in his eighties, once the indefatigable
music director of Darien’s bands, choirs and Saturday lesson programmes:
‘Why would great jazz drummers go to hear Gus Helmecke?’

‘Oh, that’s easy’, said Mr Thompson, ‘he had great schtick!’
‘You mean a great stick? Like a great beat?’, said I.
‘Well, he had that too. But he had schtick. Tricks. He was a showman!’
Mr Thompson went on to describe how Helmecke had a whole arsenal of tricks

and gimmicks, tossing the bass drum beater in the air and catching it in time for a
key accent, hitting the bass drum (and shoving it with his knee at the same time)
so that the power-stroke appeared to knock the big drum off the stand it was on – it
had to be caught with both hands before it rolled off into the trumpet section. And
so on. Gus was in vaudeville before he joined Sousa, and he was probably one of
the major reasons why Sousa’s concert tours consistently drew the biggest crowds
in music history prior to the Beatles.
I never had a bass drum lesson proper from the world’s greatest. But I got it
second-hand from Fred Fennell who had watched Helmecke with Sousa and who
knew from much experience that every band conductor was only as good as his
bass drummer.11 When I was a sophomore in high school and went to Hartford
to play bass drum for the All-State Concert Band, Fennell was the conductor. A
few measures into the first march of the first rehearsal, he waved this huge band
to a halt, jumped off the podium and made his way to the percussion section for a
detailed workshop with the bass drummer, me. First we spent quite a bit of time
tuning the bass drum, which, like almost every free-standing or non-jazz-set bass
drum I have encountered since, was way too high in pitch. Getting the batter head
as low as possible, loosening every ‘lug’, untuning in order to tune, pushing at
it to stretch the skin (ah, the pre-plastic era) a bit, was Fred’s goal. I remember
he wanted me to see the head vibrating. That loose! The question seemed to
be: how low can this particular drum and drumhead go and still be responsive?
With that question mostly answered we turned our attention to the resonating
head on the other side, and I don’t remember Fred giving me a rule or a formula.
The tightness or pitch had to be different for the batter head to resonate properly,
and that probably meant ‘higher’ since the batter head was ‘as low as it could
go’. (Certainly all the Balkan/Ottoman daoulis I have heard or dealt with have a
11
‘With the help of Hospice, he arrived home in time to see the brilliant orange
and pinks in the western skies last evening. A bit before Midnight, dad told me he was
“frustrated and disappointed”. When I asked him, “Why?” he replied, “There’s no drummer
here yet. I can’t die without a drummer!” I told him that I loved him, and that “Heaven’s
best drummer was on the way.” Moments later he said, “I hear him! I hear him! I’m OK
now.” This was my final conversation with my dad’. Cathy Fennell Martensen’s email to
friends of Fred Fennell (7 December 2004).
xviii Brass Bands of the World
high-pitched head for the flicking stick and a lower pitched head for the thumper.)
As always, it comes down to ‘personal preferences’ and a ‘communal conserving
consensus’ for the desired sound. I can’t remember exactly what Fred Fennell
said to me over a half century ago, but I know that after the drum was tuned to his
satisfaction and my amazement, he gave me one quick and powerful pep talk, to
the effect that his baton and my bass drum beater needed to be in the best possible
synchrony at all times. I had to push, anticipate his beat, hit just before ‘the pulse’
for the sound to reach the other players in time. I quickly understood that my
reputation as a jazz drummer in Darien had gotten me this All-State gig, and I had
better live up to great expectations. That public bass drum lesson, a hundred teen
peers waiting for me to become competent, implanted in me a respect for what
William Blake called ‘the minute particulars’ and what I was later to call ‘the
participatory discrepancies’ that involve people in music.12
In subsequent high school years I moved up to tympani in the orchestra and
on to an All-Eastern ensemble in Atlantic City. I had drummed for the Norwalk
Symphony from age 12, and in college percussed professionally with the New
Haven Symphony where pianist Arthur Rubenstein once accompanied me in
the famous Liszt ‘Triangle Concerto’. Whatever the instrument I was playing
in the percussion section, it became obvious to me very early in life, and at all
points along the way, that composers, conductors and performers in the world of
departmentalized legitimate music, school music, serious music, written music
wanted ‘the drummer’ for subtle support and/or for decoration, adornment, a little
‘colour’ here and there. I rebelled.
It was in reaction to this situation that I became quite fanatic about, first, jazz
drumming and ‘drumming’ the other instruments as needed in service to dancers,
and then theorizing groovology, the wording of grooves, as both my religious
12/8 Path in life and as one ‘Joyous Science’ among many in service to what
has most recently been called ‘The Great Transition’.13 Since the early 1980s my
mind has been shifting from analysis to synthesis, from secondary and tertiary
communication to primary communication,14 from business-as-usual to a search
for the primitive and diversified libertarian socialism of intensely local classless
societies,15 from his-story to Her Story, from strung/sung to blown/beaten … and
that’s where we began this Foreword.
To end it I will consider ensembles broadly, and brass bands in particular, as
gateways to moral and political awakening and how I came to see brass bands
leading the parade into the sustainable, eco-niched, autonomous communities of
12
Before 1898, Tolstoy and Bryulov called the participatory discrepancies ‘wee bits’
and found them in all the arts, but especially in music. Leo Tolstoy, What is Art, trans. Aylmer
Maude (Oxford, 1962), pp. 199–202, emphasized in Maude’s ‘Introduction’, pp. viii–xii.
13
See footnote 2 above.
14
See footnote 3 above.
15
See ‘Truth and Traditions’ at TruthAndTraditionsParty.org [Accessed 15 September
2011].
Foreword xix
the classless future. It feels to me that from infancy to old age I have always
wanted to be a player among players in a variety of ensembles. I can’t list them all,
a few real, many imagined over 70 years, but the OCO (Outer Circle Orchestra)
and 12/8 Path Band persist in Buffalo, NY, the first for over forty years and the
second for over twenty. I think they persist despite an ever-shrinking demand for
live musicking that serves dancers because wild ideas (now considered somewhat
utopian) about free and equal creativity, full expression, funkiness and soulfulness,
pursuit of happiness – Dionysian trance-dancing? – can’t be realized or actualized
in daily life by marketed products. On the contrary, it seems to require some search
for communitas16 to motivate participants to continue playing in such ensembles.
Experiencing the joys of ensemble playing as young children seems to be the best
way of ensuring that every community will be able to form such ensembles in
the future. For myself, these modes of participating have been the sine qua non,
‘without which nothing’, in relation to ethnomusicological research and writing.
If I’m not experiencing the joys of participatory consciousness in some mode of
grooving, why on earth turn trees into paper and write about it? If children are not
brought into the primary communication pleasures of group drumming, choral
dancing, call-and-response singing very early in life, why would they be interested
in brass banding or any kind of creative production when they can just push a
button and consume it passively?
I became an ethnomusicologist, if truth be told, not because I wanted to groove
throughout my life (though I did), but because I wanted to answer questions about
the essential dynamism of African American musicking and ‘make a decent living’
doing it. Degrees and publications in anthropology (Urban Blues MA and Tiv Song
PhD) made tenured teaching possible and let me help Angeliki V. Keil raise a
family. Dropping out and going to New York to become a jazz musician would have
disappointed my parents, made a future family life difficult, put a question mark
after ‘making a living’, and so, when sorely tempted as a frustrated sophomore in
college, I didn’t. And again, after being bounced out of the University of Chicago’s
Anthropology Department and piling up ‘incompletes’ at Indiana, I couldn’t find a
way to go to Africa as a volunteer. So I stayed in school.
I can’t pinpoint the time between ages 15 and 30-something when a teenage
conscientious objection to war, not wanting to kill or be killed on command, ripened
into full blown anarcho-pacifism, but I do know that the ‘libertarian socialism’
of jazz, full individual expression supported by total small group collaboration,
became my model or paradigm somewhere in the middle of my college years
(1959–60). A long-playing recording called Jazz Begins made it vividly clear to
me that New Orleans brass bands dirging death and affirming life were at the root
of this paradigm, indeed, had invented it. Playing in college Dixieland bands with
Basie and Ellington sidemen like Buddy Tate, Buck Clayton, Rex Stewart; playing
Yale reunion gigs with Ahmed Abdul Malik on bass or Herbie Nichols on piano
16
See Percival Goodman and Paul Goodman, Communitas: Means of Livelihood and
Ways of Life (Chicago, 1947).
xx Brass Bands of the World
(thanks to cousin Roswell Rudd’s referrals); backing Chet Baker one summer
weekend in Paris – every gig consolidated my growing faith in anarchism or
‘libertarian socialism’, the mystery and mastery of egalitarian group improvisation,
the joys of classless society where the lessers can play with the greaters. Recent
Honkfests on both coasts bring amateurs and pros together in recently invented
anarchist brass bands for community service. Jazz can begin all over again, but this
time with a mix of Balkan, klezmer, Caribbean and NOLA17 foundations.
Do other ethnomusicologists have performance highlights to share? Is a
reflexive autohagiography underway? Is there an ‘as told to’ story to tell someone
from another discipline? I hope so.18 There are many ways to access our memory
banks and to synthesize knowledge that could be extremely useful to future
generations of generalists. Looking closely at peak oil, peak everything, climate
change, peak unpayable debts and the ‘small is inevitable’ conclusions that
everyone will draw from a global economy collapse, I suspect that the sooner
Humo ludens collaboratus makes the Great Transition to more autonomous local
living the better. (The longer we postpone it, the less carrying capacity we will
have for the sustainable long-term future.) In local worlds with less division of
labour, ‘ethnomusicologists’ are likely to be gardening a bit or a lot from season
to season, profiting from a craft, facilitating brass bands and children’s ensembles,
composing and arranging for local processions and rites of passage, giving prenatal
instruction to parents in RPC (Rhythmic Primary Communication) and making
major contributions to ‘well-being’ and the ‘pursuits of happiness’ in the process.
If small is inevitable, we are the ones to make small societies beautiful again.
When I took my first lesson from Gus Helmecke, when jazz taught me a
politics, when I first spoke with Max Ciesielski about the Fillmore Band and
‘doubling twice’, I had no idea at the time that this was in preparation for transition
to a sustainable future in localities. May the brass bands of the world flourish and
teach us what the next seven generations need to know.
17
New Orleans, LA practices are not consciously copied by most of the bands at
Honkfests, and most borrowings come from Romani, Balkan and klezmer styles. Last
fall in Somerville, a Haitian rara group was given a special invitation and payment to
perform after three years of inviting bands from New Orleans. Local Tibetan immigrants
participated. A band from Italy, the Pink Puffers, provided Afro-American ‘soul music’ in
previous years, as did an integrated band from Oakland. Local Brazilians recruit a spectrum
of participants to parade in samba style. In sum, the new wave of brass bands is building
from traditions, and a growing diversity of styles is likely to result, perhaps a style for each
locality in time.
18
Tom Turino’s Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago, 2008)
demonstrates the value to scholars of keeping performance and scholarship thoroughly
intertwined.
Acknowledgements
A volume such as this could not come into existence without the help of many
people, and it will be impossible to name everyone who, over the years, has
contributed in some way to its realization. The initial outline of the project took
shape during the three months in 2007 that Suzel was based at the University of
Chicago on a Tinker Visiting Professorship, which allowed us to meet regularly and
identify common interests. A major thrust in the realization of the volume occurred
during the 2008 meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Middletown,
Connecticut, during the panel ‘Bands, Place, and Community Music Making’. We
would like to thank the panel members, many of whom became contributors, but
also those who attended the panel and encouraged us with their questions and
comments. A second important impulse towards the production of this book took
place during a symposium titled ‘Wind Bands in Cross-Cultural Perspective’, held
at Queen’s University Belfast in June 2009, funded by the Queen’s University
Internationalization Fund. The debates that emerged during this two-day event
profoundly affected this volume in many ways, and we thank all the participants
for their contributions.
There are some people that we would like to thank in a more personal way.
First, we are grateful to all the contributors to the volume; it was a great pleasure
to work with each and every one of you over the last years. A special thanks to
Rob Boonzajer Flaes for his support of this project and stimulating discussions,
particularly in relation to bands in colonial settings. We also wish to thank Mary
Angela Biason, Gregory Booth, Ray Casserly, Zoe Dionyssiou, David G. Hebert,
Jesse Johnson, Richard Jones, Julie Ramondi and Jacqueline Witherow, whose
contributions to the development of this project were invaluable. The volume was
also greatly enhanced by the comments of the anonymous referee, whom we also
wish to thank.
Suzel sends special thanks to Queen’s University Belfast for financial backing
at various stages of the project, and to her husband, Antonio Ribeiro, for his
continued support over the years. Kate is grateful for DePaul University School of
Music Summer Scholarship Grants in 2009 and 2011 for travel and writing for this
project. She also wishes to thank her husband, Pete, for his patience and support,
and her son Leo, who arrived during the last stages of the manuscript.
This book is dedicated to community and school band directors, who gave
many of us our first start in making music, and to band musicians around the
globe, who work hard to perform music for their communities.
Suzel Ana Reily and Kate Brucher

Introduction
The World of Brass Bands
Katherine Brucher and Suzel Ana Reily
On crisp autumn Saturday mornings in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when the air is
especially still, one can hear distant brass fanfares and a steady cadence of drums
from across town. The members of the University of Michigan Marching Band
practise field formations and repertory for the pre-game and half-time shows that
are a hallmark of high school and college football in the United States. Across
the Atlantic Ocean, in Belfast, the summer months are punctuated by a steady
cadence of drums and the piercing sound of fifes, signalling an altogether different
social ritual of an Orange Order Parade in a show of Protestant political power.
Elsewhere around the world similar sounds – brass, woodwinds and percussion –
are iconic of musical and social activities in their communities: military parades in
South Korea, brass band contests in England, jazz funerals in New Orleans, Roman
Catholic processions in Latin America, competitive bandstand performances in
Portugal, joyous wedding processions in India and more.
At first glance, these instances of band traditions have little to do with one
another: the ensembles perform for occasions that differ vastly in cultural context
and historical trajectory. Moreover, the band musicians themselves occupy
very different social roles and choose to participate in ensembles for different
reasons. However, the very instruments that the musicians play – a range of brass,
woodwind and percussion instruments adapted from the tradition of European
military bands – suggest common threads that link these traditions to one another.
As a result of militarization and colonialism, wind bands are among the most
widely disseminated instrumental ensembles in the world. However, the flexibility
of the instrumentation and its adaptability to a wide range of musical genres and
performance contexts have ensured that bands are truly localized phenomena.
Yet, despite their widespread presence across the world, wind bands have
received limited academic attention. Most scholarship on wind bands has come
from the practitioners and researchers active in the fields of music education and
wind conducting. This singular focus on pedagogy and performance suggests
much about how scholars have regarded wind bands. The academic stance on
these ensembles is linked to the way they occupy a musical role somewhere
between art music, popular music and the ‘folk’ or ‘traditional’ realms. Within
historical musicology, bands have received much less attention than orchestras,
mainly because they tend to be oriented towards functional and accessible music,
or what historian Richard Crawford has described as ‘performer’s music’, while
2 Brass Bands of the World
musicologists have largely concerned themselves with ‘composer’s music’.1 As

‘functional’ ensembles, bands primarily perform music to suit the spheres in which
they operate: parades, processions, street fairs, sports events and other popular
outdoor affairs. Although the repertory of wind bands frequently includes original
works composed for bands, they generally play marches of varying kinds and
transcriptions of programmatic pieces popular with their audiences; and it is
certainly the case that nineteenth-century bands throughout Europe, the European
colonies and former colonies often performed transcriptions of popular works of
Western art music and introduced audiences to symphonic repertory they would
not have heard otherwise.2 While composers have written many new works for
concert bands during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, most wind bands
continue to direct their efforts towards music that suits the ritual and social
functions they accompany.
If band traditions have largely been regarded as standing outside the
realm of interest within historical musicology, they have been avoided by
ethnomusicologists because of their association with European music, but
perhaps even more so because of their links to military music. Instead of being
associated with the peasantry (or the ‘natives’), where the ‘true soul’ of a people
has been thought to reside, brass bands evoke images of power and authority.
Rather than a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era of simplicity and community
so sought after in the modern age, bands are seen to derive from precisely those
forces considered responsible for the disaggregation of the traditional world:
modernity and colonialism.
Bands have not figured prominently in popular music studies either, which as
a discipline has been primarily focused on mediated forms of music. Although
bands have made commercial recordings since the early years of the recording
industry, wind bands are fundamentally geared to live performance, interacting
with their audiences. Furthermore, key figures in the band world, notably John
Philip Sousa, were critical of the nascent recording industry and its impact on
live performances.3 The recordings that contemporary bands do produce tend to
be secondary to their roles as functional performers, and indeed the sales of band
music recordings tend to be local and limited. Yet during their performances,
bands have played an important role in disseminating popular music that already
circulates in mediated forms, particularly in earlier eras, when access to recorded
music was far more restricted than it is today. Contemporary bands continue to
draw on both local and global mediated styles. Indeed, brass bands in New Orleans
1
Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life (London, 2001), pp. 227 and 229.
2
Trevor Herbert, ‘Nineteenth-Century Bands: Making a Movement’, in Trevor
Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History (Oxford, 2000),
pp. 10–67.
3
John Philip Sousa, ‘The Menace of Mechanical Music’, Appleton’s Magazine, 8
(1906), reprinted as ‘Machine Songs IV: The Menace of Mechanical Music’, Computer
Music Journal, 17/1 (Spring, 1993): 14–18.
Introduction 3
can be heard playing tunes by popular hip-hop artists,4 and Indian wedding bands
perform the latest Bollywood hits.5 And it is also worth remembering that many
popular musicians across the globe received their initial training in the band world.
Wind bands seem to have been neglected because they fall between the cracks
in the disciplinary boundaries of contemporary musicologies. They occupy an
intermediary position, a space between an imagined past and ultimate artistic
achievement, and in this manner, they have eluded the traditional domains of
musicological research. But these disciplinary boundaries are being challenged.
For nearly twenty years, New Musicology has recognized the contributions of
ethnomusicology and popular music scholarship to the study of music, and led
scholars to apply these principles to the study of art musics. Ethnomusicology,
likewise, has shifted away from a search for folk cultures unpolluted by Western
influences to perspectives that consider hybrid musical forms as well as the power
dynamics and identity politics underlying the relationship between colonizer
and colonized or centre and periphery. In doing so, scholars have expanded the
frontiers of musicology to encompass the sociological questions underlying erudite
music as well as the popular music industry. This blurring of boundaries has also
increased the dialogue between music scholars and sociologists, anthropologists
and cultural geographers interested in music research.
As traditional disciplinary boundaries are being corroded, musical worlds
that were previously overlooked are drawing a scholarly gaze precisely because
of the complex ways in which they highlight global flows and articulations
and the implications of these processes in the construction of contemporary
musical values. Wind bands provide an especially productive way of engaging
these themes. Indeed, the ensembles themselves provide a means of challenging
the ideological discourses that have sustained disciplinary boundaries within
musicologies and beyond. Within the band world we confront ‘functional music’
and its modes of communal sociability adapted to the experience of modernity;
we see how the great European masters serve as the soundtrack for animated street
festivals; in other settings, subaltern communities appropriate the powerful sound
of military might to publicly parade their own numerical strength; these very
same bands can also be critical spheres of music training, preparing musicians
for a range of parallel musical arenas. The band world, therefore, constitutes a
space for the redefinition of aesthetic sensibilities and identities, given its ability
to situate repertoires and practices within the social settings in which they are
found. In bands, there is a rich space for the academic exploration of various
4
See Matt Sakakeeny, ‘“Under the Bridge”: An Orientation to Soundscapes in New
Orleans’, Ethnomusicology, 54/1 (2010): 1–27, at 1 and 23; and Michael G. White, ‘The
New Orleans Brass Band: A Cultural Tradition’, in Ferdinand Jones and Arthur C. Jones
(eds), The Triumph of the Soul: Cultural and Psychological Aspects of African American
Music (London, 2001), pp. 69–96, at p. 90.
5
Gregory D. Booth, Brass Baja: Stories from the World of Indian Wedding Bands
(New Delhi, 2005).
themes that have become the focus of current debate, such as globalization and
its counterpart, localization (or ‘glocalization’6); colonialism, post-colonialism
and modernity; space, place and the ecology of sound; community musicking and
music sociability among other themes.
This volume seeks to provide an initial impetus to cross-cultural band research,
first, by highlighting the sheer diversity of this musical universe, and second, by
exploring the diverse ways in which the interaction between global flows and
local dynamics has shaped band traditions across the world. To this end, in this
introduction we begin by looking at how the European military band emerged and
how it developed its instrumental resources and repertoires. We then discuss the
dissemination of the military band model across the globe, viewing it in relation to
the European colonial enterprise. We follow on by looking at the localizing forces
that transformed a transnational prototype into a range of local music worlds; this
discussion is subdivided into two major themes: place making and community
musicking. Following common practice, this introduction concludes with an
overview of the contributions to the volume.
The Military Band: Historical Overview
Appealing to the masses by the performance of bright sounds, by the pomp of

military spectacle and discipline, and backed by a little innocent swagger, a military
band materially enhances the attractions of military life, and induces many of the
multitude to enlist in their country’s service.7
Among the wind bands of Europe, there is a wide range of traditions, each with its
own specificities. Each band and band world tells its own story – a story with no
ending – since changes in all of them are ongoing, a consequence of the multiple
forces, encompassing the social, the musical, the economic, the political to name
just a few, to which bands must adapt. Even though it is impossible to identify a
point of departure that might have set the proliferation of wind bands in motion,
there is no doubt that the European military band played a central role in the
emergence and development of brass bands as we know them today and their
dissemination across the globe, particularly from the eighteenth century onwards.
Furthermore, the activities of military bands frequently overlapped with other
institutions that supported music making – the court, the church and commercial
6
Roland Robertson, ‘Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’,
in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (eds), Global Modernities (London,
1995), pp. 25–44.
7
J. A. Kappey, Military Music: A History of Wind-Instrumental Bands (London,
1894), p. 94.
Introduction 5
or entertainment venues – spreading the influence of military bands beyond that of

the battlefield and military parade.
The canonical narrative of the history of military bands emphasizes an
evolutionary development of ensembles through instrumentation and repertory.
In his histories of European military bands, Henry George Farmer,8 for instance,
claimed that military bands emerged out of a confluence of two main spheres:
the first involved the military use of wind instruments and drums to send signals
and messages to the troops; the second was linked to the medieval ‘bands’ made
up of families of different-sized instruments of the same type that were used
to communicate the hours to the population and to provide music for popular
festivals in European towns. Over time, the instrumentation changed radically
and developed within the cultural, physical and political contexts of particular
geographic locations and governments, but military bands retained key functions:
music as communication and an integral part of the acoustic soundscape; outdoor
performances and the movement of people through space; morale-building,
patriotism and spectacle; and performances for entertainment. Rather than restate
this history, which is appositely critiqued in this volume by Trevor Herbert, what
follows touches on major changes in wind band instrumentation, performance
practice and repertory in order to provide readers with fundamental background
information pertinent to the development of contemporary band worlds.
Various musical trends that developed over several centuries of European
military music – the emergence of hautboisten, or double reed bands, the
popularity of Harmoniemusik and Turkish or Janissary music and the introduction
of large-scale military bands of mixed woodwinds, brass and percussion – reflect
transnational musical trends that predate contemporary notions of globalization,
but encompass similar processes of movement, contact and power. Far from
following a unitary historical narrative, instead, military campaigns, political
alliances and cross-cultural contact across political borders shaped the trajectory
of the wind band within a pan-European context.
Trends in instrumentation tended to spread relatively quickly, and in many
cases, preferences for particular instruments or styles of play moved between
neighbouring forces. Middle Eastern armies proved to be an important influence
on European armies at various points. Farmer attributed the adoption of a separate
band of ‘shawms, reedpipes, horns and drums’ in addition to trumpets already
employed by European bands to military encounters with Middle Eastern peoples
during the First Crusade.9 European Crusaders marched with horns and trumpets,
but Muslim armies employed trumpet (nafír), horn (búq), reedpipe (zamr), shawm
(surnáy), drum (tabl), kettledrum (naqqára), cymbals (sunúj) and bells (jalájil) to
play throughout battle.10 Throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern periods,
8
See Henry George Farmer, The Rise and Development of Military Music (London,
1912); and Military Music (London, 1950).
9
Farmer, Military Music, p. 10.
10
Ibid.
instrumentation in both military bands and civilian town bands favoured shawms,
sackbuts, fifes, flutes, recorders, natural horns and drums.11 Within the militaries,
there emerged a distinction between fife and drum ensembles to accompany
infantry and mounted trumpets and kettledrums to accompany cavalry units.12
Other dramatic changes in instrumentation were fuelled by power dynamics
between European courts. In the seventeenth century, the widespread popularity
of hautbois – bands of double reeds, including precursors to modern oboes and
bassoons – reflected how French courts influenced musical tastes throughout
Europe. Louis XIV of France established Les Grands Hautbois, replacing fifes
with oboes, in 1643.13 This musical trend may also have roots in the Middle East;
Farmer attributed the adoption of the oboe to the influence of shawm (zurna) and
drum (dawul) bands used in the Ottoman Empire.14 The king’s band of hautbois
had eight oboes (two treble, two alto, two tenor, two bass), two cornets and two
trombones.15 These loud double reed ensembles were well suited to the outdoor
performances required for military activities. French food, manners and fashion
served as a model of imperial culture, and the spectacle of the king’s Les Grands
Hautbois must have made an incredible impression on visitors to the court. ‘Oboe’
bands became synonymous with military music: hautboisten in Germany16 and
‘hoboys’ in Britain17 and in its colonies.18
Political conflict with the Ottoman Empire further influenced the development
of European military music, particularly with respect to the introduction of
Turkish Janissary music. The Turkish Janissary band, or mehter, was composed
of trumpets, shawms, kettledrums, bass drums, cymbals and cewhan or chaghana,
a percussion stick with jingle bells and crescent on top used to keep time.19 The
Janissaries were an elite military corps founded in the fourteenth century from
Christian subjects and prisoners who had converted to Islam to serve the Sultan
of the Ottoman Empire.20 European armies were familiar with the Janissaries, as
11
Ibid., p. 16.
12
Ibid., p. 20.
13
See ibid., pp. 20–21; and Raoul F. Camus, ‘The Early American Wind Band:
Hautboys, Harmonies, and Janissaries’, in Frank J. Cipolla and Donald Hunsberger (eds),
The Wind Ensemble and Its Repertoire: Essays on the Fortieth Anniversary of the Eastman
Wind Ensemble (Rochester, NY, 1994), pp. 57–76, at p. 58.
14
Farmer, Military Music, p. 21.
15
Ibid., p. 20; and David Whitwell, The Baroque Wind Band and Wind Ensemble, vol. 3
in The History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble (9 vols, Northridge,
CA, 1983), p. 29.
16
Whitwell, Baroque Wind Band, pp. 2 and 4.
17
Farmer, Rise and Development, p. 48; and Farmer, Military Music, p. 21.
18
Raoul Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1976), p. 43.
19
Edmund A. Bowles, ‘The Impact of Turkish Military Bands on European Court
Festivals in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, Early Music, 34/4 (2006): 533–60, at 534.
20
Ibid.
Introduction 7
the Ottoman Empire and central European courts had battled for territory since the
time of the Crusades and the Ottoman Empire extended to central and southern
Europe. In other words, a European fascination with Turkish music (and all ‘things
Turkish’) was based on close proximity and ongoing contact, rather than distance.21
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century court pageants frequently depicted Turks,
Moors and other non-European people, establishing an aesthetic for Turkish culture
as a symbol of the exotic that predated the incorporation of elements of Janissary
bands into European military bands.22 Following the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699,
the Sultan Mehmet IV gave August, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, a
complete Janissary band.23 These Janissary bands, or ‘Turkish music’, first gained
popularity within the European courts in most contact with the Ottoman Empire,
namely Prussia, Poland and Austria, and then spread to Russia and Serbia.24 The
ensembles followed local European ideas of what Turkish music was, rather than
the actual musical traditions of the Janissaries. The exoticism of ‘Turkish music’
introduced a new dimension of spectacle to military bands. Musicians wore
brightly coloured uniforms and carried the distinctive percussion instruments. To
European ears, the incorporation of additional percussion instruments associated
with the Janissary bands marked ‘Turkish music’,25 but the Turkish ambassador to
Prussia, Achmed Effendi, is said to have exclaimed, ‘It’s not Turkish!’ when asked
how he liked a concert given by King Frederick the Great’s ‘Turkish Ensemble’.26
Within the British armed forces, musicians of colour, including slaves and
conscripts from the colonies, were employed to perform the Turkish percussion
instruments.27 This practice of using musicians of colour to perform the so-called
‘exotic’ instruments suggests how the incorporation of the music of Turkish and
Middle Eastern peoples into European military bands became a mechanism for
both exoticization and the domestication of the Other within the body politic.
Beyond the spectacle of Turkish bands, wind music also played an important
role in music for entertainment. Wind musicians’ overlapping duties to
provide functional music for military and court activities as well as music for
entertainment comes to the fore in the practice of Harmoniemusik. Like the
Turkish bands, Harmoniemusik also developed first in the courts of Central
21
Ibid., p. 533.
22
Ibid., pp. 539–46.
23
Ibid., p. 546.
24
Ibid., p. 550.
25
Bowles, ‘Impact of Turkish Military Bands’, p. 534; Farmer, Military Music, p. 35;
Whitwell, Baroque Wind Band, pp. 95–6.
26
See Bowles, ‘Impact of Turkish Military Bands’, p. 553; Whitwell, Baroque Wind
Band, p. 101.
27
See John Ellis, ‘Black Soldiers in the British Army’, blackpresence (2 March
2009), available at http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/2009/03/black-soldiers-in-the-british-
army-john-ellis/ [Accessed 7 December 2010]; Farmer, Rise and Development, p. 78; and
Kappey, Military Music.
Europe in the eighteenth century, but it soon spread across the continent through
the political and social circles of the elite and the travels of individual musicians
seeking employment within wealthy households and military ensembles. Within
aristocratic circles, Harmoniemusik was commonly performed by pairs of
oboes, bassoons, clarinets and horns. Some scholars have attributed this shift in
instrumentation to the incorporation of horns and the newly popular single-reed
clarinet into military oboe bands,28 while others argue that chamber music genres
of Baroque courts influenced military practices.29 Military bands would split into
smaller ensembles, without the ‘Turkish instruments’, to play Harmoniemusik
arrangements, complicating scholarly efforts to define Harmoniemusik as either a
military or a court practice.30 In many cases, it seems likely that the same musicians
performed for both military and court functions,31 thus further blurring the division
between the musical practices of the court, the military and even the church. In
Europe and the colonies, woodwind musicians often performed ‘double-duty’
by playing for both military and entertainment occasions, and many were also
‘double-handed’, or proficient on more than one instrument.32 Harmoniemusik
was often performed in informal settings as entertainment, such as dinner
music (Tafelmusik), for concerts and to accompany dancing, and the repertory
included original compositions and transcriptions of music from popular ballets,
operas and symphonies.33 Arrangements and transcriptions for Harmoniemusik
ensembles became an important mode of disseminating popular works throughout
Europe. The practice of performing arrangements of popular theatre music and
transcriptions of orchestral works persisted even as instrumentation changed
radically in the nineteenth century, and this practice continues today in the
popularity of arrangements of film and musical scores with wind bands around
the world; this is the case, for instance, in the Indian wedding bands’ arrangements
of the latest Bollywood hits or the local North American high school marching
band’s performance of film scores at the ‘half-time show’ during football matches.
Ensembles resembling contemporary military bands in form and function
began to emerge during the late eighteenth century. Significant cultural,
demographic, economic, political and technological shifts profoundly influenced
28
Farmer, Military Music, pp. 28–9; Janet Kay Heukeshoven, ‘A Harmonie
Arrangement of “Barber of Seville” by Wenzel Sedlak’ (DMA thesis, University of
Wisconsin, 1994), pp. 5–6.
29
Roger Hellyer, ‘Harmoniemusik: Music for Small Wind Band in the Late Eighteenth
and Early Nineteenth Centuries’ (PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1973); Whitwell, Baroque
Wind Band, pp. 2 and 11–22; and David Whitwell, The Wind Band and Wind Ensemble of
the Classic Period (1750–1800), vol. 4 in The History and Literature of the Wind Band and
Wind Ensemble (9 vols, Northridge, CA., 1984), p. 7.
30
Hellyer, ‘Harmoniemusik’, p. 51.
31
Whitwell, Wind Band and Wind Ensemble of the Classic Period, p. 112.
32
Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution, p. 20.
33
Heukeshoven, ‘A Harmonie Arrangement of “Barber of Seville”’, pp. 4 and 18.
Introduction 9
the nature of military music. Trevor Herbert explores the implications of these
changes for British brass band culture in his essay later in the volume.34 The
French Revolution spurred the development of what scholars consider the modern
military band as well as the beginnings of the civic band movement. Military
bands were central to the open-air spectacles that took place in Paris following
the revolution. Captain Bernard Sarrette founded the Corps de Musique de la
Garde Nationale (National Guard Band) in 1789 from the civilian militia that was
formed to protect the capital city. At a time when a typical military band had only
12 musicians, this ensemble had 45 or more musicians with clarinets replacing
oboes as the main melodic instruments. Furthermore, most parts were doubled
for volume and strength in outdoor performances.35 Whitwell hypothesizes that
the success of the National Guard Band was based at least in part on its contrast
to Les Grands Hautbois of the French king, as ‘the replacement of the aristocratic
oboe by the numerous clarinets [reflected the] deposition of Louis XVI and his
replacement by a body of citizens’.36 The military band played an important
role as an emblem of power for the new regime, and its performances projected
the state into public spaces. Bands figured in public rituals that demonstrated
power through spectacle: on the first anniversary of Bastille Day, more than 300
winds, 200 drums, 50 serpents and a chorus performed a Te Deum by Francois-
Joseph Gossec.37 Massed bands simultaneously evoked ‘the people’ with scores
of performers and displayed an awesome power through the sound and visual
spectacle of hundreds of disciplined musicians.
The continued militarization of Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century
– the Napoleonic Wars, revolutions throughout Europe in 1848 and conflicts
over colonial territories overseas – fuelled the demand for military music. As
military bands developed following the French model, the first national music
conservatories were also based on the French model of the Ecole de Musique
de la Garde Nationale, which Sarrette founded in 1792 to train musicians for
the military. This institution became the Conservatoire de Musique, or Paris
Conservatory, in 1795. Thus, the military became central to the codification of
music education and the development of methods of wind pedagogy based on
a national model. Militarization also contributed to the development of civilian
militias, especially in Germany and England,38 which drew their membership
34
See also Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow, ‘The British military as a musical
institution, c.1780–c.1860’, in Paul Rodmell (ed.), Music and Institutions in Nineteenth-
Century Britain (Farnham, 2012), pp. 247–66; and Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow,
Music and the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century (New York, 2013).
35
Whitwell, Wind Band and Wind Ensemble of the Classic Period, p. 151.
36
Ibid., p. 152.
37
Ibid., p. 159.
38
David Whitwell, The Nineteenth-Century Wind Band and Wind Ensemble in
Western Europe, vol. 5 in The History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble
(9 vols, Northridge, CA, 1984), p. 143.
from local communities and organized around the principles of the freedom to
associate and self-defence, setting precedence for the formation of amateur civic
bands. Military bands and their civilian counterparts developed in continuous
dialogue with one another. Decommissioned military musicians and civilians
who had previously been employed by military ensembles returned to civilian
life with sufficient musical training to start and instruct bands within their own
communities.
Innovations in instrument technologies during the nineteenth century had
far reaching consequences for military bands and their civilian counterparts that
led to brass bands being viewed as icons of modernity. Instruments were no
longer handmade by traditional craftsmen, but instead, manufacturers made use
of new technologies and eventually began mass producing horns in factories.
Improved key-systems for woodwinds, the introduction of the valve for brass
instruments and new inventions, like the saxhorn and saxophone families,
changed the sound of wind bands. Instrument makers competed to perfect and
manufacture instruments suitable for outdoor performance with better tuning
and greater agility for technical passages. Militaries played a key role in
popularizing these new sonorities, but a growing commercial music industry
for band instruments and music contributed to the popularity of wind bands
among amateur musicians.39 Technological changes made instruments easier
to play for the non-specialist, and new manufacturing techniques resulted in
greater numbers of instruments built at a lower price. For example, the advent
of the valve eliminated the need to change crooks and made performance on
brass instruments at a higher level more accessible to musicians who only had
time to play during leisure.40 Entrepreneurs introduced new instruments hoping
for commercial success. The Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax invented
the saxhorn and saxophone families to facilitate a more stable intonation and
blended sonority, and by the late nineteenth century, amateur and professional
as well as civilian and military bands across Europe and North America had
adopted the saxophone.41
The influence of European military bands extended beyond Europe’s borders
as European militaries and other cultural institutions such as the Catholic Church
and the Salvation Army took bands to other parts of the world. As the following
section on colonialism shows, European military music traditions had far reaching
consequences across the globe, as wind bands were adapted to suit local needs
and traditions. Since the late nineteenth century, military wind bands have played
a key role in nation building as symbols of power and modernity. These efforts
continue in conflict areas. NATO powers work with Afghan army trainees to form
39
Trevor Herbert, ‘Introduction’, in Trevor Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band:
A Musical and Social History (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1–9.
40
Trevor Herbert, ‘Nineteenth-Century Bands’, p. 34.
41
Thomas Liley, ‘Invention and Development’, in Richard Ingham (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1–19, at pp. 18–19.
Introduction 11
military bands as part of security operations in Afghanistan,42 indicating that the

military band remains central to contemporary conceptions of the military and its
association with order, power and spectacle.
Brass Bands and the Colonial Enterprise
The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry – a difference

that is almost nothing but not quite – to menace – a difference that is almost total
but not quite.43
The European colonial project is typically seen as the main agent in the
dissemination of the brass band across the world. Indeed, Rob Boonzajer Flaes
presented the European military band as a metaphor for European colonialism,
claiming that such ensembles were dispatched to the colonies with the explicit aim
of promoting a sense of amazement among the ‘natives’.44 Their ‘terrible beauty’45
was able to unite, in a single formula, a clear hierarchy and labour structure, an
orderly portrayal of power and military might, and dazzling modern technology in
the form of bright, indestructible musical instruments. In explicit ‘rites of power’,46
military bands paraded through the colonies, their spectacular public performances
displaying European cultural, technological and military superiority.
Although the military band clearly aimed to impress colonial subjects, its
expansion across the globe often replicated some of the same processes that
led to its dissemination across Europe, and indeed Trevor Herbert and Margaret
Sarkissian have argued that many of the characteristics that attracted European
civilians to these ensembles might also help account for their popularity and rapid
dissemination in other parts of the world.47 Be that as it may, colonial relations
have always been inherently marked by Orientalist constructions of otherness.
Moreover, any assessment of the role of colonialism in the dissemination of brass
42
J. G. Buzanowski, ‘10th Mountain Division Band mentors Afghan National
Army Band’, U.S. Army Band News, available at http://bands.army.mil/news/default.
asp?NewsID=164 [Accessed 8 November 2010]; Lalenia Maria, ‘The 82nd Band Initiates
the Afghan National Army Band Mentorship Project’, U.S. Army Bands News, available at
http://bands.army.mil/news/default.asp?NewsID=599 [Accessed 8 November 2010].
43
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 1994), p. 131.
44
Rob Boonzajer Flaes, Brass Unbound: Secret Children of the Colonial Brass Band
(Amsterdam, 2000).
45
Ibid., p. 22.
46
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, 1988).
47
Trevor Herbert and Margaret Sarkissian, ‘Victorian Bands and their Dissemination
in the Colonies’, Popular Music, 16/2 (1997): 167–81.
bands around the world must also take account of the temporality and unevenness
in the European colonial enterprise. Colonial powers operated differently from one
another; their policies changed over time; metropolitan interests varied from one
region of the world to another, and these interests also shifted across the centuries;
and each colony was itself an ever-changing socio-cultural complex inhabited
by a range of groups and individuals, each with their own continuously shifting
interests. And as a backdrop to these complex relations were power differentials
sustained through Orientalist discourses, civilizing campaigns, rites of power and,
when necessary, outright violence.
The introduction and dissemination of wind ensembles and full-fledged
brass bands into colonial settings mirror this complexity, and each band tradition
constitutes the outcome of its own unique historical processes. In many colonial
outposts local musicians were trained to play European instruments for military
parades and manoeuvres; in this way significant numbers of locals became competent
performers in new musical idioms. Frequently these musicians were called upon
to perform their new skills outside military contexts, establishing links between
military and non-military performance domains. In some cases, local ruling classes
founded their own Western military bands to display their authority, attaching
themselves to these powerful and exotic emblems of modernity. But common
people – or, as Homi Bhabha might call them, ‘vernacular cosmopolitans’48 – also
appropriated facets of the European band complex, spawning countless hybrid
brass band traditions, in such wide-ranging socio-cultural domains as religious
ritual, Christian or otherwise, professional musicianship, servicing peers, colonial
authorities and/or local elites, or simply everyday spheres of entertainment and
sociability.
As each band world emerged and developed, it came to articulate a unique
set of musical elements, performance practices and symbolic associations, a
configuration that derived from the continuous and complex processes of collective
negotiation and re-negotiation taking place at both local and transnational levels.49
One approach to analysing such complex processes has involved the dismantling
of these articulations to identify the unique processes of glocalization that took
place in each case, remembering Gramsci’s contention that articulated formations
embody the tensions in the work of both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces.50
Not surprisingly, such studies of colonial hybridities have frequently revealed the
complexities and ambiguities involved in colonial exchanges, appropriations and
mimicry, themes that permeate the contributions to this volume.
48
Homi Bhabha, ‘Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’, in Gregory
Castle (ed.), Postcolonial Discourse: An Anthology (Oxford, 2001), pp. 39–52.
49
Ulrich Beck, ‘The Cosmopolitan Turn’, in Nicholas Gane (ed.), The Future of
Social Theory (London, 2004), pp. 143–66.
50
Perhaps one of the most comprehensive explications of this methodology, as
applied to the world of popular music, has been provided by Richard Middleton in Studying
Popular Music (Milton Keynes, 1990).
Introduction 13
By way of introductory exemplification, we present a few ethnographic

cases of band traditions that emerged within colonial environments. In India,
for instance, Gregory Booth contends that over 7,000 private professional brass
bands, made up predominantly of low-income and marginalized members of
society, currently make their services available for wedding processions,51 though
this strongly localized band world grew out of the British military bands of the
colonial period. From the onset of colonialism in the subcontinent, the British set
up Indian armies that included musicians trained in the musical styles required by
the British military. By the mid-nineteenth century some of these armies marched
to as many as forty drummers and fifers.52
Alongside the musicians servicing the British military, bands modelled on
imperial prototypes were being founded by the royal classes across the subcontinent.
It is commonly assumed that the first subcontinental military band was established
in the latter quarter of the eighteenth century in Nepal by the head of the Gorkha
dynasty, Prithvi Narayan Shah. He ‘had heard a British army band play in Varanasi
and had translated the concept into a combination of instruments suitable for
Nepal’.53 A number of other maharajas in the subcontinent also formed private
bands, such as the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh, whose band performed for the Earl
of Auckland in 1838, but also the Maharajas of Baroda and of Mysore, the Nawabs
of Jaora and of Rampur, the Nizam of Hyderabad and many others.54 The bands
were deployed by their patrons in processions, announcing their social position
within Indian society, much in the manner that older local musical traditions would
have been used in royal processions in India long before the arrival of the British.
According to Booth, it was the integration of the British military band model
into royal Indian procession, far more than the public British military displays,
that accounts for the fashion of hiring brass bands for celebrations, particularly
for weddings among the Indian elites.55 As the fashion took hold, the demand for
brass band music increased, creating an ever-expanding market for bandsmen,
the supply of which grew considerably after 1947, with the end of British rule in
India. Many former military bandsmen set up local wedding band businesses, the
more successful ones sustaining several ensembles simultaneously. The rise of
the Indian film industry influenced what the bands played, such that today their
standard repertoire is drawn primarily from Bollywood films. While traces of the
European military band can still be detected in these bands, they have become
totally adapted to the commercial and religious environment that they service in
contemporary India.
51
Booth, Brass Baja, p. 3.
52
Ibid., p. 154.
53
Boonzajer Flaes, Brass Unbound, p. 91.
54
Booth, Brass Baja, pp. 157–8.
55
Ibid., pp. 158–9.
In East Africa, where considerable research associated with the impact of the
European military band has been conducted,56 Africans received initial training
in European military music towards the end of the nineteenth century. Both the
Germans and the British occupied the region until the end of the First World War,
when it came under full British control. Both colonial powers engaged in the
training of Africans to man their bands,57 and just as this know-how seeped out
of the garrisons in India, in East Africa it provided the basis for a competitive
popular dance genre, the beni ngoma, that mimicked the military brass band. Beni
ngoma proliferated across the region, retaining its popularity for at least sixty
years, until it disappeared following the end of colonial rule. The movements
replicated European military drills; the dancers were assigned military ranks, and
the uniforms were inspired by military fatigues. Songs accompanying the ngoma
were generally sung in Swahili and through simple rhymes they commented on
current issues of concern to the participants.
In his classic study Dance and Society in East Africa (1890–1970), Terence
Ranger presented the beni ngoma as an African response to colonialism,58 extending
Clyde Mitchell’s representation of the kalela dance a few decades earlier.59 Despite
the marked presence of elements recognizable to Westerners, Ranger claimed that
competitive dances like beni had been a long-standing feature of East African
cultures; in beni, however, the traditional dance societies were recast within the
new social networks and societal transformations affecting the region following
the arrival of the Europeans. For the most part, subsequent studies inspired by
Ranger’s work have tended to extend the breadth of ngoma as a mechanism for
mediating East African experiences of social change. Peter Pels, who conducted
research on ngoma in the Uluguro Mountains of Tanzania, found that, among the
Luguru, the term ngoma was most commonly used for rites of passage, and not
simply for competitive social dancing. In appropriating European cultural forms
and institutions, their performances were both metaphors for colonial contact
and a means of ‘initiating’ Africans into the ‘secrets’ of the colonial authorities.
Ngoma allowed them to embody social change through dance, rhythm and actions,
and experience alternative systems of authority, labour, economic distribution,
56
See Kelly Askew, Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in
Tanzania (Chicago, 2002); Rebecca Gearhart, ‘Ngoma Memories: How Ritual and Dance
Shaped the Northern Kenya Coast’, African Studies Review, 48/3 (2005): 21–47; Frank
Gunderson and Gregory Barz (eds), Mashandano! Competitive Music Performance in East
Africa (Dar es Salaam, 2000); Stephen Martin, ‘Brass Bands and the Beni Phenomenon in
Urban Africa’, African Music, 7/1 (1991): 72–81; Peter Pels, ‘Kizungo Rhythms: Luguru
Christianity as Ngoma’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 26/2 (1996): 163–201; Terence O.
Ranger, Dance and Society in East Africa (1890–1970): The Beni Ngoma (London, 1975).
57
Martin, ‘Brass Bands and the Beni Phenomenon’.
58
Ranger, Dance and Society in East Africa.
59
Clyde Mitchell, The Kalela Dance: Aspects of the Social Relationships among
Urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia (Manchester, 1956).
Introduction 15
religiosity and social relations.60 Moreover, these vernacular cosmopolitans

created a model of musical exchange, opening avenues for conceptualizing new
sources of sound and new ways of making music.
Another colonial power to have played a critical role in the dissemination
of the brass band, one commonly overlooked in the English-speaking world,
was Portugal. A major factor accounting for its global musical impact was the
absolutism of the Portuguese crown from the ‘age of discoveries’ to the early
nineteenth century. Without a division between the (Roman Catholic) Church
and the State, military music and religious musics commonly merged. In colonial
Brazil, for instance, the same musicians linked to the garrisons were employed
to accompany Catholic processions, and most state occasions could hardly be
distinguished from religious affairs, centring as they did on a set of Catholic feast
days and royal rites of passage. Even the initial training of the musicians could be
shared between the clergy and military personnel, as occurred in the eighteenth-
century gold mining regions of Minas Gerais.61 As the repertoires and practices
associated with military music shifted from fifes, bugles and drum to full-fledged
brass bands, the same shifts occurred in the religious sphere. The dialogue between
military and civic bands has remained strong to this day; the (Brazilian) dobrado,
a regimental march genre, is the main musical form used to accompany religious
processions throughout the country.
Religious requirements in other Portuguese colonies also ensured the training
of significant numbers of brass players. Goa, and especially the Goanese Christian
community, maintained a lively wind band environment, so much so that their
bandmasters were frequently drafted in to train natives for the military bands of
other colonial settings.62 Brass bands were also common in many Spanish colonies,
where, as in the Portuguese territories, they performed for military and religious
affairs. This was certainly the case in the Philippines; when, in a second (American)
colonial wave, Lt. Walter Howard Loving set about recruiting musicians for the
Philippine National Band in the early twentieth century, he soon discovered that the
islands were home to legions of bandsmen. These musicians played in their village
brass bands during fiestas, processions and funerals; they had acquired their skills
from relatives and friends, just as their teachers had learned from their predecessors,
harking back to former Spanish colonial times.63 In the Andean regions of both Peru
and Bolivia, brass bands were only introduced in the early twentieth century when
predominantly peasant conscripts were taught to play them during military service.
As in other former Iberian colonies, the musicians immediately adapted their new
skills to the fiesta context, and as for many other instrumentalists trained in the
60
Pels, ‘Kizungo Rhythms’.
61
Aldo Luiz Leoni, ‘Os que vivem da arte da música, Vila Rica, século XVIII’ (MA
thesis, Universidade de Campinas, 2007).
62
Martin, ‘Brass Bands and the Beni Phenomenon’.
63
Claiborne T. Richardson, ‘The Filipino-American Phenomenon: The Loving
Touch’, Black Perspective in Music, 10/1 (1982): 3–28, at 9.
barracks, their bandsmanship has become their primary source of income. Along
with processional music, the brass bands accompany the elaborate dance-dramas
that are the hallmark of Andean ritual.64
While military bands have certainly served as the foundational models
for brass band traditions generally, the globalization of these ensembles has
involved institutions beyond the military, particularly religious institutions such
as the Catholic Church, but also the Salvation Army, whose famous brass bands
bolstered its missions and whose enterprise now encompasses over one hundred
nations.65 Alongside the presence of military bands in colonial settings, European
civic band traditions were also reaching the colonies and former colonies via the
civilians moving to them in search of new opportunities. The transplantation of
the British band movement to the Antipodes, for example, was directly linked to
the large numbers of working-class British emigrants who moved to Australia and
New Zealand in the latter part of the nineteenth century, many a bandsman among
them. As in England, the primary focus of the movement centred on contesting,
though given the size of the territories involved, Antipodean competitions tended
to be regional rather than national affairs, and they placed a greater focus on visual
spectacle than their British counterparts.66 In the twentieth century, Portuguese
immigrants to Brazil, Canada, the United States and Venezuela also founded bands,
along with football teams and social clubs, when they established organizations
to continue their Portuguese cultural, linguistic and religious traditions. Similar
to their British counterparts in the Antipodes, many working-class migrants came
from rural villages where bands played important musical and social roles in
their communities. In contrast to bands in Portugal, bands in the diaspora tend
to emphasize an ethnic Portuguese identity by performing almost exclusively
music by Portuguese composers, wearing uniforms that display the colours of the
Portuguese flag and performing for Portuguese civic and religious holidays.67
These ethnographic cases provide little more than an inkling of the huge
diversity of hybrid forms to be found within the global brass band complex. While
the articulation and re-articulation that came to constitute each hybrid formation is
unique, the continuous exchanges and dialogues across band traditions underline
64
See Michelle Bigenho, Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music
Performance (New York, 2002), p. 44; and Raúl R. Romero, ‘Musical Change and Cultural
Resistance in the Central Andes of Peru’, Latin American Music Review, 11/1 (1990): 1–35.
65
Trevor Herbert, ‘God’s Perfect Minstrels: The Bands of the Salvation Army’,
in Trevor Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History (Oxford,
2000), pp. 187–216, at p. 215.
66
Duncan Bythell, ‘The Brass Band in the Antipodes: The Transplantation of British
Popular Culture’, in Trevor Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social
History (Oxford, 2000), pp. 217–44.
67
Katherine Brucher, ‘Viva Rhode Island! Viva Portugal! Performance and Tourism
in Portuguese-American Bands’, in Kimberly DaCosta Holton and Andrea Klint (eds),
Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity (Dartmouth, MA, 2009), pp. 203–26.
Introduction 17
common sources of fascination with the brass band as well as strands of articulation
that are potentialized by them. Without doubt, wherever brass bands are found and
whatever their repertoire, they are generally suitable for performance in outdoor
spaces, they are loud, and they call attention to themselves. Moreover, brass
instruments are durable and fairly inexpensive, they are relatively easy to learn
and to play, and they are versatile. Finally, brass bands are bands – that is, they are
designed to be performed by an ensemble; much of their sonic impact is predicated
upon the mobilization of a group of people for collective musicking. However a
band tradition is articulated, these properties are factored into the equation, and for
this reason brass bands can also provide the music researcher with a useful point
of departure to investigate themes surrounding space and place making on the one
hand, and music learning and community musicking on the other. It is to these
themes that we now turn.
Bands and the Making of Space and Place
In [the] symbolizing kernels [of naming] three distinct (but connected) functions of
the relations between spatial and signifying practices are indicated … the believable,
the memorable, and the primitive. They designate what ‘authorises’ (or makes
possible or credible) spatial appropriations, what is repeated in them (or is recalled
in them) from a silent and withdrawn memory, and what is structured in them.68
Brass instruments are able to project in outdoor environments, and for this reason
they are frequently favoured in public events the world over; this was even more
significant before there was widespread access to microphones and electrical means
of amplification. The sound of a band in the street attracts attention, indicating that
something special is taking place, such as a wedding, a funeral, a procession or
a civic commemoration. Indeed, the very adoption of the brass band for public,
collective affairs has been frequently attributed to its volume and attention-
grabbing capabilities. Raúl Romero, for instance, notes that, in the Andes, the
move to brass bands was instigated by the competitive orientation of the fiesta,
in which each village strives to out-shine its neighbours; since brass instruments
are louder and more vibrant than traditional reed pipes and string instruments, the
villages playing them were able to drown out their rivals.69
The acoustic range of a brass band is fairly large, and when one is playing
it redefines the soundscape. The band, one might say, appropriates the sphere
encompassed by its range; or, perhaps more appropriately, through the band, those
68
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley,
1984), p. 105 (emphasis in original).
69
Romero, ‘Musical Change and Cultural Resistance’, p. 23.
sponsoring the ensemble claim control of its soundspace. Either way, the fact that
bands typically perform in public places and for collective events makes them
particularly well suited as points of entry for engaging with the academic debates
pertaining to social geographies and the construction of spaces and places. Indeed,
several contributions to this volume address issues of territoriality, the street and
public space, and locality and place. In this section we aim to provide a framework
that contextualizes these distinct case studies, beginning with a discussion of
Michel de Certeau’s distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’, to then look at some
of the reasons why bands are so frequently recruited in processes of space and
place making around the world.
For de Certeau, place is constituted by the ordering of elements in a particular
location; it is, therefore, a static entity, a reification. Space, on the other hand,
comes into being, he claims, through the ways in which it is used and transformed
by these uses. It is composed of the ‘intersection of mobile elements’ and produced
through the actions, movements and practices that take place within it.70 If place
is identified by what is located in it, space takes shape through what is done in
it. For instance, a particular place may have one or more bands, but these bands
create spaces through and during their performances. It is the sound of the Hindi
film tunes that publicly announces that a wedding is taking place at that moment,
while the continuous repetition of this practice over decades has emplaced the
band in wedding processions throughout the subcontinent. Families employ bands
as they are thought to be auspicious,71 but it is the performance – the moment of
the production of the sounds – that attracts divine attention. In effect, bands can
transform both places into spaces and spaces into places, continuously actualizing
spaces during their performances and identifying places through their presence. No
doubt, this is true of all music, but the contexts in which bands perform frequently
draw special attention to the spatiality of music and musicking, and the social uses
to which bands are put typically exploit this potential.
Spaces and places, however, are never neutral environments. As de Certeau has
indicated, spatializing practices may be guided by memory, but they are constrained
by ‘authority’. James Scott contends that the public sphere is always governed by
the rules of the hegemonic sectors of society.72 It should not be surprising, therefore,
that the military legacy of the brass band has undoubtedly contributed to its adoption
in public events, particularly civic commemorations, such as national holidays. But
some band traditions are linked to subaltern groups, and as Scott has shown, it is for
this reason that, when they enter public spaces, they tend to take care to maintain an
inoffensive appearance and mask any critiques of power they may make. While Indian
bands, for instance, are employed by the elites, they are made up overwhelmingly of
Moslems, untouchables and members of other low castes. If, as Booth has claimed,
70
De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, pp. 117–18.
71
Booth, Brass Baja, p. 37.
72
James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New
Haven and London, 1990).
Introduction 19
these ensembles pay little attention to the musical quality of their performances, this
may be their revenge, but it is also true that their position within the wider ritual
process of the wedding is restricted to the liminal domain of the street.
Perhaps the most representative spatializing performances involving bands are
those in which there is a processional dimension. Brass and wind instruments can
be played by musicians on the move, so they are ideal for accompanying marches,
parades, pageants and processions. The Brazilian anthropologist Roberto DaMatta
was among the first scholars to draw attention to the ways in which collective
street processional forms can reveal aspects of the social world in which they are
practised. While his analysis aimed to identify the social and cultural characteristics
unique to Brazil, his identification of three prototypical processional modes – the
military parade, the religious procession and carnival pageantry – can be usefully
applied more generally. He showed how each of these forms of public collective
action is premised on a distinct set of symbolic displays and practices, through
which cultural understandings of power and the ownership of the public space
are dramatized.73 During military parades, for instance, the armed forces and the
‘authorities’ lay claim to the streets, presenting themselves as an orderly, corporate
body able to both coerce and protect the spectators. During religious processions,
place is enacted as a divine gift, and the faithful bring their saints out into the streets
to sanctify the locality and to pray for the continuity of divine protection. Carnival is
the festival of ‘the people’; it is generally conceived as a space in which the world is
turned upside-down, and revellers in masks and fancy-dress thwart everyday norms
through displays of unrepressed eroticism, gluttony and social criticism. Mikhail
Bakhtin portrayed the carnivalesque as a sphere for experiencing human equality,
as the uninhibited speech permitted during carnival allows people to express their
true views.74 Alongside these three processional forms, one might contemplate
including protest marches, as these events also involve the appropriation of public
space and consciously aim to redefine the rules regulating the public realm.
While DaMatta has provided a point of departure for approaching parading
practices, he basically ignored what is perhaps the primary catalyst in promoting
collective sentiment in a processional environment: music. There are very few
processional forms that take place without some form of music, often that of
brass and/or wind instruments. Like the soundtrack to a film, the band is central
to establishing the atmosphere of a collective event and in defining how a parade
is experienced as space. Moreover, bands provide the impetus for the dislocation
of the people involved in the procession or parade. In this way, they play a central
role in the bodily sensations and the processes of embodiment that occur during
the collective movement through space. They set the tempo and help encourage
the progression of the participants along the route. The repertoire for such events
73
Roberto A. DaMatta, Carnival, Rogues and Heroes: An Interpretation of the
Brazilian Dilemma, trans. John Drury (Notre Dame, 1991 [1979]).
74
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington,
1984 [1965]).
can carry symbolic meanings that articulate the aims of the event and its broader
social environment. The band, therefore, accompanies a collectivity that, ritually,
traces a trajectory through geographic space, while producing strong sensations
and feelings among the participants that mark their memories of the spatial
experience and of the place it constructs.
Parades within African diaspora communities throughout the Americas, for
instance, are often driven by polyrhythmic musical styles that invite bodies to dance;
if this creates a carnivalesque atmosphere of apparent harmless fun, it nonetheless
displays the numeral power of the subaltern masses.75 Their dancing bodies and their
music invade and take over the public space, momentarily redefining its ownership.
The feelings generated during these parades are so powerful that year after year
revellers return to the streets to recreate the space that allows them to re-experience
the alternative world it articulates. The European military band tradition, at the
other extreme, is linked more firmly to marches aimed at moving the troops forward
in an awe-inspiring display of order, control and clarity of purpose; here the display
of power does not have to be disguised behind a veneer of the carnivalesque,
while the spectators may not know whether to feel afraid or protected. In Northern
Ireland, Protestant parades, which are typically accompanied by aggressive and
antagonistic flute bands, are the source of considerable tension between working-
class Protestants and Catholics, particularly when their traditional routes traverse
Catholic neighbourhoods. But even if the marchers remain in their own quarters,
the high-pitched flutes and drums resonate over long distances and transcend
the borders of distinctly Protestant areas. Since the onset of the so-called ‘Peace
Process’, however, the aggressive, overtly loyalist stance of many Protestant bands
has become less acceptable, and they are increasingly striving to give themselves a
more respectable image. To this end, the militarism of Protestant parading is giving
way to the introduction of carnivalesque elements that soften the edges of these
displays of bravado, in an effort to attract families back to the parades.76
Some processional traditions define the route of the parade so that it leads them
through lost territories; the collective action along with the repertoire the band
plays aim to ensure that the memories of dislocation are not forgotten and that they
are passed on to the next generations. The second line parades in New Orleans
and the Christmas bands of South Africa, which are represented in this volume,
constitute such cases. In New Orleans, jazz funerals and second line parades often
memorialize both people and places that have passed on. Funeral processions and
parades in the historically African American neighbourhood of Tremé pass by the
homes and businesses of deceased community members, and the intensity of these
performances often culminates when the musicians, families of the deceased,
social club members and ‘second liners’ (parade members who dance along behind
75
Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, pp. 63–6.
76
See Jacqueline Witherow, ‘The “War on Terrorism” and Protestant Parading Bands
in Northern Ireland’, Quest, 1 (2006), available at www.qub.ac.uk/sites/QUEST/FileStore/
Filetoupload,25795,en.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2011].
Introduction 21
the band) gather under the Interstate 10 overpass at Clairborne Avenue. This area
used to be the centre of a vibrant neighbourhood until construction of the highway
destroyed it and separated the neighbourhood from the French Quarter, the centre
of the New Orleans’ tourist industry.77 The urban highway overpass amplifies
the sound, and the echoing band music marks the importance of this place to the
history of the neighbourhood and the people that live there.78
As bands came to be identified with their local soundscapes, they also came to
be viewed as symbols of place. In many communities, bands formed within local
institutions, such as factories and industries, civic associations and/or churches. In
Victorian Britain, music was seen as a means of achieving the moral elevation of
the working classes,79 so a number of progressive industrialists sponsored bands
within their companies. Black Dyke Band, one of the most successful industrial
bands in Britain, was founded in 1855 by John Foster, the owner of Black Dyke
Mill, as a means of enhancing the quality of life of the workers and of instilling
loyalty to the mill.80 In some regions, bands thrived in rural towns, performing
music for civic parades and open-air concerts while providing access to musical
training, such as in Wayne County, Pennsylvania during the mid-nineteenth to
early twentieth century in the United States.81
The specific instrumental configuration used in a place frequently became a
hallmark of its soundscape. Second line parades, with their brass bands playing
powerful African American rhythms, are closely associated with New Orleans,
appearing in tourist pamphlets and on internet sites. In Indian bands, the clarinet has
become the main solo instrument, and it typically plays in a question-and-answer
structure to the rest of the band, replicating a practice common to other Indian
musical traditions.82 Tongans favour a mellow sound for their bands, a preference
Adrienne Kaeppler attributes to the local nose flute; to achieve mellowness
Tongan bands employed tubas, euphoniums, baritones and cornets, and following
the Second World War, often augmented the brass with five saxophones.83
Once emplaced, local civic bands typically re-invoke their military legacy,
creating spheres for interband competitions that can be formally or informally
structured. Bandsmen tend to consider it a point of honour to defend the reputation
of the place they represent. In the UK, the activities of brass bands centre on
77
Sakakeeny, ‘“Under the Bridge”’, pp. 5–6.
78
Ibid., pp. 2–3.
79
Herbert, ‘Nineteenth-Century Bands’, p. 32.
80
Roy Newsome, 150 Golden Years: The History of the Black Dyke Band (London,
2005).
81
Kenneth Kreitner, Discoursing Sweet Music: Town Bands and Community Life in
Turn-of-the-Century Pennsylvania (Urbana, 1990).
82
83
Adrienne Kaeppler, ‘Airplanes and Saxophones: Post-War Images in the Visual
and Performing Arts’, in Deryck Scarr, Niel Gunson and Jennifer Terrell (eds), Echoes of
Pacific War (Canberra, 1998), pp. 38–63, at p. 42.
contests, where judges decide the winners of diverse categories of performance.84

Roy Newsome notes that band directors felt that winning competitions glorified the
company sponsoring the band, and these events also created social occasions for
the towns that staged them.85 In the United States, school bands accompany their
football teams to games against other schools. Bands, such as the University of
Michigan Marching Band, described in the opening paragraph of this Introduction,
provide a more subtle complement to the competitive environment of the game.
The prowess of the marching band at half-time aims to entertain the spectators, but
it also energizes the fans, rallies the supporters and the team, and provides a show
of strength for the school regardless of the outcome of the game. Its colours and
repertory of ‘fight songs’ represent the place and the team it supports.
In rural Portugal, bands from rival communities face off on side-by-side stages
in disputes known as despiques. The competitive space highlights the placeness
of the bands, which are typically identified by their hometowns. For example, in
the village of Covões, the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões is known simply as
‘the Band from Covões’ (a banda de Covões). There are no formal judges in these
musical duels, but the two bands engage the audience in an effort to garner the
most applause and accolades. In most cases, each band’s supporters stand in front
of their respective band and clap only for their pieces. Successful performances
bring prestige not only to the band but also to the community that supports it.86
The acoustic properties of the brass band – the fact that it can project in outdoor
environments – has made it an ideal medium for use in collective social events in
public arenas. Just as bands are central to the establishment of spaces of occasion,
they mark local soundscapes and symbolize place. These ensembles, therefore, are
commonly linked to community building: processions link collectivities through
their common devotion to the saints; carnivals promote feelings of communal
equality; competitions inspire loyalty to place; the very sound of a band can evoke
memories of spaces and places and one’s experiences within them. As social
spaces, bands are themselves commonly experienced as community contexts.
Banding together gives rise to particular musical forms of sociability.
Banding and Community Music Making
[Community] is a process by which people come together for a particular cause or

purpose.87
84
Herbert, ‘Introduction’.
85
Roy Newsome, 150 Golden Years, pp. 20–21.
86
Katherine Brucher, ‘A Banda da Terra: Bandas Filarmônicas and the Performance
of Place in Portugal’ (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2005).
87
Greg Barz, ‘“We Are From Different Ethnic Groups, but We Live Here as One
Family”: The Musical Performance of Community in a Tanzanian Kwaya’, in Karen
Introduction 23
The connection between banding and community music making stems not just
from the ways that bands serve the people who share their locality through
performance, but also from the ways that the process of musicking constitutes
community for the musicians themselves.88 Importantly, ‘community music’ often
connotes amateur musicking. While professional ensembles certainly can maintain
a sense of community and belonging, within many wind band cultures participants
embrace banding as an amateur endeavour. Amateur musicians from many of the
traditions studied in this volume commented on how much leisure time they spent
with the band instead of on other pastimes or with their families.
In The Hidden Musicians, a study of amateur music making in Milton Keynes,
Ruth Finnegan described a rich, active music scene that encompassed many
different kinds of overlapping musical activities and organizations.89 Over two
decades since The Hidden Musicians was first published, the types of community-
based music practices she described still largely remain both unseen and under-
researched. By turning to banding, we hope to renew attention to community
musicking as a thriving arena of sociability as well as of local musical training.
In consonance with Greg Barz’s emphasis on community as process, Etienne
Wenger’s concept of ‘communities of practice’ provides a useful tool for
examining the dynamics of brass bands as local musicking communities.90 Bands,
like communities of practices, form around a common enterprise; but unlike some
communities of practices, they tend to be voluntary associations. For members
to make the investments required to sustain the band, participation itself must be
experienced as rewarding. Brass bands, therefore, typically channel much of their
efforts into constructing a sense of community among their members, while also
presenting their activities as a community service.91
Many people in the US today, for example, look to bands for an escape from the
hustle and bustle of modern life; these institutions, which form around common
interests in music, are explicitly situated outside of the responsibilities of work and
family. This is the case of the Ann Arbor Concert Band, an amateur ensemble in
the Midwest, to which participants drive long distances to make weekly rehearsals
and who see their participation in the band as a chance to maintain their interest
in music, although the majority are professionals working in non-musical fields.92
Ahlquist (ed.), Chorus and Community (Urbana, 2006), pp. 19–44, at pp. 25–6.
88
Karen Ahlquist, ‘Introduction’, in Karen Ahlquist (ed.), Chorus and Community
(Urbana, 2006), pp. 1–16, at pp. 3–4; and Barz, ‘“We Are From Different Ethnic Groups’”,
pp. 25–6.
89
Ruth Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town
(Middletown, CT, 2007 [1989]).
90
Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity
(Cambridge, 1998).
91
See Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians, p. 56.
92
Katherine Brucher, ‘Musical Banding: Community Wind Bands in American
Musical Life’, Seminar paper presented for the Art of Association: Exploring Institutions
Within marginalized communities, the modest investment in instruments and

uniforms required to form a band may offer a way for groups to organize themselves,
and simultaneously create a relatively inexpensive source of entertainment, a route
for bettering themselves through education and a means of contributing to the
public good. This can be noted, for instance, in relation to the Adams Juvenile
Band, founded in the city of Charlotte Amalie in 1910 by Alton Augustus Adams,
Sr., a primarily self-educated black musician from St Thomas, Virgin Islands. The
aim of the band was to offer opportunities of music education to local youths,
while also providing music to the community.93 Following the purchase of the
territory of the Virgin Islands by the United States from Denmark in 1917, the US
Navy inducted the Adams Juvenile Band as a unit.94 Adams became the first black
bandmaster in the US, and his musicians were the first African Americans to serve
as musicians since the War of 1812, at a time when blacks were limited to serving
as mess attendants and stewards. In St Thomas, the band became a symbol of
education, musical achievement and upward mobility.
The power of banding as a source of community cohesion and collective
healing among marginal peoples has been cogently demonstrated in Jesse
Johnson’s investigation of the community band in the Culion Leprosarium in
the Philippines. The leper colony was founded in the early twentieth century to
segregate those with Hansen’s disease in order to prevent the spread of infection.
The colony was supplied with brass instruments, which gave the isolated institution
a humanizing soundtrack. Although musicking may not have cured anyone of
leprosy, it accomplished social bonding among this group of outcasts. To this day
the band continues to bring the community together, standing as a symbol of local
pride, and its legacy points to the preservation of a community spirit that belies the
oppressive colonial medical practices associated with Hansen’s disease.95
A common dimension of community band activity involves the musical training
of members and future members. Amateur bands typically devote a considerable
amount of time to the instruction and transmission of repertory, performance
practice and the values that musicians associate with their participation in the
band. In a mode common to communities of practice, the learning generally takes
place through ‘doing’; it occurs in the very act of completing the tasks that sustain
the community.96 In Minas Gerais, Brazil, where band performances centre on
as Agents of American Music in Theory and Practice, Annual Meeting of the Society for
American Music (Ottawa, 2010), pp. 6–7.
93
Alton Augustus Adams, The Memoirs of Alton Augustus Adams, Sr., ed. Mark
Clague (Berkeley and Chicago, 2008), pp. 76–8.
94
Mark Clague, ‘Introduction: The Soul of Alton Adams’, in Adams, Memoirs of
Alton Augustus Adams, Sr., pp. 1–18, at p. 7.
95
Jesse A. Johnson, ‘Instilling “True American Spirit”: The Culion Leper Colony
Band’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (Mexico
City, 2009).
96
See Wenger, Communities of Practice, esp. pp. 86–102.
Introduction 25
religious processions, new recruits typically acquire their instrumental skills as they
learn to play the dirges required for the processions of Holy Week.97 New members
often join the band immediately after Easter, and spend their first year mastering
these slow pieces, through which they learn to read sheet music, assimilate basic
music theory and acquire an understanding of band instrumentation. During
their second and third years in the band, they progress to the faster dobrados, or
double marches, used in celebratory processions and civic parades, which require
considerably more dexterity.
In the United States, wind bands play a central role in music pedagogy within
formal education. Even in New Orleans, with its strong legacy of community
bands, the brass band tradition was very much linked to bands in educational
establishments, especially before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.98 Many of the
junior high and high school band directors played in community brass bands,
and the school curriculum provided instruction in basic musical skills. The brass
band culture ensured a learning trajectory that led pupils into new communities
of practice once they graduated and joined bands that accompany the many
parades and processions common in New Orleans. In this case, communities of
practice overlapped and reinforced one another as musicians moved from one to
the other. In the wake of depopulation following Hurricane Katrina, city schools
closed or reopened as much smaller institutions, and brass band musicians have
had to create new methods of providing basic music instruction through after-
school programmes.99
The practical competencies required to participate in a band community,
however, encompass far more than the musical skills that are explicitly taught.
These competencies involve a global knowledge associated with the day-to-day
continuity of the collective enterprise. Alongside the immediate skills associated
with musicking, participants need to be able to identify the leaders and core members
of the group as well as those who are peripherally linked to the ensemble; they
need to define the responsibilities of each member, how they will be undertaken,
and how they relate to the group enterprise; they also need to devise practices for
dealing with tensions that might arise in the group; members may need to identify
other communities of practice with whom they relate in different ways as well as
mechanisms for these interactions and so on. Certainly, bands provide pathways
to learning many non-musical skills and social norms necessary for negotiating
relationships within individual ensembles and beyond. These activities are part of
the ‘hidden’ infrastructure of the band, and band members may not perceive them
themselves. Many of the entries in this volume touch on the kinds of informal
97
Suzel Reily, ‘Some Thoughts on Musical Knowledge’, paper presented at the
Annual Meeting of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (Oxford, 2009).
98
White, ‘The New Orleans Brass Band’, p. 94.
99
Nick Spitzer, ‘The Music of New Orleans, After the Storm’, Interview by Melissa
Block, All Things Considered, National Public Radio (24 August 2010), available at http://
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129406974 [Accessed 28 July 2011].
social interactions – greetings before rehearsal, sociability following rehearsals and

performances – that establish and sustain social relationships between musicians.
It is worth remembering that the acquisition of musical performance
competence can require considerable personal investment; only those with a
high level of passion and motivation will put in the long hours of practise needed
to master some instruments. But the gratifications for this investment can also
be significant. Full satisfaction in performance can only be reached once one’s
instrumental skills are such that one no longer needs to direct one’s concentration to
getting the notes right. Once a musician can play on ‘automatic pilot’, so to speak,
he or she can attain that ‘peak experience’ Mihály Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’,
a state several researchers have identified in relation to ensemble musicking.100
These collective experiences – along with the investment made to acquire the
competence necessary to permit them to occur – provide an incentive for band
members to make the effort to continue pursuing their joint endeavour. In effect,
then, emotion plays a central role in the formation and continuity of brass bands.
Just as musicians acquire the musical and behavioural abilities associated with the
activities of the ensemble, so they also come to engage its ‘emotional practices’.
Banding offers various modes of sociability that may reflect or transcend
other markers of identity such as class, ethnicity or gender. Many of the traditions
discussed in this volume have been or continue to be the domain of male musicians,
and even among ensembles with relatively equal membership of male and female
musicians some instruments – particularly low brass – tend to be gendered as
male. However, most bands are organized with a relatively flat hierarchy: there is
a clear musical leader (usually a conductor or music director), but the musicians
are considered as one large group of relatively equal status within the ensemble.
This may or may not reflect social status outside the band. At least in the case
of North American community bands and British brass bands, one’s job and
education usually do not play a role in one’s status in the band;101 what matters in a
community band setting are such factors as musical ability, technique or the length
of time a musician has played with the ensemble.
Rob Boonzajer Flaes has argued that the success of wind band traditions in
colonial and later, post-colonial situations depended on a tradition finding a niche
in the new context, despite its European roots. Once these European traditions
were adapted to local aesthetics and forms, becoming ‘recognizable cultural
100
On ‘flow’, see Mihály Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience (New York, 1990). For ethnomusicological studies of flow, see Lynne Hume,
‘Accessing the Eternal: Dreaming “The Dreaming” and Ceremonial Performance’, Journal
of Religion and Science, 39/1 (2004): 237–58; Gordon Ramsey, Music, Emotion, and
Identity in Ulster Marching Bands (Oxford, 2011); Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life:
The Politics of Participation (Chicago, 2008) among others.
101
Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians, p. 50; and Brucher, ‘Musical Banding’, pp. 6
and 17.
Introduction 27
symbol[s]’, they could become ‘music you could call your own’.102 Today, in both
the former colonial powers and in former colonies, many of the traditional niches
of band performance have been progressively eroded. The enjoyment of making
music, however, has not diminished, leading bands(wo)men to search out new
performance arenas. The proliferation of band competitions can be viewed from
this perspective. Indeed, in many band traditions today the very motivation for
band participation centres on competitions.
In Britain, for instance, where competitions have been central to banding since
the late nineteenth century,103 they are understood as ‘a way of life’.104 In preparation
for a competition, musicians may feel compelled to increase their rehearsal time,
pushing themselves harder than usual. The competitions may occur in another
town, or even in another country, providing the band members with opportunities
for travel. If they win, the band returns with a trophy – a concrete sign of their
success and a potential source of considerable pride. Yet despite the vitality of
competitions, these practices continue to remain largely ‘hidden’. The larger public
is often unaware of their existence, and audiences are often composed of judges,
the other musicians taking part in the competition and musicians’ families and
friends. The structures supporting competitions – adjudicators, organizers, formal
rules and tacit understandings that govern who competes, how, when, where and
by what means – also may remain largely out of sight even to musicians who
have internalized the practices that they have learned in order to participate and
hopefully, win these competitions.
Though they may be hidden, bands across the world continue to see themselves
as part of a wider community and consider their primary role to be the service of
that community. Thus, throughout the world community bands take to the streets
and town squares to fulfil their social duties. In New Orleans they lead the funeral
cortèges. In European tourist resorts, they can be heard throughout the summer
months playing in plazas and pedestrian thoroughfares and during the Christmas
season they entertain shoppers. Throughout Latin America, they lead church
processions in their towns and neighbourhoods and they perform for all important
events, religious or secular, involving public collective gatherings. Just as communal
musicking can create bonds among band members, their performances help create
the conditions for collectivities to perceive themselves as communities.
Summary of the Chapters
The organization of this book follows, to some degree, a logic that moves from
Europe and the development of the military band prototype to colonial expansion
to processes of localization. But given the uneven and dialogic nature of band
102
103
See Herbert, ‘Introduction’, pp. 5–8.
104
Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians, p. 56.
development, both historically and geographically, we have opted against

grouping chapters into a set of subsections. Furthermore, we hope that this
structure will provide a clearer sense of the multiple links cutting across the
diverse contributions.
We begin with Trevor Herbert’s chapter, ‘Brass and Military Bands in Britain
– Performance Domains, the Factors that Construct them and their Influence’,
which aims to characterize bands as ‘performance domains’, that is, as distinct
and durable musical spheres. Herbert contends that the brass band domain
appeared suddenly during the latter half of the nineteenth century in ‘finished
form’, retaining it more or less intact to this day. Rather than being the outcome
of linear developments from earlier instrumental ensembles, Herbert shows how
a range of factors, including cultural shifts, the growth of the military, the rise
of nationalism, economic changes and technological innovations among others,
converged, allowing military and civic brass bands to take shape. He then shows
how contingencies within these bands gave shape to their specificities. As the
model travelled, it gave rise to other performance domains, such as John Philip
Sousa’s band in the US, which would in turn spawn high school bands. Having
highlighted the distinctions between various band domains, Herbert concludes his
contribution with a list of the features they share.
Sarah McClimon, in ‘Western Challenge, Japanese Musical Response: Military
Bands in Modern Japan’, offers an overview of the development of military music
in Japan from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Through an analysis
of repertoire, she shows how the military band articulated tensions deriving from
the impulse towards modernization and Westernization on the one hand, and the
desire to preserve a vision of Japan as an ancient and enduring empire on the
other. While foreign band directors were drafted in to establish new ensembles,
Japanese composers soon began creating patriotic marches, often fusing European
and Japanese musical elements. Initial attempts in this regard may have generated
somewhat awkward results, but in time Japanese composers learned how to use
Western harmony, phrasing and rhythmic structures within Japanese modes and
poetic imageries, ultimately producing a coherent Japanese band music style.
While the Pacific War may have temporarily halted the cosmopolitan aims of the
Japanese, McClimon argues that the brass band constituted a powerful force in the
introduction, dissemination and indigenization of Western music in Japan.
Heejin Kim provides another Far Eastern example of the appropriation of the
Western military band model, in ‘Battlefields and the Field of Music: South Korean
Military Band Musicians and the Korean War’. As in Japan, Korean brass bands
were initially modelled on Western prototypes. Following the Japanese invasion,
however, they entered into decline, re-emerging after independence and proliferating
with the onset of the Korean War, a sphere in which nationalism and transnationalism
intersected. While nationalist objectives inspired the production of military marches
with a Korean flavour, American marches dominated wartime programming because
of the South Korean alliance with the United States. Contact with American soldiers
also introduced Korean bandsmen to popular musics, a legacy that would contribute
Introduction 29
to the formation of hybrid styles of Korean popular music. Korean bandsmen,

therefore, developed musical versatility, playing repertoires in military and non-
military social fields, and their direct links to the state, the seat of power, placed them
in an advantageous position to extend their musical skills well beyond the military
sphere, particularly in the aftermath of the war.
In ‘From Processions to Encontros: The Performance Niches of the
Community Bands of Minas Gerais, Brazil’, Suzel Ana Reily looks at how
community musicking is both shaped by and shapes the performance niches in
which it operates. She argues that, with regard to brass bands, their versatility may
not only have contributed to their dissemination across the world, but also helps
explain their durability. By tracing the emergence and development of community
wind and brass bands, or bandas de música, in the former gold mining regions
of Brazil from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, she shows how these
ensembles have responded to changing circumstances, adapting their practices
to the performance niches available to them. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, however, a range of modernizing forces, particularly sound amplification
technologies and changing aesthetic fashions, progressively eroded the traditional
contexts of banda performances. Yet, in an effort to preserve a valued dimension
of their lives, band members created the encontro de bandas, or ‘band meeting’,
where ensembles from neighbouring towns come together to play for one another.
While today bandas may do much of their performing in other towns, Reily claims
that these events have not only kept bandas de música from folding, they now
ensure that small towns across Minas remain able to sustain a community band.
Matt Sakakeeny’s ‘The Representational Power of the New Orleans Brass
Band’ examines the ‘burden of representation’ experienced by African Americans
involved in brass bands and second line parading in New Orleans in their efforts to
present a positive image of blackness to the wider society. The chapter documents
the annual parade sponsored by the social club The Black Men of Labor, whose
leadership strive to stage a ‘traditional’ display, distinguishing their dignified parade
from the more popular, hip-hop-based second liners. His ethnographic data reveals
the ongoing debates taking place among musicians and community members over
appropriate repertory, comportment and performance practice when bands take to
the streets. Borrowing Anna Tsing’s concept of ‘productive friction’, Sakakeeny
explores how these internal dynamics, which centre on issues of race and class, are
played out in the parade, articulating the politics of the representation of blackness
in New Orleans at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
‘Soldiers of God: The Spectacular Musical Ministry of the Christmas Bands
in the Western Cape, South Africa’, by Sylvia Bruinders, focuses on the bands of
the coloured community of South Africa. Their activities encompass visitations to
the homes of community members as well as competitions, which Bruinders sees
as enactments of the respectability the coloured community wishes to portray.
Through their visitations during the Christmas season, the bands reconstitute the
coloured community. Their joyful repertoire reminds them of a past vibrancy,
sustaining the memory of the forced relocation of coloured people during the
apartheid era. During competitions they display respectability, turning out in

carefully rehearsed ensembles, precise military marching and tidy uniforms. These
‘spectacles’ are performed against the backdrop of the drug-infested townships in
which many bandsmen now live, placing them in a daily struggle to sustain their
sense of humanity. Through performances of religious music, praying, visitations
and neat presentation, bandsmen articulate their ‘moral agency’, which constitutes
a source of dignity upon which to build a sense of citizenship in the racialized
South African society.
Katherine Brucher explores the way that musical transmission establishes
shared musical and social values rooted in a sense of place in her chapter
‘Composing Identity and Transposing Values in Portuguese Amateur Wind Bands’.
This chapter focuses on the activities of the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões in
the central coastal region of Portugal. Musicians receive formal music instruction
through the band’s music school, but they also learn informally through a variety of
social and musical situations that range from weekly rehearsals to long processions
and parades to heated band ‘duels’. Musicians learn musical skills appropriate to
the bands’ performances but also a kind of moral order for their community as
participation in the band also includes instruction in the values and virtues of rural
Portuguese culture. Individual musicians’ pathways into the band suggest that the
process of becoming a musician and community member supports dense social
networks that connect musicians to the band, to each other and to Covões.
Gordon Ramsey’s chapter addresses the Northern Irish Protestant parading
band tradition in ‘Playing Away: Liminality, Flow and Communitas in an Ulster
Flute Band’s Visit to a Scottish Orange Parade’. The flute bands of Northern
Ireland represent an important historical trajectory in which community-based
amateur ensembles have taken up the instrumentation of military fife and drum
bands and adapted popular dance tunes of the eighteenth century to contemporary
parading traditions. Although the instrumentation departs from that of brass bands,
these ensembles share a common European military lineage and, likewise, provide
music that resonates powerfully in the public spaces of the communities where
they perform. These ensembles also involve sociability among their primarily male
membership. Through a case study of the Sir George White Memorial Flute Band
from Broughshane, County Antrim, Ramsey has placed the spotlight on band trips
and the ‘liminal’ space they create for a group of young men away from home.
During their annual trips to Scotland, the band reverts to in-your-face, loyalist
‘party tunes’ that, following the peace process, have become less acceptable in
Northern Ireland. Indeed, the band featured in this study has been cultivating a
‘respectable’ image for itself within the local community. This annual ‘pilgrimage’,
however, creates a context in which band members can indulge in transgressive
behaviours that promote long-lasting emotional experiences of ‘communitas’.
Ramsey contends that these experiences have palpable political effects, in that
they contribute to the band’s capacity to maintain itself as a functioning ensemble
and, on a wider scale, to the reproduction of loyalism as a social world.
Introduction 31
We close with Helena Simonett’s contribution, ‘From Village to World Stage:

The Malleability of Sinaloan Popular Brass Bands’, which provides a meticulous
account of the historical development of the banda tradition of Sinaloa, Mexico,
which, unlike most of the other case studies in this volume, is fundamentally an
arena of professional musicking. Simonett discusses the fortunes of these highly
‘local’ ‘folk’ ensembles as they confronted economic instability, technological
changes and the violence of drug trafficking over the last hundred years. In the early
twentieth century the bandas of Sinaloa developed a distinct popular repertoire
and performance practices drawn from indigenous styles, though these ‘malleable’
ensembles also played a range of international popular genres, providing the
rhythms for local dancing. In the 1950s banda music was ‘discovered’ by the
recording industry, and a few progressive bandas were able to achieve considerable
success, introducing audiences across Mexico and beyond to the regional sounds
of Sinaloa. The accessibility of amplification in the 1960s, however, led to the
marginalization of most bandas, limiting their activities to rural areas and village
settings. The 1990s saw the emergence of the technobandas, in which banda
performance practices were transferred to popular electric instruments and drum
kits. Despite its popularity, technobanda was flatly rejected by many Sinaloan
musicians, for whom traditional acoustic bandas have persisted as spheres for
local professional musical activity, however precarious for the musicians.
Chapter 1
Brass and Military Bands in Britain –
Performance Domains, the Factors that
Construct them and their Influence
Trevor Herbert
This chapter focuses on military and brass bands as they have developed in Britain
since the late eighteenth century. Despite the title, it is not entirely insular because
several themes dealt with here lead necessarily to a discussion of music making
in other European countries, the USA (which provides one of my case studies)
and some other formerly colonized territories. The emphasis falls on history
because it is my contention that historical processes have had several enduring
influences: perhaps most importantly, they have shaped the fundamental idea of
the ‘band’, as it is understood in the pages of this book, and ‘banding’ (a common
enough term among brass band players), as a relatively distinct sphere of activity
that stands apart from, but is also related to, other forms of instrumental music
making. The most powerful manifestation of the historical legacy is to be found
in the way that British bands sound, but it can also be detected in several cultural
and value systems that have their origins in the same process. It is a process that
has been nurtured by certain historical ‘events’ and by the mutually influential
relationships that bands have had with their ‘audiences’ (a term to be understood
in its broadest sense). The role of audiences has a special importance because the
cultural assumptions and interactions created by this relationship and developed
alongside banding have helped shape the way British bands sound. Those of
us who regularly or occasionally listen to bands have our receptors tuned in a
particular way to defined values and expectations, and bands respond obligingly if
subconsciously. The sound world of bands is predictable to listeners and this can
be taken as evidence of the maturity of its idiom.
The idea that a clearly defined and identifiable species of music making is a
consequence of a historical legacy to which social, economic and cultural factors
have contributed can, of course, be easily applied to other forms of music making.
But my primary argument here is that the idea of banding in Britain can only be
properly explained by reference to the detail and the more general trend of its
social and cultural history, because it is this that leads bands to occupy a particular
place defined principally by the way they perform and consequently sound. I call
this a ‘performance domain’. Performance domains also have another defining
characteristic and that is the durability of their basic musical make-up. This is
why various forms of banding can be seen as performance domains. Brass and
military bands in Britain share this important characteristic: they have remained
persistently unaltered in their fundamentals since they took on what we can
loosely call their ‘finished form’. For military bands, this occurred in the third
quarter of the nineteenth century; for brass bands, it was a couple of decades
later. As I argue below, these moments are not ascribed in an arbitrary way; they
can be defined and accounted for evidentially and with relative precision. But
what is certain is that the most powerful factor that distinguishes bands from
many other forms of music making is the constancy of the performance domain
in which they reside, and in consequence, the constancy of the soundscapes to
which they give issue. I am not merely describing musical style or genre here, for
many recognized styles have been the subject of radical change; the fundamentals
of their musical language and performance idioms have undergone massive
upheavals and transformations with the result that their values and modes of
expression have evolved to the extent that they are fundamentally different
from the point where they started: romanticism and the avant-garde, tailgate and
bebop, ballads and hard rock are examples. This is less the case with performance
domains such as British bands and banding where the fundamental parameters –
instrumentation, musical language, musical values, audience expectations and so
on – have remained more or less self-contained and intact. This constancy should
not be confused with stagnation, because, somewhat paradoxically, banding as
a whole can be characterized by its vitality and subscription to modern life at
the expense of retrospection: it adds to the quality of life of those who play and
listen, repertoire is always being added to, and dialogues are almost always about
the present rather than the past. The constancy has something to do with the fact
that banding is essentially about performance, and this sense is also central to
the relationship between bands, communities and even the country as a whole.
It is, however, less a matter of conservatism than of identity, and it follows the
basic reasoning that music is essentially a means of communication. Military and
brass bands as individual groups have lucid identities because they share a true
and confident understanding of what their idiom is and what society expects from
their endeavours.
The History Question
As I have already made clear, history is of vital importance in this argument, but
one of the persistent errors in writings about British brass and military bands (and
perhaps wind bands more generally) comes from the tendency to link them, in the
worst cases causally and seamlessly, with ancient precedents of the wind instrument
ensemble: seeing, for example, the modern brass or military band as a descendant
of the instrumental groups populated mainly (but not exclusively) by tromboni
and cornetti that prevailed before the eighteenth century. The tendency comes in
part from the proximity that modern players feel to some early repertoires because
Brass and Military Bands in Britain 35
arrangements of them for modern instruments are so numerous and popular.1 But it
also derives from an odd and somewhat affected inclination on the part of writers
since the nineteenth century to begin their surveys of banding as it was at the time
of their writing – a subject about which they usually knew a great deal – with a
prefatory romp through what they regarded as the relevant segments of Western
music history – a subject about which, almost invariably, they knew considerably
less. Jacob Kappey, the author of the first entries on bands in the first edition of
Grove’s Dictionary, opened his article by proclaiming that: ‘The history of the
development of wind instrumental music is so closely interwoven with the social
state of Central Europe in the middle ages, that it is almost impossible to sketch
the one without the other’.2
The problem with Kappey’s approach is that it positions the historical
development unproblematically as linear and progressive. Several authors of
didactic texts on military instruments made the same assumption, and even the
impressive polymath Henry George Farmer, the author of the most reliable histories
of British military bands, displays a hint of it too. Each of them got it mostly wrong,
and if the practice has any interest for our purposes here, it is because they seem
to have shared a belief that the story of a relatively modern phenomenon (as I will
argue it to be in this chapter) needed to be dignified and perhaps even legitimized
by reference to historical pedigree. This then is one of the features of the band as it
is understood in the pages of this book. Its sub-cultural status is a consequence of
its relative modernity, a condition that has been subjected for much of its history
to a comparison with Western art music history – its values, repertoires and often
its core practices. One of the interesting features about banding is the interplay
between what are often the contrasting values of this comparison.
Two groupings especially occupied the thoughts of early writers on bands: the
so-called alta bands (known originally just as alta – ‘bands’ is a modern suffix)
that emerged in the fifteenth century (or perhaps a little earlier) and those wind
bands variously called waits, Stadtpfeifer and piffari, which had the common
characteristic that they were employed, and their functions largely configured, by
civic governments. Alta were wind groups, usually of no more than three or four
in number, and they generally included double reed instruments (usually shawms)
and a species of brass instrument that was a form of trumpet. The evidence for alta
1
There are, for example, several successful sets of arrangements of music by Andrea
and Giovanni Gabrieli, and the so-called ‘tower music’ of Johannes Pezel, as well as sets of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music.
2
George Grove (ed.), A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. ‘Wind Instrumental
Music’, J. A. Kappey (4 vols, London, 1890), vol. 4, pp. 463–73. The first edition of Grove
was published in serial form and the ambition was always to provide a reference work that
was encyclopedic. Several key topics were missed from the alphabetic sequence in the
process, ‘brass bands’ and ‘military bands’ among them. The initial solution was to publish
a substantial addendum in the fourth volume; Kappey was engaged to write a substantial
piece with a catch-all header.
is mainly iconographical, though documentary fragments, some of which contain

musical texts, also survive. It leads to the conclusion that these were essentially
dance bands, given the name alta because they played ‘loud music’. Their interest
to modern scholars rests on two primary factors. The first is organological: the
brass instrument, not a single specimen of which survives, is believed by most
to be an instrument with a single telescopic slide – what we now refer to as the
‘Renaissance slide trumpet’, a precursor of the modern trombone, with a capability
of sounding diatonic melodies through much of its range, rather than being
restricted to the notes of a single harmonic series.3 The second feature is related to
the melodic character of the instruments used in these bands: they provide one of
the first examples from that period of ‘independent’ instrumental ensemble music,
a repertoire that is one step removed from vocal music – only one step, because
the polyphonic patterns apparently improvised by the wind players (as evidenced
by the musical texts related to them) were woven around a fixed melody – a cantus
firmus – that was invariably derived from vocal music, usually popular song.
The civic groups can be shown to have a yet older ancestry and a much
longer period of existence, but their repertoires before the seventeenth century
are obscure. Civic payment inventories show them to have had different types
of instrumentation at different times and in different places, but trumpets and
other loud instruments were always prominent, because they were needed for
various signalling functions. Leaving aside the broad features of their instrumental
make-up, these bands shared two important features: they were unambiguously
and consistently professional, and while they seem to have freelanced whenever
opportunities arose, their main roles were formal and determined by those who
employed them. In the Middle Ages, waits were watchmen who also sounded the
hours: they quite literally marked the passing of time. But there is an abundance
of evidence to show that because they were often the only local sources of
professional instrumentalists, they also played for various sacred and secular
ceremonials; and individual members of town bands also regarded themselves as
freelancers with the benefit of a basic income from the local civic authorities.
We know, for example, that even J. S. Bach called on town band players for the
trombonists who performed in the small group of his cantatas that included those
instruments. While alta were a thing of the past by the later sixteenth century,
town bands continued to thrive, but both their instrumentations and their place in
the music profession changed as the music establishments of aristocratic courts
and the larger ecclesiastical foundations increased in importance. Trumpeters in
court establishments were usually a discrete group, remunerated as such and with
defined roles, many of which were highly symbolic.
By the end of the sixteenth century, large sophisticated professional groups
with mixed instrumentation, which were to be the basis of what became known
as orchestras, were in existence. Their players were professionals who learned
3
For more information on the Renaissance slide trumpet, see Trevor Herbert, The
Trombone (London, 2006), ch. 3.
through dynastic apprenticeships. They were musically literate, and though they
decorated composed melodic lines with formulaic ornaments, they worked in a
culture in which the creative process and all that flowed from it was configured
largely by what composers wrote down. This was the consolidation of a long
historical process that led to the elements upon which most of the practices of
Western instrumental art music are largely based. The consequence of new
instrumental genres was the development of clear, and to an extent internationally
shared, idioms of instruments in the core of Western art music culture (essentially
those included in the modern symphony orchestra), the idea of virtuosity as a
virtue (note the similarity of the words) in its own right and, in the West, the
concept of the audience as a separate body that simply listened to instrumental
music and the way it was performed, often without recourse to any extra-musical
purpose or function.
Should we regard any of these or other developments that occurred before the
late eighteenth century as being related in an important way to the development of
the ‘band’ as the word is deployed in the pages of this book and particularly this
chapter? My contention is that the development of ‘bands’ has to be seen separately:
there was no unbroken tradition that stretched from the early modern period to the
nineteenth century and beyond; furthermore, almost none of the conditions that led
to banding existed before the nineteenth century. Town and village bands existed in
the eighteenth century and certainly the nineteenth, often to support hymn singing
and to accompany seasonal rituals, and we dismiss them at our peril as important
constituents in the story of vernacular music and its incorporation into wider aspects
of music culture; but military and brass bands must be attributed to a different
trajectory of history. The impetus came largely in the nineteenth century from the
coincidence of a wide range of demographic, economic, commercial, technological
and cultural upheavals. Many of the instruments that made up military and brass
bands were not invented before this time, and more critically the formation of both
species relied on the mobilization of large numbers of the lower social classes with
some powers of economic and social self-determination, a state that simply did not
prevail before industrialization and its resultant urbanization was well underway. It
is probably more accurate to analogize the origination of the band in the sense it is
used here with the big bang than the theory of evolution, and if a further metaphor
were needed, we need look no further than the meaning of the word ‘band’ and how
it changed as the eighteenth century passed into the nineteenth.
‘Band’ as a Cultural Expression
‘Band’ was used from the Renaissance to mean a group of men formed for a united
purpose – particularly soldiers. The regular use of the word to mean a group of
musicians appears to have emerged at the time of the Restoration of the English
monarchy, when Charles II famously recruited his ‘band of four and twenty fiddlers’
to play in the French style. ‘Band’ as essentially a large ensemble of musical
instruments of any type was thus used through much of the eighteenth century,
even as the modern use of the word ‘orchestra’ was taking root. ‘Orchestra’ in
ancient Greek referred to the ground level of a theatre, but even in the late sixteenth
century it was being used in Italy as a description of the group of instrumentalists
that occupied that space. This was not the case in England. Handel would have
called his orchestra a ‘band’, and this is the word that eighteenth-century concert-
goers would have looked for in newspapers to assure themselves that the oratorio
or opera they had booked for would have a group of instrumentalists in attendance.
But a clear and important shift in meaning occurred in the closing decades of
the eighteenth century. The very large group of instrumentalists assembled at
Westminster Abbey in 1784 for the Handel Commemoration was referred to by
Charles Burney as a band: ‘[i]n order to render the band as powerful and complete
as possible it was determined to employ every species of instrument’.4 The review
of the event in the Public Advertiser mentions that ‘[t]he Band was said to have
515 [players]’.5 Soon after this, the word ‘orchestra’ started being used as the
usual word for a large group of players. In 1807, in his Hints to Young Composers,
John Marsh persistently uses ‘orchestra’.6 It is, of course, impossible to define the
exact point when the change of meaning occurred, but the abandonment by Marsh
of the word ‘band’ in favour of ‘orchestra’ is especially interesting. Marsh was a
polymath who, somewhat unusually for polymaths of the time, displayed merit in
most of the diverse fields to which he contributed. He was at various times a lawyer,
a soldier and a writer on religious philosophy, astronomy and campanology. He
was a prolific composer and a knowledgeable and discerning writer on music.
His Hints to Young Composers is essentially an illustrated instruction manual on
orchestration with an emphasis on what he persistently refers to as the ‘modern
orchestra’. In his text he emphasizes the idea of the orchestra as a modern
phenomenon (with a fixed and balanced formulation of instruments), and writes of
the ‘great change’ that occurred in the eighteenth century. It is certainly true that
from about the time of the publication of Marsh’s book, the use of ‘orchestra’ in
the modern sense seems to be consistent – but there is a lingering use of ‘band’ as
a descriptor for those relatively recently formed groups that were associated with
various manifestations of the army: then, as now, they were referred to with total
consistency as military or regimental ‘bands’.
This change is important for our purposes because it is a signifier of something
cultural: in English parlance at least, it provides early evidence of a need for
descriptors that differentiated between types of music makers and their function.
4
Charles Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey
and the Pantheon, May 26th, 27th, 29th, and June 3rd and 5th, 1784, in Commemoration
of Handel (London, 1785), p. 7.
5
The Public Advertiser (London), 27 May 1784.
6
John Marsh, Hints to Young Composers of Instrumental Music, Illustrated with 2
Movements for Grand Orchestra in Score to which is prefixed a description of the scales
and peculiarities of every instrument in Modern Orchestras (London, 1805).
While the cultural dimensions signified by ‘band’ were not yet fully formed (it
was to be deployed for a number of different musical groupings), it had started to
move somewhat downmarket; the main meaning conveyed by ‘band’ was less to
do with what it was than what it wasn’t. ‘Orchestra’, ‘ensemble’ and even ‘octet’
and ‘trio’ were firmly established as descriptors associated with the continuity
of elite art music; ‘band’, on the other hand, denoted any one of the plethora of
instrumental groups (military, brass, German, street and eventually jazz and rock)
that occupied a different, and often relatively new, cultural place. Furthermore, the
emergent distinction in the nineteenth century was not based on purely musical
characteristics – it was defined culturally. At its simplest, in this process the
definition of ‘band’ referred to the occupation of a vacant territory: unoccupied by
the art mainstream and its institutions. Other more powerful distinctions were to
be generated by the changes that were emerging, but it was the military that was
to have the most formidable initial influence on the idea of the band as a new and
separate species, and it is to the development of military music that we must turn
to understand the cultural transition that unfolded in the nineteenth century. In so
doing, it is important to emphasize that this transition was not just about bands:
it affected all music and music making in Britain and in those places upon which
British cultural influence fell in any shape or form.
The Military and its Music
To understand the influence of the military in music, it is important to appreciate

the more general impact that military culture had on society during the nineteenth
century. Even though the British standing army can be traced back to the seventeenth
century, it took more than a hundred years for it to assemble the broad shape and
character that was to be developed in more modern times, as a collection of ordered
regiments with a substructure and command that stand permanently in protection
of the country and the furtherance of its foreign ambitions and interests. In the late
eighteenth century the command of the army was totally integrated with the British
establishment and the class system that underpinned it. For example, the ‘purchase
system’, which formally accommodated the monetary purchase of military rank,
was the main determinant of military leadership, and it lasted until 1871. The army
as a visible national force, made up of both regular and irregular units,7 each of
which functioned as symbols of monarchical authority and (in the absence of an
organized police force) as enforcers of civil order, was still under development
as the eighteenth century ended. A factor that is often overlooked is the impact of
the military on local economies: even after the reductions that occurred following
the Napoleonic Wars, there was a standing army of 60,000; by 1830 the army had
7
‘Irregular’ is the term for those branches of the army that are not full-time (‘regular’),
and have included the militia, the yeomanry, the volunteers and latterly the Territorial Army.
At various times these units have had specific roles in national defence.
almost 90,000 men, and a further 29,000 were in the navy; and the army was to
grow to more than 400,000 by the end of the century.8 Significant commercial and
cultural implications flowed from the fact that the military was both the largest
single employer in the country and the only one that (despite the absence of many
soldiers and sailors abroad) was widely dispersed across the whole kingdom; most
towns of any size had military garrisons, and in most there was a band of music
which was supported in its entirety by private subscriptions from officers.9 One of
the reasons why military bands took root so quickly in the UK is precisely because
the officer class saw bands of music as an aspect of the artistic patronage that was
expected of their social rank. The fact that bands also helped to authenticate the
legitimacy of the military by means of their ceremonial functions was in some
places, so it seems, just an additional consequence. Very many examples could be
cited of military bands being used for exclusive social purposes. Musicians who
took such duties lightly did so at their peril. For example, in 1783 the entire band
of the Coldstream Guards was dismissed for refusing to play for an officer’s private
party, which took the form of ‘an aquatic excursion … to Greenwich’.10
Of course, Britain had no monopoly over military music, which took hold
in different ways in different European countries and hence in the colonies and
dependencies of those countries. The process was aided in its development by
two related factors that were felt with equal weight across Europe: a void caused
by the breakdown of other traditional modes of patronage for professional
music (particularly traditional aristocratic patronage) and the rise of new
forms of nationalism. The latter development saw the organized military and
its colourful paraphernalia assuming new diplomatic importance by confirming
and exhibiting national strength and authority through the power of ceremony.
Military bands became bigger and more important as their value in this process
became more evident.
The major influence on British military bands came from Germany, which
preceded Britain in the instigation of large-scale groups to replace the smaller
wind bands that imitated the Harmoniemusik formations prevailing in some of the
regiments.11 France, Italy, Russia, Austria, Italy and eventually the post-Civil War
United States all established large-scale bands within their armies. The reality,
8
Chris Cook and Brendan Keith (eds), British Historical Facts 1830–1900 (London,
1984), p. 185.
9
The army paid only for signal instruments – effectively, trumpets and drums. All
band instruments, conductors and the expenses they attracted were levied as a charge on
mess funds.
10
W. T. Parke, Musical Memoirs (2 vols in one, New York, 1970 [1830]), p. 240.
11
The term ‘Harmoniemusik’ originated in Germanic countries in the late eighteenth
century, and referred to a band of about eight players, typically made up of oboes,
bassoon, horn and sometimes clarinet and/or trumpet. This type of grouping attracted a
large published repertoire, with keyboard arrangements produced simultaneously for the
domestic music market.
which is routinely overlooked in conventional histories of Western music, is that

by the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, the military had a major
influence on a large part of the infrastructure of Western music. Leaving aside the
sheer scale of the military music enterprise, it also benefitted from the resources
and organizational strength of the military and often the State. The elite regiments
in London, for example, negotiated arrangements that allowed players to include
membership of a military band as part of a broader portfolio of employment. Most
conductors of bands in the UK in the first half of the nineteenth century were
contracted civilians: they did not wear military uniforms, they rejected military
discipline and they were usually foreigners. The tendency was for bands to get
larger. When the first formal regulation relating to the size of regimental bands
was introduced in 1803, the number was limited to one player per troop; thus
a regiment with, say, 12 troops would have 12 players in its band.12 By 1822
a new regulation was necessary that limited the total number to ten musicians
and a bandmaster,13 and one of the more prominent features of army regulations
throughout the Victorian period was the attempt to control the growing profligacy
among officers in respect of the size and social function of their bands.
Because of the size and importance of the military music network, there
emerged a massive commercial dependency on it. Many, probably most,
improvements and inventions relating to brass and wind instruments in the
nineteenth century were aimed at the improvement of military music. The
commercial structures – the production and retailing of instruments and printed
music, and the various paraphernalia associated with music making – would have
been hugely impoverished without military consumption, and musical commerce
also benefitted from colonial expansion. Elite music education systems were
provided to train musicians for the military, which filled a void – as traditional
modes of aristocratic and ecclesiastical patronage dissolved, so did the system
that saw players educated through dynastic apprenticeships, and there was a need
for institutions to educate performers. At the time of its foundation, the Paris
Conservatoire was motivated by, and in part configured to, the service of the
French military. Its predecessor establishment, the Ecole de Musique de la Garde
Nationale, was actually founded in 1792 by a captain in the Garde Nationale.
When the Military Music Class (to become the Royal Military School of Music)
was founded at Kneller Hall on the outskirts of London in 1857, it stood out from
all other similar British institutions of the time, including the Royal Academy of
Music, as the only one single-mindedly dedicated to the production of musicians
who were destined for the music profession, and the one with by far the most
sophisticated and broadly based curriculum. In addition to the impact of the
12
The King’s Regulation for the Army, 1803, reprinted as an appendix in A Collection
of orders, regulations and instructions for the army on matters of finance and points of
discipline immediately connected therewith (London, 1807), p. 557.
13
General Regulations and Orders for the Army (London, 1822), p. 125. As well as
ten musicians, regiments were also allowed to include black men and boys.
military music education system and the very existence of military music on the
musical life of the country more generally, it was also responsible for the supply of
generations of musically literate and informed musicians who had a wide impact
on amateur music and the emergent popular music business. Fitting into both
categories was the brass band, which, in its British manifestation, was unique.
Brass Bands
The rapid development of the British brass band in the nineteenth century is a
remarkable phenomenon that can be properly described only by recourse to
commercial, economic, demographic and especially technological factors. Of
particular importance was the invention of valve brass instruments, or, to put
it more accurately, the commercial exploitation of that invention. Valve brass
instruments allowed players to play a chromatic compass by using the three most
dextrous digits in the right hand. It made brass instruments (especially those in
the treble register) that had been outstandingly difficult to play, relatively easy.
In fact, most ab initio players appear to have learned from simple primers under
the direction of musically literate but often unspecialized teachers. It was one of
the most important innovations in Western music history. The valve system was
not the first invention to provide an effective mechanical means by which a player
could extend the length of tubing through which he was blowing (thus giving
access to the tones of more than one harmonic series): the trombone, invented
by 1470, had such a facility by means of its telescopic slide. Also, in the very
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there were other inventions such as
the keyed trumpet, the much more successful keyed bugle and from about 1820
the ophicleide, a bass version of the keyed bugle. The major breakthrough came
around 1814, when the German inventor Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel invented a
design that allowed players to adjust the length of tubing that was being blown
through by depressing and releasing valves that directed the air flow through longer
or short lengths of tubing. Three valves, depressed individually or in combination,
provide instruments with a complete chromatic spectrum over more than two and
a half octaves. Many modern valve systems are but a variant of Stölzel’s invention.
But, as has often been the case, the invention significantly preceded a widespread
need for its consumption, and it was not until the 1840s, when Adophe Sax, a
Belgian inventor working in Paris, applied the idea to instruments of somewhat
different design and of various sizes, that it caught the public imagination and
found retailing champions. The Sax instruments (by then referred to as saxhorns)
were promoted in the UK by the highly entrepreneurial virtuoso brass-playing
family, the Distins.
By about 1850, several factors had combined to make the brass band one
of the ubiquitous features of British musical life, especially among the lower
social orders. The adoption of mechanized production allowed brass instruments
to be made in larger quantities at a cheaper cost, the promotion of them became
keener and the existence of deferred payment schemes made them accessible
to the groups of amateurs who inhabited the new conurbations and who were
defined by manufacturers as the new market. Employers and other sponsors
often acted as the guarantors for the collective loans because the formation of
bands was encouraged by the higher orders, who saw music making as a ‘rational
recreation’: an activity that built responsible citizenship through engagement in
what was perceived as a docile, collaborative and essentially artistic endeavour.14
The entire brass band ‘movement’ (a term in circulation even in the nineteenth
century) soon became enamoured with the competitive ethos. Brass band contests
were initially founded by entrepreneurs as a commercial activity often sponsored
by railway companies to encourage working people to use trains.15 It did not take
long for the bands themselves to take a bigger stake in the organization of contests,
and it may be this factor – the sense of ownership of contests, as well as the heady
delight that players gain from them – that explains their enduring appeal. It is
certainly the case that the competitive ethos and the contest as the common focus
for standards and style have continued to define the brass band world. Through
the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, even in the midst of challenges
from new forms of entertainment, the contest has endured, often underpinned by
media organizations such as the BBC and commercial sponsorship. Individual
bands adopted the names of their sponsors; sometimes the same band would
have a succession of names as the company to which it was aligned changed
its identity. A case in point is the celebrated Munn and Felton’s Band, founded
in Kettering by the shoe manufacturer Fred Felton in 1933. It changed its name
to GUS (Footwear) Band when the firm was taken over by the Great Universal
Stores conglomerate, then the GUS Band, followed by Rigid Containers Band,
and Travelsphere Holidays Band, before reverting to a nuance of history with
the ‘Virtuosi GUS Band’ – the word ‘Virtuosi’ itself indicating an alliance with a
brass instrument retailer of that name.
Modernism and Tradition
The British brass band has been largely resistant to change in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. Instrumentation has been essentially fixed since about 1900,
thus enabling publications for a set instrumental line-up. The single major change
was cataclysmic and important as an exemplar of how the brass band movement
14
For a fuller description of the origin of the brass band movement in the UK, see
Trevor Herbert, ‘Nineteenth-Century Bands: Making a Movement’, in Trevor Herbert (ed.),
The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History (Oxford, 2000), pp. 10–67.
15
For a description of sources relating to a large brass band contest with railway
company sponsorship, see Trevor Herbert and Arnold Myers, ‘Music for the Multitude:
Accounts of Bands entering Enderby Jackson’s Crystal Palace Contests in the 1860s’, Early
Music, 38/4 (2010): 571–84.
in general has endured such changes without losing its identity. Around 1966,
the two major producers of brass band instruments, Boosey and Hawkes and
the Salvation Army Supply Company, combined in a decision to stop producing
instruments at the traditional brass band pitch of 452.5 vibrations per second, a
little short of a semitone sharp of the modern universal pitch standard. (Military
bands had adopted the modern standard in 1929.) The measures put in place to
mediate the change – the production and sale of ‘kits’, short pieces of tubing to fit
on to high pitched instruments to lower them to the new standard – were entirely
hopeless because they took little account of the acoustical complications of such a
measure.16 Many bands could not afford to buy a complete set of new instruments,
and were eventually wound up.17 Perhaps more importantly, and relevant to the
main topic of this chapter, the move to lower pitch provided the opportunity for
retailers to promote instruments that also had wider tubing that produced a more
euphonious orchestral timbre. The overall effect of the change was therefore
to reduce the number of brass bands in existence and also to change, probably
irreversibly, the traditional sound colour of the British brass band from a sharper
and more focused, to a wider and more euphonious sound, but even as this change
took place, all the fundamental aspects of the performance idiom remained intact
and the sound of the brass band remained distinctive.
The major event that impacted on British military bands was the reorganization
and consequent cultural transformation that came about from the middle of
the nineteenth century following the centralization of military music when the
Military Music Class was formed at Kneller Hall in 1857. The foundation of the
school was highly controversial for two primary reasons: individual regiments, in
which bands were supported privately by officer subscription, regarded them as
part of the embedded regimental tradition and were hostile to what they perceived
as external interference; ‘external’ in this sense should be understood as the central
command of the British Army, for by the mid-nineteenth century, regimental
culture had developed a maturity and strength that the central command struggled
to cope with. Also there were genuinely principled objections to the very idea that
military music should stop being the subject of private patronage and become a
burden on the State – that even a penny of the nation’s military expenditure should
be spent on things such as clarinets and sheet music rather than horses, cannons
and boots for soldiers. Even when Kneller Hall opened its doors to its first cohort
of students, the funding of army music in general remained largely unresolved, but
the case for training native-born bandmasters was so strong that even the regiments
16
The idea that such a simple measure could accommodate the various challenges
involved in reconfiguring the pitch in complex brass instruments was extremely badly
conceived.
17
It was not sustainable for bands to continue at the old high pitch standard, even
though some tried to do so. New instruments and new players with new instruments
(including those instruments stocked by schools that were developing instrumental tuition)
could not be adjusted to the old sharp pitch.
favoured it. It was and remains the case that leadership – the idea of a single voice
of authority in performance – is an essential factor in banding, irrespective of any
musical consensus or democratic systems that might otherwise prevail. The focus
on the training of bandmasters was to have vital importance, and would, in due
course, impact on amateur bands too.
It did not take long for Kneller Hall to assume a fundamental importance in
British military music and establish a new direction for British military music
in which the principle of centralization was both irresistible and irreversible. By
the end of the nineteenth century not a single entrant to the bands of the British
Army was anything other than a trained soldier who could be summoned to
battle when occasion demanded. Bandsmen, and more importantly bandmasters,
were unambiguously part of the armed forces of the country, and their behaviour
and manner were configured by the conditions of their service. It also followed
that the style, taste, practice and idiom of military music followed what was
espoused at Kneller Hall. The military band assumed a somewhat different
place in the country’s musical life than it had done for much of the Victorian
period. Whereas for the first part of the century it had to a significant extent
been the music of the officer class, with as many private, social functions as
martial ones, it now became more recognizable by its military character and
ceremonial role. Its musical values and performance style were a reflection of
this changed idiom and were recognizable as such. In effect, the Kneller Hall
project had, for the first time, and perhaps to a greater extent than elsewhere
in Europe, established a central orthodoxy for military music performance and
style; but paradoxically, military bands did not withdraw into an exclusively
martial function, for the ‘martial’ and the ‘ceremonial’ must be interpreted here
not so much in terms of function as of the nature of the performance domain that
was being formed, and this impacted far beyond the parade ground. Military
music performance and the manner of its presentation, wherever it was enacted,
in public concerts both indoors and in the open air, reflected the crisp precision,
decorum and discipline that was to characterize the military music orthodoxy. In
effect, musical values were to stand as a metaphor for the ideals of disciplined
militarism. Bands always appeared in dress uniforms with stagecraft perfectly
co-ordinated. Conductors ceremonially saluted audiences at the start and end of
concerts and always appeared replete with medals.
From the late nineteenth century, both military and brass bands benefited
from the introduction of gramophone recordings and broadcasting. Bands were
favoured in comparison to several other groupings because their instruments were
acoustically more suitable for the recording technologies of the time.18 The non-
microgroove era of recording – effectively the period before the introduction of
the 33.33 rpm disc in 1948 – abounds with recordings of brass and military bands,
and while the technology favoured this type of line-up, there is little doubt that
18
For a survey of band recordings between 1903 and 1960, see Frank Andrews, Brass
Band Cylinder and Non-Microgroove Disc Recordings 1903–1960 (Winchester, 1997).
these bands were also widely popular. When Arthur Bliss (soon to be Master of
the Queen’s Music) was appointed as head of music at the BBC in 1942, one of his
first tasks was to appoint the virtuoso brass band cornet player Harry Mortimer as
‘brass and military bands supervisor’ at the corporation.
The Construction of Performance Domains
A reason for the enduring success of banding in Britain is that the bands consistently
represent something more than a musical experience: in the case of military
bands, they are conveyors of an aspect of nationhood, and brass bands are often
evocative of Victorian urbanism, class, community and a sense of heritage. The
sounds of the brass and the military band almost always summon such evocations,
and they do so with little provocation: the identifiers are carried in the way the
players play and the bands sound, rather than in what they play. Both soundscapes
are the product of a historical legacy that explains the construction of their
respective performance domains. Put somewhat differently, we can understand
the evocative power of bands not by reference to a scholarly contextual narrative,
as, for example, might inform the performance of a piece of programme music,
but rather because the performance values that are habitually enacted actually
provide a sonic character that derives from their history. Most aural identifiers
have remained intact even as military bands took on their more modern form
and brass bands passed through the various changes that accompanied the shift
to standard pitch in the mid-1960s. The bands are instantly recognizable for what
they are – even without visual prompts; it is the sound that reveals them. To the
performers in these bands, it is the sound that is the warm home that holds and
nurtures their participation. To them, an easy and effective exchange of musical
language prevails: banding is the sound domain in which their musical instincts
can be brought into play both individually and collectively.
I have explained that a ‘performance domain’ exists when an established
tradition of music making is so clearly formed that its continuity is all but
impervious to idiomatic change. It follows that the values associated with it
are widely understood and followed instinctively, and operate consciously or
subconsciously within a largely self-contained set of processes. A performance
domain derives from a legacy and is capable of (for example) retaining its
idiomatic identity while passing through moments of change or absorbing new
repertoire; it is because of its subscription to new repertoire that it remains fresh
and relevant to contemporary life. Furthermore, a performance domain is easily
recognizable because it carries evocations. This idea can be applied to other
musical practices, but with more difficulty. For example, jazz can be defined as
a musical species, a style and a tradition, but the phases of that tradition have
created acute contrasts: the bebop style of the 1940s and 1950s is so far removed
from the styles prevalent in New Orleans and Chicago in the 1920s that it can
even be said to oppose and contradict them.
The British brass band provides an especially good example of how self-contained
performance domains operate and are formed. So powerful is the coding contained
in the British brass band sound that its evocations have been used repeatedly in
television and film to summon the very idea of the historical working class and
the imaginary, largely nostalgic territory in which it resides. For example, the
1996 British film Brassed Off (dir. Mark Herman) brought together a commentary
about industrial and social change through the story of a colliery brass band. The
narrative is entertaining, romantic and nostalgic, but with a hard-edged political
posture. Despite any other attributes the film might have, its potency comes from the
sound of the band, which is used in both diegetic and non-diegetic modes to carry
a subliminal narrative of its own. The effectiveness of this communication is easy
to explain by reference to the continuity of brass band history. Brass bands sound
distinctive (compared to a collection of orchestral brass instruments, for example)
for two primary reasons. First, the instrumentation is fixed at 25 players deployed
to particular instruments in a precise formulation; the formation of a brass band is
as predictable as that of a football team or string quartet. Bands impoverished of
the full complement of players still sound distinctive in the same way because they
remain a part of the inner culture of the brass band world and imitate the mentors.
Also, the second causal element is always present: leaving aside the three trombones
that brass bands always include, every other instrument (cornets and various species
of saxhorn) has in its design a large proportion of conical (as opposed to cylindrical)
tubing; this is why trumpets (made largely of cylindrical tubing) are never included
in the British brass band line-up. All this derives from the commercial imperatives
that were present at the birth of the brass band and allowed working people to take
part in them – the saxhorn-type instruments were sold not so much as individual
instruments, but as complete sets at what were claimed to be knock-down prices: the
promotion of the saxhorn design was one of the most successful musical marketing
campaigns of the nineteenth century.
At the end of the nineteenth century the most successful contest conductors –
the most powerful mentors of their generation – found that a particular formulation
of instruments worked best.19 Their formulation was widely imitated, publishers
started publishing music for it and by 1913, when the first original contest test piece
was written, this formulation was effectively set in stone. The piece in question
was ‘Labour and Love’ by Percy Fletcher, musical director of Chu Chin Chow,
the long-running West End show. It marked an important moment for brass bands,
but tellingly it was important because it finally defined the brass band test piece as
the major genre of the movement – it remains the only genre unique to the British
brass band. Test pieces have many flavours, but key aspects of their character are
constant. Originally, test pieces were arrangements of orchestral works, often
19
The most influential figures in this process are usually (and probably accurately)
seen as John Gladney (1839–1911), Edwin Swift (1843–1904) and Alexander Owen (1851–
1920). Each man conducted several leading bands, and between them they dominated brass
band contesting for the last 20 years of the nineteenth century.
formulaic derivatives from classical overtures and opera selections. Many of the
first original compositions were imitative of this operatic selection format. Later
works were more independent of this origin, but almost all have some programmatic
element or extra-musical reference, and this includes the works that appeared in
the late twentieth century that exploit a more radical musical language. However,
despite this variety, the common features are always there and they derive from
what test pieces are intended to do: to test bands and their players so as to determine
which, on any one day, can be judged to be the best. Thus, test pieces (for the
highest category of bands) always last around 14 minutes and contain passages
that provide opportunities for ensemble and soloists to show virtuosity, lyricism,
ability to play in a wide dynamic range and so on. There are commonly understood
ideas about what constitutes virtuosity and lyricism. So, for example, there are
key aspects in the sonic identity, such as the presence of a warm vibrato, which is
especially evident in lyrical passages, and the persistence of figurations which call
for highly idiomatic articulation techniques (such as double- and triple-tonguing)
in more virtuosic phrases. There are no rules that test piece composers must follow
(except perhaps in respect of the duration of the piece), but it stands to reason
that composers applying themselves to the genre are applying creative ideas to a
clearly defined and commonly understood idiom and set of expectations. Indeed,
the understanding is shared so clearly and in such an unambiguous consensus that
in all the years that brass band contests have endured, no adjudicator has devised
or been required to subscribe to a set of criteria against which performances should
be measured.20 For at least a century and a half, the brass band performance domain
has been conditioned by the contest, and it impacts as much on small village bands
as on those of stellar status, because here as elsewhere in musical practice it is the
dominant group that defines idiomatic and stylistic standards.
Though innumerable brass band players have migrated to the very different
idiom of the professional orchestra, the transition is complex. The issue is one of
technique, sound and style, and it seems obvious that a psychological transition
is also required, because the cultural reference points that drive art music are
different from those of the brass band. The mediation between brass bands and art
music in recent generations has been the conservatoires, which take brass players,
largely sanitize them of the warm, euphonious, glowing expression of banding,
and transform them into art music virtuosi, or, more likely, expert but malleable
orchestral utilities. This latter description is neither cynical nor inaccurate, for it
is adaptability (to different styles and periods of repertoire and the preferences
of individual conductors) that plays a large part in defining professional players.
It is the absence of such stylistic flexibility – the ability to move effortlessly in
and out of the performance domain – that contributes to the character of brass
band players. There are exceptions of course, but it remains a general truth that
immersion in one mode tends to make the other something of a foreign place.
20
I am grateful to John Wallace, who has been an adjudicator at all national and
international levels, for confirming this from his own experience.
Before 1960, the mediating role between amateurism and professionalism (the
brass band and the orchestra) was largely acquitted for brass players by military
bands, through which so many of the brightest players passed in the period of
British military conscription.
The relationship between brass and military bands in Britain is a complex
one, but vital ingredients are shared. The modern brass band movement has a
strong commercial underpinning just as it always has, but it remains an essentially
amateur activity. Civilian military bands (often termed ‘concert bands’) thrive,
and the two types may expediently share some players, but they are considerably
less common than brass bands, and because they do not have the central reference
point of the contest, their idiom has fewer evocative or idiosyncratic elements.
They also stand in the shadow of the bands of the regular military, which remains
the largest single employer of salaried performing musicians in the UK.21 The
traditional role of the regular army bands and those of the other armed services
prevails, as does the central reference point of the Royal Military School of Music.
Many bandmasters from foreign armies are trained there.
In the nineteenth century, the military influenced the amateur brass band
movement in many ways, but two factors were important. The adjudicators at
major Victorian brass band contests were almost invariably military musicians.
For example, Charles Godfrey of the Grenadiers was adjudicator of the national
contest for decades, and he arranged many of the test pieces. Also, military
musicians (usually Kneller Hall-trained bandmasters) were the conductors of
many brass bands, and this pattern has endured for much of the twentieth century
and beyond. In consequence, brass bands have sought to aspire to values that are
prevalent in the military, where a broad culture of discipline carries through to
musical style: subscription to a core repertoire which includes exact identifiers
(such as regimental marches), rhythmic accuracy, a general emphasis on precision
and adherence to a repertoire that uses a largely traditional musical language.
This type of performance domain can perhaps be better explained by what it
eschews: changes to instrumentation, radical musical language, impromptu
individual freedom of expression (rubato), improvisation at the expense of
directed leadership, departures from established instrumentation, use of the most
‘advanced techniques’ (such as are found in the art avant-garde) or departure from
repertoires and an essentially predictable way of performing them.
The Case of Sousa: A Performance Domain, its Demise and Legacy
I have described the performance domain of the British brass and military bands
as having three important characteristics: a sound world that is the product of
historical legacy, a shared regard for musical formality and precision, and a level
21
At the time of writing (2013), the British armed forces still employ 1,230
performing musicians.
of self-contained values – an exclusivity in which particular musical and cultural

actions and processes prevail. It may seem contradictory to cite these domains as
influential on banding elsewhere: how could an exclusive, self-contained activity
influence models that appear so very different? In fact, I would contend that such
a process is alive and has been manifest in different regions of the world since the
nineteenth century. The closest imitation occurs in places such as New Zealand,22
where the brass and military band model has been copied almost literally, but
since the late twentieth century the British brass band model has also been cloned
in several European countries. But some of the most interesting developments
have occurred where this influence has been filtered and progressed through
locally determined functions and directions. Later chapters in this book discuss
such matters in the context of post-colonial regions. But an especially interesting
example of the mutation of British banding and its consequent influence and
legacy can be witnessed in the case of what may have been the most tightly
exclusive performance domain and perhaps the most globally famous band of
all – that of the charismatic American composer-conductor John Philip Sousa.
Banding in the United States after the Civil War was, as one would expect,
based on European derivations. Most of the players were first or second generation
European immigrants and the instruments they played were made either in
Europe or in the USA by European manufacturers. Military bands at the time of
the Civil War were often town brass bands that enlisted on one side or the other.
The influence of the British military model came after the war and specifically
from the Grenadier Guards Band, which visited the Boston International Peace
Festival in 1872 under its famous conductor Dan Godfrey.23 It reportedly played
to an audience of 30,000 and made a major impression.24 Two facets in particular
were influenced by the visit: repertoire – British bands played pieces of much
greater substance than did American bands of that time; and instrumentation –
the Grenadiers had a large, highly sophisticated line-up that was both musically
varied and balanced, and thus could be deployed to produce a wide range of sound
colours. A third factor also left its mark – the way that the Grenadiers, through
their precision and deportment, conveyed a sense of patriotism and British
nationhood. The visit had been arranged by the highly influential Irish immigrant
conductor Patrick Gilmore, who, after the Civil War, had been given the task of
reorganizing military music in the USA. It was also he who imitated the British
model most closely and successfully with the 1st Regiment Band, stationed in
New York City. Gilmore realized that the military band as he reconfigured it
could be the best show in town: audiences made up of immigrants from many
22
See Duncan Bythell, ‘The Brass Band in the Antipodes: The Transplantation of
British Popular Culture’, in Trevor Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band: A Musical and
Social History (Oxford, 2000), pp. 217–44.
23
In 1887 Dan Godfrey became the first British Army bandmaster to receive a
commission.
24
Musical Standard, 22 June 1872, p. 350.
European countries found in the performances both an essence of the old country
and a confirmation of American nationhood; concerts were in large, indoor and
open air spaces and in the piazzas of large fashionable hotels. What was soon at
play was the provision of shared cultural experiences that contributed to a sense
of communality.
In 1892 Gilmore died suddenly in St Louis. Within, a few days the New
York impresario David Blakely, one of the city’s brightest entrepreneurs, had
persuaded John Philip Sousa, the 38-year-old conductor of the US Marines Band,
to leave the service and form his own band to be based in New York City and tour
widely, following the routes newly determined by railroad tracks. With Blakely’s
encouragement (though it appears that little was needed) Sousa reconstructed
himself as a consummate showman. It was an entirely civilian concert band, but
it always wore quasi-military uniform, and Sousa himself never appeared without
a tunic replete with medals. Sousa is properly remembered for his 137 marches.
The remainder of his compositional output has no lasting merit, but marches were
never included in the printed concert programmes: they were reserved for encores,
when they were received with rapt attention and responded to ecstatically. Sousa
created a sound domain that was both exclusive and compulsively influential. The
exclusivity was protected carefully: for example, while the marches were published
for wind band, and in arrangements for piano and all sorts of other combinations,
not one was ever published as the Sousa Band actually performed it.
The protection of the ‘secret sauce’ in the Sousa concert menu actually
intensified the influence. Sousa configured his instrumentation carefully and
attracted the best available players, but as with British military and brass bands,
the emphasis was on crisp performance precision and disciplined stagecraft
layered with a conspicuous veneer of patriotic nationalism; even his arrangements
of ragtime (which he introduced to Europe at the 1900 Paris Exposition) were
labelled ‘native American music’. In the second decade of the twentieth century,
the implication of patriotism and moral certainty articulated by the Sousa Band
was utilized by the C. G. Conn Musical Instrument Corporation of Elkhart,
Indiana, in a brilliant but relentless targeting of American parenthood and high
school educators for the sale of musical instruments to teenagers. It was this that
led to the birth of the US high school marching band, a performance domain in
its own right, one of the emblematic elements of American nationhood and a
movement that has more than a hint of the Victorian idea of rational recreation
about it.25 One American commentator has referred to the cult of nostalgia that
surrounded the reception of Sousa and especially its legacy: a retrospective regard
for a time when patriotism and even the idea of American nationhood was more
commonly shared, understood and less ambiguous26 – sentiments summoned
25
Meredith Willson’s highly successful 1957 Broadway show The Music Man was a
faintly disguised parody of this phenomenon. Willson was a flautist with the Sousa Band.
26
Neil Harris, ‘John Philip Sousa and the Culture of Reassurance’, in Jon Newsom
(ed.), Perspectives on John Philip Sousa (Washington DC, 1983), pp. 11–40, at p. 11.
with an ease of evocation by Sousa and his imitators, just as the British brass
band served as a reminder of a wholesome working-class community.
The Sousa formula and the legacy it created were based on a relationship
with American audiences that provided a sense of security in uncertain times. It
was always precisely what the audience wanted. Sousa took every opportunity to
articulate the moral and patriotic value of his endeavour, and his band subscribed
wholeheartedly to this credo too.27 His performance style manifested this in its
complete absence of ambiguity: its quality and precision was at the heart of his
musical values. Exaggerated and idiosyncratic though it may have been, the Sousa
formula tells us something about the nature of banding and why it is distinctive.
It also tells us something about how, despite (or perhaps because of) their self-
contained exclusivity, performance domains exert influence.
Legacies and Conclusions
It is beyond my purpose here to fully argue the detail of how mature performance
domains such as the three I have concentrated on – British brass and military bands
and that of Sousa – have exerted influence on newer musical practices that have
formed different performance domains, sound worlds and served new purposes.
Often the values that are transferred change fundamentally in translation. For
example, it is worth noting that the US high school band, which was the major
product of the Sousa legacy, sounds very unlike the Sousa Band, which placed
emphasis on virtuosity. High school bands play marches and aim for precision in
marching rather than playing. Sousa became a hero to generations, many of whom
never heard his band; his ‘Stars and Stripes for Ever’ was formally designated the
country’s ‘national march’ by an Act of Congress in 1987. But there is a certain
paradox in the fact that in the 15,623 known performances of the Sousa Band, it
marched only eight times – probably somewhat imprecisely.28
As I have already pointed out, the more interesting features that occur through
such channels of influence are not the cloning of the species, but its mutation into
forms that have their own rules and create their own sound worlds. Furthermore,
the many bands that developed in such diverse ways – in formerly colonized
countries, for example – are done no service by being grouped together and
seen as the banding by-products of the post-colonial experience: they need to be
understood on a case-by-case basis. However, it is possible to isolate a group of
features that seem to be shared in part or in total by most bands:
27
The archive of the US Marines Band (the President’s Own) holds the complete press
cuttings of Sousa. From this evidence, it is easy to see the consistency of his approach and
the way it was articulated to media. For evidence relating to members of the Sousa Band, see
Paul Edmund Bierley, The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa (Urbana and Chicago, 2006).
28
See Trevor Herbert, ‘Sousa, the Band, and the “American Century”’, Journal of the
Royal Musical Association, 135/1 (2010): 183–90.
• Bands tend to be built around wind and brass instruments with percussion
that are, or are based on, designs that emerged in the nineteenth century.
They were new forms of musical activity at that time.
• Players usually have outward symbols (such as uniforms) that distinguish
them as an established group; such signifiers often show indebtedness to
military uniforms.
• Bands perform in public spaces and always have done: one of the features
that distinguish them from other forms of music making is that they
originate and continue to thrive as forms of public music making.
• They are discernibly separate from art music traditions, even though
they may be connected to them. For example, many bands use repertoire
borrowed from art music and (in modern times) use some of the spaces that
were designed with the art music establishment in mind for contests and
concerts.
• They are never isolated entities: they are always part of something larger
than themselves – a community, an army, a school and so on.29 Many bands
are initiated for a purpose – for example, to represent, or to contribute to
special or seasonal rituals.
• Each band occupies a performance domain in which commonly understood
rules and values apply. These rules and values can be explained and
referenced to events and processes that led to the formation of the band
type.
• Most bands are led by an authority figure – a leader or conductor. While the
general direction of a band’s organization or business may be subject to a
democratic process, performance style is directed.
• Bands as performance domains develop to what I have called a ‘finished
form’, after which they change very little. They may perform new
repertoire, but the qualities that define their musical idiom remain more or
less constant.
• This constancy leads to (and to an extent is actually formed by) a consensus
with bands’ primary audiences, so banding is generally predictable rather
than radical, but it is alive rather than stagnant. The vitality comes not
from repertoire, but from the fact that banding is essentially a performance
activity.30
• The mood and purpose of banding is positive: it has little to do with austerity,
however and wherever it is practised. Banding is always concerned with
life enhancement, it is celebratory, ceremonial and connected to the
communities in which it exists. Banding impacts positively on those who
are involved in it and those who witness its endeavours.
29
Even professional wind bands such as that of Sousa strived purposefully to
represent nationhood.
30
See Christopher Small, Musicking (Hanover and London, 1998).
Chapter 2
Western Challenge, Japanese Musical
Response: Military Bands in Modern Japan 1
Sarah McClimon
Brass bands enjoy enormous popularity in Japan today.2 Many amateur groups
are active throughout the country. School bands are an integral part of music
education. The police and fire departments maintain bands and the Self Defence
Force bands perform regularly. Professional groups such as the Tokyo Kōsei Wind
Ensemble, previously directed by internationally acclaimed conductor Frederick
Fennel, continue to be active. The roots of these bands in Japan stretch back more
than 150 years; over that time the roles of bands changed dramatically. From the
late Edo Period (1600–1868) to the Meiji Era (1868–1912), bands were a part of
the musical Westernization of the country. The adoption of fife and drum music
and the founding of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy bands in 1871 enhanced
the prestige of the military and supported it in wartime and peace.
Japan’s Westernization process in the late nineteenth century is fascinating because
of the speed with which the country, which had been politically and economically
closed for more than two centuries, adopted Euro-American science, technology,
government, military organization, education and the arts; music was a central part
of education and arts reforms. Foreign musical influence in the military came from
two sources: foreign band directors who worked as government employees in Japan
and Japanese military musicians who studied in Europe. These musicians developed
1
The title is inspired by Chapter 2 of W. G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan:
Political, Economic, and Social Changes Since 1850 (rev. edn, London, 2000).
2
The research for this project was supported by a fellowship from the Japan
Foundation. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for the detailed comments and suggestions.
Junko Oba provided extensive constructive feedback on the draft. Yamada Masashi assisted
with Japanese translations. Thanks to Justin Hunter, Taketani Etsuko, Ricardo Trimillos and
Tsukahara Yasuko for their assistance. Hayashi Rie, librarian at the International House,
Japan, assisted with permissions for reprinting of the score and musical examples. Thank
you to the faculty and librarians at the University of Hawai‘i and Tokyo University of the
Arts. The Osaka Municipal Band directed by Shimanuki Toshihiro and Zen-on Gakufu
graciously approved the reprinting of musical examples.
Conventions: Japanese names follow the traditional style with surname first, except in
the case of Japanese writers publishing in English, in which given forename comes first.
Romanization follows the modified Hepburn style. Macrons are used for long vowels;
however, they are omitted for major cities such as Tokyo.
the level of band performance and contributed to its diversification through new
compositions and arrangements of existing works for band.
Military bands played an important role in the continuing modernization and
Westernization of Japan over the following decades. After the foreign directors
returned to their home countries in the late nineteenth century, Japanese conductors
assumed leadership and adapted band music, introducing traditional music features
to the repertoire. During peacetime, bands provided entertainment for civilians
and took part in tours and exhibitions abroad to enhance the nation’s image as a
modern power. International events improved the prestige of Japan as an imperial
power with a significant military on a par with others in the Western world. During
times of war, bands supported Japanese military engagements abroad and aided
military recruitment and mobilization of the home front.
The Western-style military band in Japan, with its diverse choices of repertoire
incorporating Euro-American and Japanese elements, shaped an image of Japan
as modern and cosmopolitan, yet rooted in a mythical ancient past. Through
an examination of a few representative examples of military band repertoire,
I illuminate the role of military bands in creating a Japanese nation that was
comparable to other Western nations while retaining unique Japanese elements.
Bands played diverse musical styles and bandleaders adapted the repertoire over
time to respond to Japan’s increasing efforts at modernization, imperialism and
militarization. The role of bands, then, is situated at a complex intersection of
modernization, Westernization, imperial ambition and military strength.
Japanese brass bands have been largely missing from musicological studies by
foreign and domestic scholars. This stems from two factors. First, military band
music holds a relatively low status in contemporary Japan, as in other parts of
the world. Its association with amateur musicians and school groups makes it less
appealing for scholars than European classical music in Japan, traditional Japanese
music and even folk and popular genres. Second, after Japan’s defeat in the Asia-
Pacific War, many Japanese have avoided discussion of the war. Japanese academics
tend to be especially leftist and anti-war. The lack of band music research in Japan
began to change in the mid-1990s, with the publication of A Social History of the
Brass Band3 and several studies of Meiji Era band music. Japanese band music
is a promising area for future research, and it would particularly benefit from
collaboration between Japanese and non-Japanese scholars.
Japanese military music evolved over time. Five distinct time periods in
military band development can be identified with particular musical trends: the
late Edo Period, during which fife and drum and bugle corps were imported
(1850–68); the early Meiji Era, which ushered in the development of the military
and official naval and army bands under foreign leadership (1868–1900); the later
Meiji Era with expanded activities and compositions (1900–1912); the peaceful
3
Abe Kan’ichi, Hosokawa Shūhei, Tsukahara Yasuko, Tōya Mamoru and Takazawa
Tomomasa (eds), Burasu Band no Shakaishi: Gungakutai kara Utaban e [A Social History
of the Brass Band: From Military Bands to Vocal Accompaniment] (Tokyo, 2001).
Western Challenge, Japanese Musical Response 57
Taisho Era (1912–26); and the first two decades of the Showa Era (1926–45),4
with a growing military to support war in Asia and the Pacific, up to the end of the
Asia-Pacific War in 1945. The Japanese military was disbanded at the end of the
Pacific War. Much of Japan’s military music survived after the post-war abolition
of the military, preserved by the Self Defence Force bands and civilian bands.
However, these post-war musical activities are beyond the scope of this chapter.
The Late Edo Period (1855–68): Fife and Drum and Bugle Corps
The predecessors of the brass band style military bands were fife and drum corps
(kotekitai), bugle corps (rappatai) and drumming corps. Drum corps, adopted in
Japan in 1854, were modelled on the Dutch style. Fife and drum corps as well as
bugle corps were used in the late Edo Period by various feudal domains at ceremonies
in training and in battle.5 They dramatically changed the musical landscape of Japan,
setting the stage for the development of military bands in the Meiji Era.
Kyle Ono argues that military field music (fife, drum and bugle corps for
military training and battle) was introduced in Japan as part of a larger trend of
military contact with Europe and ‘symmetrical adoption’ of the European military
techniques and technology. In other words, when two militaries fight, the one with
the newer technology usually wins; the losing military then adopts the victor’s
technologies in order to be competitive in the following battle. Field music was one
of the essential tools of a modern military. Nineteenth-century firearms were limited
in range, accuracy and speed. To compensate for these limitations, soldiers fired in
coordinated groups to maintain a steady attack. Drums, fifes and bugles helped
soldiers to march into position and deploy weapons in coordination. In addition,
music relieved the monotony of training and the psychological pressure of battle.6
During the last decades of the Edo Period, Dejima, an island near Nagasaki,
was the only site open for trade between the Dutch and the Japanese in a nation
that was otherwise closed to foreign visitors. Japanese feudal domain leaders
took an interest in Dutch music, especially the domains opposing the Tokugawa
shogunate, from Tosa (now Kōchi Prefecture), Chōshū (present day Yamaguchi
Prefecture) and Satsuma (currently Kagoshima Prefecture). Takashima Shuhan
(1798–1866), a Nagasaki official in charge of gunnery and an amateur scholar of
Dutch studies, ordered musical instruments as early as 1832 for use in training. In
1840, he travelled to Tokyo with 123 men to demonstrate complex Dutch-style field
techniques to the shogunate; although records do not indicate field music, Ono posits
4
The Showa Era ended in 1989.
5
Tsukahara Yasuko, ‘Gungakutai to Senzen no Taishū Ongaku’ [Military Bands and
Popular Music until the End of the Asia-Pacific War], in Abe Kan’ichi et al., Burasu Band
no Shakaishi, pp. 83–124, at p. 86.
6
Kyle D. Ono, ‘Western Military Field Music in the Late Edo Period: The Introduction
of Western Music to Japan’ (MA thesis, University of Hawai‘i, 1997).
that field music was necessary for the complex manoeuvres that they performed.7
The demonstration was a success and from the middle of the 1850s, men from
other provinces travelled to Nagasaki to study with Dutch military directors Perth
Raiken and R. H. van Kattendijke (1816–66). The repertoire of these early drum
corps included ceremonial and drill pieces. Tsukahara writes of the extraordinary
popularity and widespread adoption of fife and drum corps music:
It can be seen from photos and written records of the time that there was an
unbelievable mania in all social classes and all parts of Japan, over the music and
the military uniforms, which were quite fashionable at the time, and although the
music is simple, its rhythm and tone colour were completely new to the Japanese
people and so became very fashionable.8
When American Admiral Matthew C. Perry arrived in 1853 with his ‘black ships’
to force Japan to open itself to foreign trade, he had two military bands and field
musicians on board. Upon their landing, the musicians performed for Japanese
government officials and local townspeople, who responded with mixed reviews.
According to first-person accounts in diaries of Japanese officials, the music
was fresh and exciting for people of the common classes, yet it was intolerable
for those with Japanese traditional tastes in music, particularly Japanese elites.9
Perry’s musicians provided further musical entertainment on their return trip in
1854, with performances of ‘Hail Columbia’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’.10 Blackface
performances made a big impression, as shown in paintings by Japanese artists.11
Military bands were an important symbol of the power of Western culture because
they accompanied Perry’s display of technological and military strength. Perry’s
musicians impressed on the Japanese the importance of military brass bands and
field musicians as part of a modern military power.
The Satsuma feudal domain adopted British fife and drum corps music starting
in 1863.12 The British repertoire included marusu (marches), haya ashi (quicksteps)
and oso ashi (slow marches). A representative drum and flute score, ‘Eikoku
Kotekifu’, was published in 1865, at a key historical moment between the visit by
Perry in 1854 and the arrival of British band director John William Fenton in 1869.
The score adopted a modified Japanese percussion notation to represent British-style
drumming. Rows of black circles were drawn in two columns, for left and right
7
Ibid., pp. 96–100.
8
Tsukahara, ‘Gungakutai’, p. 86, translated by the author.
9
Ono, Western Military Field Music, p. 83.
10
Justin R. Hunter, ‘Observations on Re-representing Music of the Other: Western
Military Music, Transcription, and Modernization in Pre-Meiji Japan’ (MM thesis,
University of Arkansas, 2009), p. 26.
11
Kasahara Kiyoshi, Kurofune Raikō to Ongaku [The Coming of the Black Ships and
Music] (Tokyo, 2001), frontispiece.
12
Tsukahara, ‘Gungakutai’, p. 88.
hands, and lines connecting the dots represented rhythms and patterns.13 Musicians
also adapted traditional instruments for use in British-style marching fife and drum
corps.14 The matsuri bayashi taiko festival drum, removed from its traditional stand
and strapped to a drummer’s shoulders, kept time while marching. The jingane field
gong and horagai conch shell served as signalling instruments on the field. Provincial
musicians showed creativity in adapting Japanese instruments to a new function
and musical style. While some powerful provinces used imported instruments,
other provincial musicians made do with domestically produced copies of Western
instruments or with Japanese substitutes. French bugling was also popular in the final
years of the Tokugawa Period. While Japan was officially a ‘closed country’ until the
middle of the nineteenth century, Western field music played on fife, drum and bugle
was being learned and adapted to Japanese musical instruments and techniques.
Early Meiji Era Military Bands (1868–1900): Euro-Japanese Collaborations
With the restoration and centralization of imperial power in Tokyo from 1868,
increased contact with the military and economic power of Europe and the United
States forced the Meiji government to modernize the nation along Western models.
Bands were an integral part of the modernization of the military, not only for practical
purposes such as training, but also for creating international prestige. With their
shiny imported instruments, powerful, potentially aggressive sound and handsome
uniforms, bands enhanced the impression of a modern military power. Starting in
1868, Japanese government agencies and businesses hired European and American
experts to help the nation modernize various scientific, technical, educational and
cultural fields. The number of these foreign government advisors (oyatoi gaikokujin)
peaked around 1874 and 1875, when the Meiji government employed 530 foreigners,
and private companies employed around 320.15 Throughout the Meiji Period as
many as 4,000 foreigners were contracted to work in Japan, but these workers were
replaced by Japanese once local competence became available.16
Along with their counterparts in various fields, a handful of foreign band
directors were invited to instruct the early military bands. Some of these musicians
were already living in Japan as part of diplomatic delegations, while others were
invited to Japan especially for the purpose of advancing modern band music
called for by the new national project. Along with the school songs (shōka) and
to a lesser extent Christian hymns (sanbika), military songs and marches had an
enormous influence on the later development of Western music in Japan, and soon
overshadowed traditional music in popularity.
13
Hunter, ‘Observations on Re-representing Music of the Other’, pp. 45–50.
14
Ibid., pp. 29–30.
15
Muramatsu Teijiro, Westerners in the Modernization of Japan (Tokyo, 1995), p. 22.
16
Beasley, Rise of Modern Japan, p. 88.
The adoption of full military-style brass bands began in 1869, one year after
the Meiji Restoration. The Satsuma domain provincial oligarchs brought youths
with them on the long journey to Yokohama to study music with John Fenton,
a band director stationed with the British Embassy. In 1871, the newly created
Office of Military Affairs invited the Satsuma musicians to become part of the first
official military band of Japan.17 In 1872, this band was divided into the Army and
Navy bands when the Office of Military Affairs was divided into the Ministries of
the Army and Navy.
The Meiji government’s original motivation for adopting military music was
practical. William Malm writes: ‘Western music was not acquired by the Japanese out
of any special interest in its qualities per se, but rather as necessary parts of a Western-
derived table of organization for the particular institution in question’.18 Similarly,
Eppstein argues that Western military music was adopted because of its symbolic
value as power, rather than from any interest in its aesthetic qualities as music.19
The early band directors played an important role in the creation of a new
repertoire of Japanese music. Fenton and German band director Franz Eckert, who
lived and worked in Japan from 1879 to 1889, introduced band music popular in
English and German military bands of the time. Military budget and general public
records show that Fenton ordered 40 pieces of music from Britain’s Boosey and
Hawkes Publishing Company in 1876 and Eckert ordered 106 works from Germany
in 1882. These purchases included popular marches of the time, light classical works
and Romantic opera transcriptions.20 This large number of European pieces in the
repertoire of the early military bands helped to establish Western music in Japan.21
French director Charles Leroux led Japan’s Army Band from 1885 to 1889.
He is called the ‘father of the Army band’ because he developed the educational
system of music by teaching solfège and music theory, as well as developing the
repertoire by composing new gunka (Japanese military songs) and marches. His
most famous works are the songs ‘Battōtai’ (A Band of Drawn Swords, 1885),
‘Fusōka’ (Ancient Japanese Poem, 1885) and the march ‘Rikugun Bunretsu
17
Kōichi Nomura, ‘Occidental Music: Importation of Occidental Music’, in Komiya
Toyotaka (ed.), Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, trans. and adapted Edward G.
Seidensticker and Donald Keene (Tokyo, 1956), pp. 451–507, at p. 454.
18
William P. Malm, ‘The Modern Music of Meiji Japan’, in Donald Shively (ed.),
Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971), pp. 257–300, at p. 259.
19
Ury Eppstein, ‘The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan’ (PhD thesis,
Tel-Aviv University, 1982); and Ury Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji
Era Japan (Lewiston, NY, 1995).
20
Tsukahara Yasuko, ‘Fenton to Ekkeruto ga Chūmon Shita Gakufu Mokuroku’
[Catalogue of Musical Scores Ordered by Fenton and Eckert], Kaigunshi Kenkyū [Research
into the History of the Navy], 2 (1993): 128–37, at 128.
21
Tsukahara, ‘Gungakutai’; Shiotsu Yohko, ‘Rikugun Daiyon Shidan Gungakutai
Shōzō Gakufu Mokuroku Sōfūhen’ [The Military Band of the Fourth Army Division: A
Music Collection Catalogue], Ongaku Kenkyū, 15 (1999): 5–76.
Kōshinkyoku’ (Army Review March, 1886). The latter is an arrangement of

the previous two songs into a medley. The lyrics of ‘A Band of Drawn Swords’
describe the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. It first appeared in the poetic anthology,
‘Shintaishi’ and remained popular throughout the following decades and well into
the twentieth century. ‘Army Review March’ remains the official march for the
Ground Self Defence Forces today. However, because of sensitivity to the term
‘Army’ and a general distancing of the Self-Defence Force from its predecessor,
the Imperial Army, the piece is often called ‘Ancient Japanese Poem’ or ‘A Band
of Drawn Swords’. The march is also frequently used by the Police Band of Tokyo
for military reviews and parades (see Example 2.1).
Example 2.1 ‘A Band With Drawn Swords’
The early formation of the military bands was characterized by this model
of guidance from foreign employees, who prepared Japanese musicians to adapt
the music and develop it for their own use. The most important and well-known
development in this regard was the creation of ‘Kimigayo’ (Your Reign), the
national anthem of Japan. John Fenton was stationed in Yokohama from 1869 with
the British Tenth Foot Regiment, and during this time he began teaching music to
the Japanese. When his battalion left Japan in 1871, he became an official instructor,
staying until 1877. He suggested the need for a national anthem and court poets
chose the poem ‘Kimigayo’. Fenton composed a melody in 1870 that was played
for some naval ceremonies, but it was not widely adopted. Malm suggests that it
is difficult to sing, and otherwise not solemn enough to be the national anthem.22
A decade later, the court musicians Hayashi Hiromori and Oku Yoshiisa set the
poem to a new tune, based on the ichikotsu mode of gagaku court music.23 German
band director Franz Eckert transcribed and harmonized the melody into its present
form.24 This arrangement had been used for over a century as the de facto national
anthem before it became the official national anthem in 1999.25
An important element that separated Japan from the way other nations
adopted military music was the level of collaboration between native and foreign
musicians. Since the Japanese government adopted military music by choice
rather than by imposition of a foreign colonial government, the new music could
be incorporated without disrupting existing musical values. Foreign directors were
employees of Japanese institutions; they were required to work with established
native musicians. The creation of the national anthem is a good example of this
collaboration between Japanese and foreign musicians.
The Late Meiji Era (1900–1912): Composition of Japanese Marches and

Public Band Performances
During the late Meiji Era, foreign directors left the Japanese military bands and
Japanese conductors took the baton. Many of these directors wrote original music
for band, giving birth to distinctly Japanese military band music. One of the most
important of these was naval band director Setoguchi Tōkichi (1868–1941).
Born into a samurai family from Satsuma, he moved to Yokohama and joined
the Second Naval Band as a musician and later became a music instructor there.
He wrote the ‘Gunkan Kōshinkyoku’ (Battleship March) in 1900, which remains
the most famous march in Japan today. In 1917, he retired from the military and
led the brass band clubs at Tokyo Imperial University and Kyoto University. He
became well known again in 1937 for winning a competition by composing the
music to ‘Patriotic March’, which became one of the most popular gunka military
songs at the end of the war. Setoguchi is considered by many to be the ‘father of
the march’. Conductor and music historian Tanimura Masajirō devoted an entire
book to the history and international dissemination of the ‘Battleship March’,
Japan’s representative march.26
22
Malm, ‘Modern Music of Meiji Japan’, p. 262.
23
Tsukahara Yasuko, Meiji Kokka to Gagaku: Dentō no Kindaika, Kokugaku no
Sōsei [Meiji Nationalism and Gagaku Court Music: Modernization of Tradition, Creation
of National Music] (Tokyo, 2009), pp. 179–80.
24
Ibid., pp. 262–3; Nomura, ‘Occidental Music’, p. 455.
25
Junko Oba, ‘Performing Kimigayo: Japanese National Anthem and the Sonorous
Undoing of the Collective Voice’, Asian Musicology, 12 (2008): 85–124, at 87.
26
Tanimura Masajirō, Kōshinkyoku Gunkan Hyakunen no Kōseki [One Hundred
Years in the Wake of the ‘Battleship March’] (Tokyo, 2000), p. 10.
In many ways, ‘Battleship March’ follows the standard European march

form. Setoguchi’s march melodies are well balanced, with a European classical
sense of phrase construction. The first strain has a melody in four parts: a a’ a”
b, with a repeated rhythmic pattern. It also uses counterpoint in the low brass.
As is common with marches, the second section has a more expansive feel than
the first. Because these marches often accompany singing, they vary slightly
from a typical European or American march form of Intro AA BB Trio Trio AB.
Japanese marches based on gunka tend to follow the form Intro AB AB Trio
Trio AB to allow for the singing of verses: each verse incorporates the A and B
sections of the melody.
However, ‘Battleship March’ has a Japanese twist: the trio incorporates
the military ceremonial song ‘Umi Yukaba’ (If I Go to the Sea). This melody
was written in 1880 by court musician Tōgi Sueyoshi, based on the gagaku
mode ichikotsu.27 Its lyrics, from Japan’s oldest poetic anthology, the eighth-
century Man’yōshū, describe mounds of bodies on land and sea that sacrificed
themselves for their ‘lord’, a figure often interpreted as ‘the emperor’. Composer
Nobutoki Kiyoshi set the same poem to another melody in 1937; the second
setting, discussed later in this chapter, is better known in Japan. Since ‘If I Go
to the Sea’ is in duple time, with regular phrases, it works well as a march trio
melody. However, its modal qualities and the contrast of brisk obbligato over
slow melody embody the hybrid identity of the Japanese army during this period
(see Example 2.2).
Gunkan (Battleship) March (1900)28

‘Kono Shiro’ (Toriyama Hiraku)29
Mamoru mo semeru mo kurogane no

Ukaberu shiro zo tanomi naru
Ukaberu sono shiro hi no moto no
Mikuni no yomo wo mamoru beshi
Magane no sono fune hi no moto ni
Ada nasu kuni wo seme yokashi
27
William P. Malm, Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (Tokyo,
2000), p. 114; Tsukahara, Meiji Kokka, pp. 179–80.
28
Osada Gyōji, Nihon Gunka Daizenshū: Gunka, Aikokuka, Senji Kayō, Guntai
Rappa [Complete Collection of Japanese Military Songs: Military Songs, Patriotic Songs,
Wartime Popular Songs, and Military Bugle Calls] (Tokyo, 1968), p. 125, trans. by
S. McClimon and M. Yamada.
29
The first part of the lyrics to ‘Battleship March’ was originally a poem called
‘Kono Shiro’ [This Castle] by Toriyama Hiraku. The second part is an adaptation of
the Man’yōshū (eighth century) poem ‘Umi Yukaba’ [If I Go to the Sea] by Ōtomo no
Yakamochi. Translation adapted from James Bradley, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
(Boston, 2003), p. 38.
Example 2.2 ‘Gunkan Kōshinkyoku’ (Battleship March: opening of trio) (reduced

transcription)
Iwaki no kemuri wa wadatsumi no

Tatsu ka to bakari nabi kudari
Tama utsu hibiki wa ikazuchi no
Trio: Umi Yukaba (Ōtomo no Yakamochi, Man’yōshū)

Umi yukaba mizuku kabane
Yama yukuba kusa musu kabane
Ōkimi no he ni koso shiname
Nodo ni wa shinaji
To defend and to attack the great iron ship

It’s a floating castle that we rely on
This floating castle of Japan
We should protect the nation in all four directions
This pure iron ship

Enemies of Japan we must attack
The smoke of the coal flutters over the ocean
Just like a dragon flying
The sound of the cannons echo like a voice of thunder.
Trio: Across the sea, corpses floating in the water

Across the mountains, corpses heaped
upon the grass.
We shall die by the side of our lord.
We will die peacefully.
There is a tension in the contrast between the optimistic lyrics of the verse
and the sombre lyrics of the trio. While ‘Battleship March’ is probably the most
well-known and best-loved military march in Japan, many other marches used
gunka as their themes, either in the first and second sections or for the trio section.
Often the melodies for the first strain as well as the trio come from popular military
songs. Examples include Leroux’s ‘Rikugun Bunretsu Kōshinkyoku’, discussed
previously, as well as ‘Kimigayo March’, which uses the national anthem as the
first theme and the gunka ‘Kitare ya Kitare’ as the trio.
Starting from the turn of the century, many Japanese military musicians
travelled to Europe to study. Yoshimoto Mitsuzō studied clarinet, piano and music
theory in Berlin from 1900 to 1902. On his return, he led the Naval Band and
composed many works for military band. These include ‘Kimigayo March’ as well
as arrangements of Japanese traditional music for band. ‘Echigo Jishi’ (Lion Dance
of Echigo) is a representative transcription by Yoshimoto. The music remains in
the possession of the Osaka City Band.30 Originally, ‘Lion Dance of Echigo’ was
a nagauta – a lyric song that accompanies dance in the kabuki theatre. The band
arrangement is an incongruous mix of Japanese melody and Western band tone
colours. The original work is scored for equal numbers of shamisen (plucked
lute) and voice, along with the hayashi ensemble consisting of flute and drums.
The melodies are idiomatic of these instruments. The shamisen is a percussive
string instrument with a twanging sound and a percussive attack created with a
flat plectrum.31 The instrument produces a characteristic buzzing sound (sawari)
caused by ‘allowing the lowest string to vibrate against the edges of a shallow
cavity at the top of the neck while the other two strings rest atop a metal bridge and
30
A recording by the Fourth Division Band is available in the compact disc compilation
Kurofune Konokata: Nihon no Suisōgaku150 Nen no Ayumi [After the Coming of the Black
Ships: The 150 Year Path of Japanese Band Music], two compact discs (Tokyo 2003).
31
Alison McQueen Tokita, ‘Music in Kabuki: More than Meets the Eye’, in Alison
McQueen Tokita and David W. Hughes (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to
Japanese Music (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 229–60, at p. 236.
pass over the cavity untouched’.32 Repeated percussive notes are common because
the player can create a drum-like quality by hitting the cat-skin covered wooden
sound box with the plectrum. Disjunct melodies with large leaps are also common.
The musical texture is generally in a heterophonic style called tsukazu hanarezu:
‘both lines are essentially the same melody but do not coincide in time’.33
The band arrangement of ‘Lion Dance of Echigo’, however, uses woodwinds
and brass with no percussion, strings or voice, so the tone colour is dramatically
altered. When the repeated notes, large leaps and heterophony characteristic of
nagauta are transferred to the wind ensemble, they do not sound idiomatic of band
music. The result is repetitive and disjointed. The vocal line, hayashi ensemble
and characteristic shamisen tone colour are missing, so the work lacks crucial
elements of its original character. However, since nagauta was popular at the turn
of the century, this band arrangement appealed to the audience. Along with other
band transcriptions of traditional Japanese music, it continued to be played in the
following decades (see Example 2.3).
Example 2.3 ‘Lion Dance of Echigo’ by Yoshimoto Mitsuzō, clarinet excerpt
In addition to the development of original Japanese marches in the late Meiji

Period, an increase in concerts and concert tours reflected the growing sophistication
and internationalization of the military bands. Military band concerts in the park
32
Philip Flavin, ‘Sōkyoku-Jiuta: Edo-period Chamber Music’, in Alison McQueen
Tokita and David W. Hughes (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music
(Aldershot, 2008), pp. 169–96, at p. 184.
33
Tokita, ‘Music in Kabuki’, p. 236.
became a regular feature of Tokyo life during the Meiji Era, most notably in Hibiya
Park at a special outdoor hall built for band performances. These concerts were
modelled after the many concerts in the park that were common in the United States
and Europe. The first concert in Hibiya Park took place on 1 August 1905 with
50 Army Band musicians performing under the direction of Nagai Kenshi. The
Navy Band, directed by Yoshimoto Mitsuzō, gave the second concert on 12 August.
These performances introduced European classical music to many Japanese.34
Other bandstands were built in the major parks of Osaka and Nagoya, and military
bands performed there, providing musical entertainment to the public.
In 1910, Great Britain and Japan jointly held the Japan-British Exhibition at
White City in Shepherd’s Bush, London. The exhibition was an elaborate showcase
for Japanese industry and culture. Japan and Britain were allies at the time and
Japan aspired to emulate Britain, which was the largest island empire of the time.
At the request of the British government, a band of 35 Imperial Army musicians
(18 of them military cadets) travelled to England to perform.35 They stayed for
the entire six months of the exhibition (May to October) and performed at various
venues around England alongside the British Guard Band and the Italian Army
Band, which was also in England at the time.36 They gave a performance at Hibiya
Park upon their return. The programme comprised arrangements of European
popular songs, opera and light classical music, including works by Gioachino
Rossini, Francois Benoist (1794–1878), Gabriel Faure and Charles Gounod.37
According to the Museum of London, ‘The Japan-British Exhibition in 1910
again focused on imperial power. It was also intended to emphasize the suitability of
Japan – an Asian nation – as a worthy ally of Britain. There were tableaux of Japanese
history, art displays and exhibits of the Japanese colonies in Korea, Manchuria
and Formosa’.38 Much of the exhibit was designed to show Japan as a nation that
balanced traditional culture and modern industries, which was exemplified by the
use of scale models of ancient and contemporary buildings.39 Ayako Hotta-Lister
describes the shared goals of the Japanese and British governments: the primary
goal of the exhibition was to display the power of Japan as the ‘Island Empire
34
Nomura, ‘Occidental Music’, pp. 451–8; Tanimura Masajirō, The Music from Hibiya
Park Bandstand, Tokyo: Historical Records of the Japanese Military Bands (Tokyo, 2010).
35
Nakamura Masao, Hirooka Yoshio and Yamaguchi Tsunemitsu, ‘Nihon no Suisōgaku:
Hajime ni, Rikugun Gungakutai, Kaigun Gungakutai’ [Japanese Bands: In the Beginning –
Army Bands and Navy Bands], in Ongaku no Tomosha (ed.), Suisōgaku no Hensei to Rekishi
[The Organization and History of Bands] (Tokyo, 1971), pp. 105–41, at p. 118.
36
Ibid., p. 119.
37
Ibid., pp. 119–20.
38
White City Exhibitions, ‘Exploring Twentieth Century London’ available at
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/X20L/Themes
/1385/1253/ [Accessed 1 November 2010].
39
William H. Coaldrake, ‘Introduction’, in Hirokichi Mutsu (ed.), The British Press
and the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 (Melbourne, 2001), pp. iv–xvi, at p. x.
of the East’, in order to strengthen ties between Japan and the ‘Island Empire of
the West’ – Britain. According to Hotta-Lister, the event was extremely popular in
Britain, but condemned by many Japanese who attended; they were embarrassed by
the ‘backward’ image of Japan that the organizers chose to portray.40 The brass band
appearance was part of the entertainment that included a sumo wrestler, jugglers
and shamisen players. This potpourri of entertainers was a way to portray the
exotic and familiar aspects of Japanese life, projecting Japan as both modern and
traditional. The Japanese Army Band promoted a modern image of Japan abroad.
The Taisho Period (1912–1926)
After the peak in Japanese army bands at the turn of the century, the number of
bands decreased starting in the 1910s. Bands stationed in Korea and Lüshun (also
known as Ryōjun and Port Arthur) were discontinued in 1915. Because of the
disarmament agreement signed at the Washington Conference of 1921, the Japanese
military was greatly reduced. Five of the six Army bands were disbanded, and in
1923 the Osaka Band and two Guard bands were disbanded, too. This left only the
Toyama School Band, whose membership was increased to 115 musicians. The
Navy bands were largely unaffected by the disarmament policies.41
The repertoire of the Taisho Period enjoyed more variety than the early Meiji
Era. Music became more varied and more sophisticated as the level of the musicians
improved and as Japanese composers and arrangers created new repertoire.
Japanese military bands continued to draw their repertoire from European bands.
In addition to marches, Romantic overtures, symphonies and opera arias were
extremely popular. Many new Japanese marches, ceremonial pieces and patriotic
songs were added. The addition of arrangements of traditional Japanese works
made the typical band music programme quite eclectic.
The library catalogue of the Osaka Fourth Army Band (active from 1888 to
1923) illustrates the range of musical styles played in Japanese military bands
around the turn of the century. Shiotsu Yōko has examined this catalogue and
characterizes the repertoire based on newspapers, concert programmes, magazines
and scores, classifying it into the categories classical, light classical and opera,
hōgaku Japanese music and marches.42 She argues that the military band members
were the most skilled Japanese musicians playing Western music in the western
part of Japan at that time and asserts that they had an important role in the
dissemination of Western music there.
40
Ayako Hotta-Lister, The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910: Gateway to the Island
Empire of the East (Richmond, VA, 1999).
41
Tsukahara, ‘Gungakutai’, pp. 98–9.
42
Shiotsu Yohko (Yōko), ‘Rikugun Daiyon Shidan Gungakutai no Senkyoku Keikō’
[The Trend of Musical Selections in the Military Band of the Fourth Army Division],
Ongaku Kenkyū, 14 (1998): 43–80.
Marches in the Osaka Fourth Regiment Band Library included those borrowed
from Europe and the United States as well as original marches written by directors
of the Japanese military bands. They included marches by Franz Eckert (‘March
de Riojunko’, ‘Der Kautschouer Humor March’) and Charles Leroux (‘Fusōka,
March Japonaise’), 12 marches by John Philip Sousa and ‘American Patrol’
by F. W. Meacham. European classical music reflected a variety of composers
from several time periods. While Baroque and Classical era music appears in the
repertoire, the majority of European works were Romantic or early twentieth-
century. Romantic opera arrangements constituted a large portion of the repertoire.
Hōgaku (Japanese music) arrangements formed a small but important part of
the library collection.43 The category includes traditional Japanese music genres as
well as original Japanese military songs and Japanese school songs. Arrangements
of traditional Japanese musical genres are a unique part of the repertoire. Examples
from concert programmes include Rokudan no Shirabe (koto music), Echigo-jishi
(discussed previously) and Oimatsu (a nō play). These arrangements sound quite
unusual from the standpoint of both Japanese traditional aesthetics and band music
style. Japanese traditional music tends to emphasize songs, the subtle tone colours
of Japanese instruments, complex ornamentation and a flexible rhythmic flow.
These aesthetic values are quite different from band music, and the character of the
music was changed drastically in the translation. The band music arrangements of
hōgaku have a rather static tone colour, employing large numbers of instruments
in mostly unison with some heterophony. The large ensemble format rather than
smaller chamber music settings typical of hōgaku is another major alteration to
the musical originals. Nevertheless, these hōgaku works consistently appeared on
concert programmes from the 1900s to the 1940s. In the early decades of the
twentieth century, hōgaku was very popular with audiences. In the following
decades, when other popular musical genres benefited from mass distribution on
radio and phonograph records, hōgaku arrangements filled the role of preserving
‘Japaneseness’ in military band concerts.
The performance of European classical music and opera along with hōgaku
transcriptions embodies an eclectic approach to programming that created a
richness of band heritage that continued through future decades. The range of
musical works, from European classical to Japanese traditional music, contributed
to a more varied repertoire, but it also reflects the peacetime atmosphere: patriotism
is not yet the focus as it would become upon entry into wartime.
The Shōwa Period to 1945: Band Music in Wartime Japan
Beginning with the Manchurian incident in 1931, Japan’s invasion of China and the
enormous growth of the military, the number of military bands increased rapidly
43
Shiotsu Yohko, ‘Rikugun Daiyon Shidan Gungakutai Shōzō Gakufū Mokuroku
Sōfūhen’, p. 67.
during the Shōwa Era. Bands continued to perform domestically as a recruitment

tool and often performed at deployment ceremonies of soldiers. The Army and
Navy bands were also dispatched to various colonies and battle sites in East Asia,
South East Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Programmes of band concerts in China show a wide variety of pieces that differ
from the Taisho Era performances: Chinese folk song medleys were often included,
and the national anthems of both Japan and China were consistently performed at
the beginning of concerts. There was a strong emphasis on Japanese marches, and
European and American marches were nearly absent from programmes by this
time. European classical works were performed much less frequently than before.
Occasionally, such instrumental solos on trumpet, xylophone or clarinet were
included in army band concerts during the Asia-Pacific War. These are similar
to the virtuosic solos accompanied by such turn-of-the-century bands as the US
Marine Band directed by John Philip Sousa. However, Japanese patriotic songs
made up the largest portion of the programmes. These patriotic songs were well
known in all sectors of Japanese society: they were sung in military training, taught
at schools, filled the airwaves and were even sung by neighbourhood associations
and at factories and other workplaces for mobilization.44 As the wartime situation
gradually deteriorated, the military relied on patriotic music to boost morale.
Below is a concert programme for the Music Corps Dispatched to Nanking,
1940–43.
23 December 1940. Nanking Tōa Kurabu (Nanjing East Asia Club),

led by Army Music Director Yamaguchi Tsunemitsu.45
‘Aikoku Kōshinkyoku’ (Patriotic March) – Selected by Cabinet
Information Bureau, Setoguchi Tōkichi
Overture: ‘Egmont’ – Ludwig van Beethoven
Gunka: ‘Tairiku Kōshinkyoku’ (Continental March) – General
Military Band Department
Gagaku: ‘Etenraku’ (Music of Heaven) – Arr. General Military
Band Department
‘Hatenaki Deinei’ (The Quagmire without Horizon) – Arr. General
Military Band Department
‘In a Persian Market’ – Albert Ketèlbey
44
Junko Oba, ‘From Miyasan, Miyasan to Subaru: The Transformation of Japanese
War Songs from 1868 to Today’ (MA thesis, Wesleyan University, 1995); Sarah Jane
McClimon, ‘Music, Politics and Memory: Japanese Military Songs in War and Peace’ (PhD
thesis, University of Hawai‘i, 2011).
45
Nakamura Masao, Hirooka Yoshio and Yamaguchi Tsunemitsu, ‘Nihon no
Suisōgaku’, pp. 238–9; trans. McClimon.
Battlefield Song: ‘Akatsuki ni Inoru’ (Prayer at Dawn) – Arr.

General Military Band Department
Xylophone solo: ‘Long Long Ago’ – Arr. Dietrich
Old Song: ‘Umi Yukaba’ – Nobutoki Kiyoshi
Nagauta: ‘Oimatsu’ – Arr. Army Band
‘Jikyokka’ (Situational songs about the war) – Arr. General Military
Band Department
‘Tsuki no Zangō’ (Moon Over the Trenches) – Arr. General Military
Band Department
L’Arlésienne – Georges Bizet
Kokuminka: ‘Kokumin Shingunka’ (People’s New Military Songs)
– Arr. General Military Band Department Selected by the Army and
Navy Ministry
Medley: ‘Imonbukuro #7’ (Comfort Bag for Soldiers) – Arr. General
Military Band Department Arr. General Military Band Department
Many of the works in the programme above are patriotic songs that would have
been well known to civilians of wartime Japan and Japanese colonies. ‘Patriotic
March’, the first piece of this programme, was probably a sing-along performance,
along with ‘Tairiku Kōshinkyoku’ (Continental March), ‘Akatsuki ni Inoru’
(Prayer at Dawn), ‘Kokumin Shingunka’ (People’s New Military Song), ‘Imon
Bukuro’ (Comfort Bag for Soldiers) and Nobutoki’s 1937 setting of ‘If I Go to the
Sea’,46 which was widely known during the Pacific War and often sung to send
soldiers off to battle. The positioning of patriotic songs at the beginning and end
of the concert also suggests that audiences probably participated through singing.
Much of the traditional Japanese music on the programmes refers to the
longevity of the emperor. The arrangement of the traditional nagauta dance of
kabuki Oimatsu, based on the earlier nō play, alludes to longevity, and particularly
to support of the emperor’s reign and a peaceful Japan. The other hōgaku work
is the court music piece ‘Etenraku’ (Music of Heaven). This work is a subtly
nationalistic programming choice, fitting the patriotic theme of the concert.
‘Etenraku’, with its historical roots in the early Heian Era (794–1185), is an
important symbol for national identity.
The radio programming for broadcasts of naval band performances directed
by Naitō Seigo opens a further window on the musical atmosphere of wartime
Japan and its colonies. The Navy Band performed on Japan’s first radio broadcast
in 1925. Regular broadcasts began much later, in 1935. Hario Genzō compiled
46
The lyrics are the same except for the last line: ‘Kaeri mi wa seji’ (I will not look
back/I have no regrets).
lists of domestic broadcasts of the Navy Band from 1935 to 1945 and overseas
radio broadcasts from 1936 to 1945, based on newspaper articles and Naitō’s
written records.47 Hario notes that with the entry into the Pacific War in 1941, the
number of Japanese patriotic songs and marches increased dramatically, but Naitō
continued to programme some classical works by composers such as Wagner.
German composers were acceptable to Japanese censors since Germany was an
axis ally, but American and British music was banned from the airwaves.
A comparison of domestic radio broadcasts in 1936 and 1941 illustrates the
changes in musical programming over the wartime period. The 4 December 1936
radio broadcast included two European classical works and several Japanese
patriotic songs. It consisted of ‘Kimigayo March’, ‘Hōshuku Gokōtan’ (a work
celebrating the birth of the Crown Prince Akihito), Haydn’s ‘The Creation’
and Beethoven’s ‘Funeral March’ from Piano Sonata No. 12. Five years later,
at the start of the Pacific War, the 8 December 1941 domestic radio broadcast
programme consisted entirely of Japanese marches and patriotic songs and no
Western classical music. The programme included the following marches and
military songs: ‘Battleship March’, ‘Umi no Shingun Kōshinkyoku’ (Advancing
on the Ocean), ‘Mamore Unabara’ (Protect the Ocean), ‘Taiheiyō Kōshinkyoku’
(Pacific March) and ‘Aikoku Kōshinkyoku’ (Patriotic March) and the popular
gunka military song ‘Yūkan Naru Nippon Hei’ (The Brave Japanese Soldiers).48
The programming of military band performances during the Pacific War supported
the total national mobilization at that time.
Setoguchi Tōkichi (1868–1941) composed ‘Patriotic March’ in 1938 at the end
of his career. He had become famous nearly four decades before for composing
‘Battleship March’ and had retired from his post as conductor of the Navy Band.
The Propaganda Department sponsored a song contest soliciting lyrics for a
‘Patriotic March’ and a second contest to create the melody. In a dramatic turn of
events, Setoguchi came out of retirement and produced the winning melody. The
melody basically follows a Western march form. The phrases are well balanced in
terms of cadences and contrasting sections. The first melody has a series of dotted
rhythms. This contrasts with a more expansive second section. However, the work
uses a typically ‘Japanese’ scale that ethnomusicologist Junko Oba describes as
the ‘seventhless major’ that is common in gunka.49 Its lyrics mention the Japanese
archipelago and Mount Fuji. The poetry also follows a common Japanese metric
pattern of alternating seven and five syllable lines. The work, similar to ‘Battleship
March’, illustrates a hybrid Japanese identity in song (see Example 2.4).
47
Hario Genzō, ‘Kaigai Rajio Hōsō Kyokume: Naitō Seigo & Kaigun Gungakutai’
[Works Broadcast Abroad by Radio: Directed by Naitō Seigo and the Navy Band], in Hario
Genzō (compiler) and Tsunekazu Hideo (ed.), Kaigun Gungakutai: Hana mo Arashi mo…
[Naval Bands: Through Flowers as well as Storms…] (Tokyo, 2000), pp. 156–69.
48
Hario, ‘Kaigai Rajio Hōsō Kyokume’, pp. 156–69.
49
Oba, ‘From Miyasan, Miyasan to Subaru’, p. 16.
Example 2.4 ‘Aikoku Kōshinkyoku’ (Patriotic March) by Setoguchi Tōkichi50
50
Osada, Nihon Gunka Daizenshū, p. 222; translation from Satoshi Sugita, ‘Cherry
Blossoms and Rising Sun: A Systematic and Objective Analysis of Gunka (Japanese War
Songs) in Five Historical Periods (1868–1945)’ (MA thesis, University of Ohio, 1972)
p. 42.
Miyo tōkai no sora akete

Kyakujitsu takaku kagayakeba
Tenchi no seiki hatsuratsu to
Kibō wa odoru kono yashiro
Ōseirō no asagumo ni
Sobuyuru Fuji no sugata koso
Kin’ō muketsu yurugi naki
Waga Nippon no hokori nare
Lo, the skies of Eastern sea have dawned

The Morning Sun glows high
The spirit of the earth and heaven is bright
Hopes hover on the Japanese archipelago
In the midst of bright morning clouds
The figure of Mount Fuji
Is perfect and majestic
It is the pride of Japan
As the Showa Era progressed, bands played original works beyond marches
and patriotic songs; these included symphonic poems and overtures written by
‘serious’ classical composers. Yamada Kōsaku (1886–1965) wrote an important
early symphonic band work called ‘Shoshun no Zensō to Kōshinkyoku – Nihon no
Kodomo no Tame’ (Early Spring Prelude and March – for the Children of Japan)
in 1932. JOAK, the predecessor of NHK, the national broadcasting company of
Japan, commissioned the symphonic band work for the 1933 New Year’s Day
morning broadcast. Yamada studied in Berlin and was deeply influenced by
Wagner and Richard Strauss. He was a strong advocate for German Romanticism
in Japan, but he maintained a Japanese musical identity in his compositions.51 The
composer is known for his cooperation with military authorities during wartime
Japan. ‘Early Spring Prelude and March’ was broadcast annually for the following
13 years until 1945. While the composition of works for symphonic band increased
in the latter half of the 1930s and through the 1940s, this remains an important
early example.52
The work incorporates three Japanese songs: Taki Rentarō’s’ Oshōgatsu’
(New Year’s Day), ‘Ichigatsu Tsuitachi’ (January First) by Ue Sanemichi, and
‘Kimigayo’. The single movement work is just less than nine minutes long, and
it is reminiscent of opera overtures and symphonic poems of the late nineteenth
51
Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Yamada, Kōsaku’, Kanazawa Masakata and Akioka Yo,
Oxford Music Online available at http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/
grove/music/30669 [Accessed 2 August 2011].
52
Katayama Morihide, liner notes to Kurofune Konokata: Nihon no Suisōgaku 150
Nen no Ayumi [After the Coming of the Black Ships: The 150 Year Path of Japanese Band
Music], King Records B00009P68T (Tokyo, 2003), pp. 36–7.
century. It begins simply with an ostinato in the low brass and low woodwinds,
and the melody of ‘New Year’s Day’ in the horns (see Example 2.5). Woodwinds
echo the second phrase in parallel fifths, an Orientalist gesture considered
emblematic of the Far East. Later, a march-like setting of ‘January First’ follows
a hymn-like setting of the same song. Next, a set of motivic modulations and
a royal brass fanfare introduce a hymn-like version of ‘Kimigayo’. The first
phrase is performed by brass, then woodwinds and chimes join the hymn-like
homophonic setting.
Example 2.5 ‘Early Spring Prelude and March’ as performed by the Tokyo
College of Music Symphonic Band
Table 2.1 shows an outline of the form of the piece. ‘Early Spring Prelude and
March’ is written in wind-ensemble style with a greater variety of tone colours
than previous military music. Percussion instruments, such as chimes, timpani
and crash cymbals, provide colour and punctuate dramatic sections rather than
keeping march time. The piece shows a heavy influence of German composers,
especially Wagner, while integrating distinctively Japanese elements derived
from children’s songs and the national anthem. The entire work has a solemn
feel, and the combination of hymn-like song settings and a march section makes
it sound like a patriotic hymn in praise of the emperor.
Table 2.1 Yamada Kōsaku, ‘Shoshun no Zensō to Kōshinkyoku – Nihon

no Kodomo no Tame’ (Early Spring Prelude and March – for the
Children of Japan)53
Time 0:00 0:30 0:40 1:21 1:33 1:52
Instru- Melody Second Modulation, Melody Motivic Trumpet,

ment horn, phrase motivic second dev. Low snare drum,
ostinato, echoed in development time, flute, woodwinds woodwinds
low brass. woodwinds, clarinet,
Sustained parallel 5th oboe
P5, 8ve on
beat 2
Melody Oshōgatsu Oshōgatsu Triplet
pattern
Key G ~ E@ ~ D@ A@ ~ D@ Modulation
2:39 3:30 3:46 4:15 4:50 5:01

Homophonic, Oboe solo, ‘Brass Woodwinds Oboe solo Cymbal
brass + bassoon, choir’ + brass, final phrase, crash,
woodwinds + last phrase eighth note modulation trumpet
chimes arpeggio in fanfare
bass
Ichigatsu Ichigatsu Ichigatsu
Ichinichi Ichinichi Ichinichi
D@ D@~ E@
5:15 6:39 6:48 7:44 7:55 8:25

March. Brass Woodwinds + Oboe solo Flute solo Snare drum
Ichigatsu homophonic brass, snare, rolls, brass
Ichinichi first phrase chimes second choir style at
in brass; phrase end
obligatto in
woodwinds
Ichigatsu Kimigayo Ichigatsu
Ichinichi Ichinichi
B@ (modal) A@ A@
53
As performed by the Tokyo College of Music Symphonic Band, Kurofune
Konokata: Nihon no Suisōgaku 150 Nen no Ayumi [After the Coming of the Black Ships:
The 150 Year Path of Japanese Band Music], King Records B00009P68T (Tokyo, 2003).
On 11 February 1940, Japan commemorated the 2600th anniversary of

the mythical founding of Japan by the first emperor, Jimmu. This event, called
Kigensetsu Nisen Roppyakunen Shukusai, was marked by a tour by the emperor and
many musical performances and celebrations. An important work performed that
year was the overture ‘Yūkyū’ (Eternity) by Mizushima Kazuo and Suma Yōsaku.
The work was premiered at Tokyo’s Hibiya Park bandstand on 15 July 1940 by a
combination of Army and Navy band members, directed by Ōnuma Satoru.54 The
opening section begins with timpani tremolos that depict the creation of the islands
of Japan from volcanoes, then it adds layers of chord clusters that resemble the shō
mouth organ used in gagaku. Fragments of Japanese min’yō folk melodies follow
in a symphonic poem that celebrates the mythical origins of Japan.
The music of ‘Eternity’ reflects a tension in the band world of wartime Japan:
on the one hand, bands developed primarily as a tool for Westernization and
modernization, in order to be on equal terms with the enemy, as Ono discussed;
on the other hand, emphasis on an ancient and unchanging Japan, exemplified
by the Kigensetsu 2600 celebrations and the reference to gagaku court music
in ‘Eternity’, revealed a counter impulse that portrayed Japan as unique and
spiritually superior to Europe and the United States. Band music had developed
full-circle: from a musical ensemble modelled on Europe that relied primarily
on European repertoire, to gradual integration of Japanese elements, ultimately
incorporating Japan’s musical symbol of imperial longevity as implied in the title
of the piece. Band music repertoire expressed a tension in the Japanese national
image: the irreconcilable impulses to become a modern Western power and the
embodiment of an ancient Yamato warrior.
Conclusion: The Diverse Roles of Band Music in Modern Japan
Over the first 70 years of its history, the repertoire of Japanese band music has
shown considerable diversity and change in response to contributions from
foreign and domestic musicians. The early period of musical Westernization
(late Edo Period and early Meiji) incorporated music from various European
countries under the direction of foreign instructors and directors. Development
of field music and bands was inspired by the American musicians who came
aboard Perry’s black ships; foreign band leaders from the Netherlands, England,
Germany and France collaborated with Japanese musicians to develop the early
field bands and brass bands.
Early Japanese band repertoire relied heavily on foreign works, especially
band music from Britain and Germany. Over the following decades, Japanese
conductors greatly expanded the repertoire, adding arrangements of Japanese
traditional works as well as original works in a variety of styles. Arrangements
of Japanese traditional music often exhibited a unique hybrid sound that seemed
54
Katayama, liner notes, p. 39.
a bit idiosyncratic, since the aesthetics of traditional music and military bands
have so little in common. However, compositions became increasingly more
sophisticated. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Japanese military
songs and marches composed by military musicians skilfully integrated Japanese
and Western musical elements, creating an image of a modern nation that valued
both tradition and modernity.
The late Meiji and Taisho eras were an eclectic period. Newly composed
Japanese marches entered the repertoire along with arrangements of traditional
music. At the same time, European and American band repertoire continued to
be important. These programming choices reflected the government’s goal of
developing a cosmopolitan image of Japan – one that incorporated both Euro-
American and Japanese musical styles into its repertoire. By the late 1930s
and 1940s, composers were creating symphonic band works that showed
influence from Romanticism. In the context of wartime nationalism, composers
incorporated Japanese children’s songs, folk songs and the national anthem into
concert band works.
The wartime period saw a turn towards nationalism and militarism. Fewer
non-Japanese marches found their way onto programmes, while Japanese military
style marches, military songs and traditional music in various forms projected a
Japanese band style. The music changed in response to political objectives of the
military and government, but the range of music was fresh and quite diverse. Band
music continued to be an important source of entertainment as well as of political
mobilization.
The repertory of Japanese military bands changed dramatically during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century in response to changes in national
policy. The military bands were integral to modernization and Westernization,
in particular the popularization of Western music in Japan. The later repertoire
supported the nationalist and colonial project. The Meiji Era slogan wakon yōsai
(Japanese spirit, Western technology) provides a useful characterization of the
history of Japanese military bands. Band music used Western instruments and
repertoire, while retaining Japanese musical values. Military band music had a
major role in diversifying, indigenizing and popularizing Western music in Japan.
Chapter 3
Battlefields and the Field of Music:
South Korean Military Band Musicians and
the Korean War
Heejin Kim
‘I am alive thanks to the trumpet’.1 This is how Kangsŏp Kim, a Korean War veteran
military musician and former bandmaster of KBS Kwanhyŏnaktan (the Korean
Broadcasting System Band) in South Korea, began his remarks during an interview
on his musical experiences during the Korean War. The Korean War, a civil war
between South Korea (The Republic of Korea, the ROK) and North Korea (The
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the DPRK) and simultaneously the first
‘hot war’ of the transnational Cold War between the communist and capitalist blocs,
broke out on 25 June 1950 and ceased with an armistice agreement on 27 July 1953.
The war was extremely fierce, affecting approximately 80 per cent of the Korean
territory and resulting in casualties of about 10 per cent of the Korean population and
approximately 1.4 million non-Koreans.2 Although ROK military band musicians
1
This chapter is drawn from my dissertation research. See Heejin Kim, ‘Military
Band Musicians on the Border: Crossing over Musical Genres in the Transnational Space of
the Korean War’ (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012). An
earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Society for
Ethnomusicology in Middletown, Connecticut, in October 2008. I thank my advisor Gabriel
Solis for guiding me through each step in the research process and adding insightful ideas to
this paper. I am grateful to Professor Nancy Abelmann for inspirational comments that were
crucial in shaping this research and her valuable feedback on this paper. I thank Professors
Bruno Nettl, Jeffrey Magee and Thomas Turino as well for their invaluable feedback on
earlier versions and Professor Jungwon Kim for her help in understanding the history of
Taehanjeguk (the Korean Empire). I also thank my friends Thomas Faux and Tanya Lee for
their thoughtful suggestions. Special thanks go to the governmental officials and military
personnel who were of great help with data collection and to the veteran military musician
interviewees who kindly shared their experiences of the Korean War and knowledge of
music. The fieldwork for this research was supported by the Center for East Asian and
Pacific Studies and the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
2
James P. Finley. The US Military Experience in Korea, 1871–1982: In the Vanguard
of ROK–US Relations (San Francisco, 1983), pp. 88–9; Kukpangbu Chŏnsa P’yŏnch’an
Wiwŏnhoe, Hanguk Chŏnjaeng: Yoyak [The Korean War: A Summary] (Seoul, 1986),
p. 109; and William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic
experienced many of the hardships of war, they were protected to some degree by the
ROK state system because of the necessity of their music for the war effort. Music
gained an increased importance during the war as a means of boosting morale, and
the ‘trumpet’ not only protected musicians from the threats of war but also signalled
the emergence of new musical developments from the ashes of war.
In this chapter, I discuss the activities of South Korean military band musicians
as one of the groups who played a key role in these musical developments that
transcended the military context and wartime. In particular, I examine the military
band musicians’ creation and performance of Korean military marches, exploring
their implications for musical nationalism in South Korea, and their performance
of popular music with its contributions to the emergence of new popular music
practices in South Korea within the transnational Cold War context. Ultimately,
I argue that it was the versatility of South Korean military band musicians in
fulfilling the functions of military music, as well as their positions in both the field
of music and the social field of the Korean War, that made it possible for them to
be significant agents of musical formations in South Korea during and after the
war, spreading their influence beyond the boundaries of the military sector.
It is generally agreed that military music functions to build morale, maintain
emotional stability, assist camp duties and military ceremonies, and display the values
of the military and the State.3 To accomplish the various functions of military music,
South Korean military musicians were trained to play diverse types of music, from
military marches and songs to classical music, and, in some band units, popular songs as
well. While differences of aesthetics and practice among various music types divide the
field of music,4 the notion of functionality in military music embraces and consolidates
these differences under military goals. Therefore, essential for the ROK military bands
to achieve their military goals was the band members’ versatile musicianship. ROK
military musicians developed their versatility within the military system with the
support of the ROK state system in the social field of the Korean War, where military
power was tightly interconnected with the civilian domain in the war efforts.
My discussion in this chapter is based on information gathered from interviews
with veteran South Korean military musicians in conjunction with data obtained
from documents and printed sources. I used interviewing as a primary research
method because information on ROK military band members’ activities during the
Korean War in both historical records and scholarly publications is limited. Many
sources were lost during the turmoil of the war, and preserved documents are not
History (Princeton, 2002), p. 1. Different sources provide different estimations. For

example, see Hakchun Kim, Hangukchŏnjaeng: Wŏnin, Kwajŏng, Hyujŏn, Yŏnghyang
[The Korean War: The Cause, Course, Armistice and Influence] (Seoul, 2003), p. 390.
3
See Raoul F. Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Westerville, OH,
1975), pp. 3–6; Lowell E. Graham, ‘Music in the Military: It’s about Influence’, American
Music Teacher, 54/3 (2004–2005): 34–6, at 34; and Raymond Kendall, ‘Music for the
Armed Services’, Musical Quarterly, 31 (1954): 141–56, at 141.
4
Alan P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, IL, 1964), p. 211.
Battlefields and the Field of Music 81
fully accessible because some of them have been secured for military purposes.
ROK military institutions published books about their military bands, but these
books focus on the bands’ organizational histories, not the musical aspects of their
activities.5 In literature on Korean music history, descriptions of civilian musicians’
involvement in the war effort and discussions about the ROK military’s influence
on the development of South Korean symphony orchestras are found,6 but the
activities of the ROK military bands during the Korean War tend to be overlooked.
In addition, scholars and journalists have identified the US military camp shows as
an important source for the post-war changes in South Korean popular music and
shed light on the performance arrangement procedures of booking agencies and
the famous South Korean popular music stars who developed their careers in US
military camp shows through these booking agencies.7 However, the involvement
of ROK military musicians in these music scenes has not yet been systematically
illuminated. Thus, as a result of insufficient information available in documents and
printed materials, my historical research on the musical activities of ROK military
bands and military musicians relies substantially upon interviews with veteran
military band members. Moreover, for military musicians who lived through the
war and participated in the war period, music making offer crucial information
and unique insights for the historiography of Korean War period music. However,
information from printed sources, though limited in quantity, is also significant. I
employed this data to elicit recollections from interviewees and to cross-confirm
and complement the information I gathered from interviews. By combining
historical and ethnographic methodologies, I intend to provide a more complete
view of the South Korean military musicians’ activities during the Korean War and
their contributions to the development of musical practices in South Korea.
5
See Konggun Yŏksagirok Kwallidan, Konggun Kunaksa [The Military Music
History of the Republic of Korea Air Force] (Taejŏn, Korea, 2008); Yukkunbonbu, Yukkun
Kunaksa [The Military Music History of the Republic of Korea Army] (Seoul, 1980).
6
For example, see Chŏngim Chŏn, ‘Chŏnhu Hanguk Ŭmakkyeŭi Yangsang’ [Aspects
of the Field of Music in Korea after the Korean War], Ŭmakhak [Musicology], 8 (2001):
185–207; Ch’anguk Kim, ‘Hanguk Chŏnjaenggi Pusan Ŭmagŭi Sahoesa’ [A Social History
of Music in Pusan during the Korean War Period], Ŭmakhak [Musicology], 8 (2001):
85–129,at 93–125; and Kangsuk Lee, Ch’unmi Kim and Kyŏngch’an Min, Uri Yangak
100-nyŏn [One Hundred Years of Western Music by Koreans] (Seoul, 2001), pp. 261–2.
7
For example, see Young Mee Lee, Hanguk Taejunggayosa [A History of Korean
Popular Songs] (Seoul, 1998), pp. 117–44; Roald Maliangkay, ‘Koreans Performing for
Foreign Troops: The Occidentalism of the C.M.C. and K.P.K.’, East Asian History, 37 (2011):
59–72, at 66–72; Roald Maliangkay, ‘Supporting Our Boys: American Military Entertainment
and Korean Pop Music in the 1950s and Early-1960s’, in Keith Howard (ed.), Korean Pop
Music: Riding the Wave (Folkestone, 2006), pp. 21–33, at pp. 21–7; Hyunjoon Shin and Tung-
hung Ho, ‘Translation of “America” during the Early Cold War Period: A Comparative Study
on the History of Popular Music in South Korea and Taiwan’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10/1
(2009): 83–102, at 92–5; and Hyunjoon Shin, Yongu Lee and Chisŏn Ch’oe, Hanguk P’abŭi
Kogohak 1960 [The Archaeology of Korean Pop in the 1960s] (Seoul, 2005), pp. 21–35.
The Establishment of ROK Military Bands and their Forerunners
The history of Western-style military bands in Korea can be traced back to the late
nineteenth century. Chosŏn, the dynastic Korean State at the time, was reshaping its
state system to counter harassment by imperial powers. Chosŏn politicians renamed
their state Taehanjeguk (The Korean Empire) and reorganized their military system
as a means of strengthening their state system, adding military units created in the
Western style.8 This reorganization of the military forces included a Western-style
military music system that started in the 1880s with the training and assignment of
buglers to military units, which developed into the formation of Kokhodae, military
band units composed of buglers and drummers. Around the turn of the century,
Taehanjeguk finally developed a full-size Western-style military band. This band
was organized within Siwidae, the military unit that was charged with defending
the Korean emperor. This band started with about 50 band members, and played
music on Western military band instruments, including brass, woodwinds and
percussion.9 In this chapter I refer to this band as ‘Siwidae Kunaktae’.10
8
The Korean word ‘Taehanjeguk’ is usually translated in English texts as ‘the Taehan
Empire’ or ‘the Korean Empire’. In this paper, however, I use the transliteration of the
Korean word instead of translating it into English. I also use the transliteration of the name
of the dynastic Korean State ‘Chosŏn’, rather than translating it into ‘the Chosŏn Dynasty’
or ‘the Yi Dynasty’.
9
It is stated in available literature that the authorized strength of this full-size
Western-style military band organization was about 100 but that the actual number of band
members when it was founded was about 50. It is indicated in additional sources that the
actual number of band members grew over time. See Sahun Chang, Yŏmyŏngŭi Tongsŏ
Ŭmak [The Dawn of Eastern and Western Music] (Seoul, 1974), pp. 175–83 and 202–20;
Chŏnghŭi Lee, ‘Taehanjegukki Kunaktae Koch’al’ [A Study of the Military Bands during
the Period of the Korean Empire], Hanguk Ŭmak Yŏngu [Studies in Korean Music], 44
(2008): 165–94, at 165–79; Sukhŭi Lee, ‘Taehanjeguk Akcheŭi Sŏngnip Paegyŏnggwa
Sŏnggyŏk’ [The Formation and Characteristics of the Music System of the Korean Empire],
Seoul-hak Yŏngu [Journal of Seoul Studies], 35/Summer (2009): 59–110, at 97–8; Yoyŏl
Namgung, Kaehwagiŭi Hanguk Ŭmak: Franz Eckert-rŭl Chungsimŭro [Korean Music
in the Era of Korea’s Encounter with the Western World: With a Focus on Franz Eckert]
(Seoul, 1987), pp. 55–6; and Tongŭn No, Hanguk Kŭndae Ŭmaksa, I [A History of Korean
Music in the Modern Era, vol. 1] (Seoul, 1995), pp. 387–97 and 478–92.
10
Siwidae had various types of military music ensembles including traditional ones as
well as this full-size Western-style military band. Strictly speaking, all these ensembles are
components of Siwidae Kunakdae, which means the military bands of Siwidae. However, in
this paper I use the term ‘Siwidae Kunaktae’ to refer specifically to the full-size Western-style
Korean military band of the early twentieth century in order to avoid having to delineate my
intended subject each time I mention this band. Sahung Chang and Tongŭn No also referred
to this band as Siwidae Kunaktae in their books. See Chang, Yŏmyŏngŭi Tongsŏ Ŭmak,
pp. 171–81; No, Hanguk Kŭndae Ŭmaksa, pp. 478–93. Regarding the meanings of the
Korean words, Siwidae, Kunaktae, and Siwidae Kunaktae, see Lee, ‘Taehanjeguk Akcheŭi
Sŏngnip Paegyŏnggwa Sŏnggyŏk’, pp. 97–102; No, Hanguk Kŭndae Ŭmaksa, pp. 480–3.
The formation of this military band was a part of the state project of
Taehanjeguk, but the Taehanjeguk administration needed to incorporate
contributions from other countries in order for its project to succeed. The most
notable foreign influence on the establishment of this first full-size Western-style
military band was Franz Eckert, a German composer and military musician. He
came to Korea in 1901, bringing along instruments for the creation of the military
band. He worked as a director of, and educator for, the military band, and he
was also its initial conductor.11 Further examination of the pre-history of this
band reveals that its foreign influences were more complicated. For example, the
development of Kokhodae, the bugle and drum bands from which many of the
Siwidae Kunaktae musicians came, had involved Korean musician Ŭndol Lee’s
travels between Korea and Japan; he learned military music in Japan and taught
Koreans the bugle upon his return. However, the musical influences actually came
from an even more distant country. Ŭndol Lee was taught in Japan by a Frenchman
who trained Japanese military musicians.12 In addition, the plan to create a full-
size Western-style military band in Korea was initially made in connection with
Korean administrative authorities’ observations in Russia and European countries.
Several foreigners from Japan, England and the US were also involved in the plans
and preparations.13 Consequently, and somewhat ironically, this nationalist effort
by Korean politicians to create a new type of Korean military band proceeded
through constant interaction with the conventions of Western military bands that
had spread transnationally.
This band, however, experienced many hardships as the Japanese colonization
efforts intensified, and eventually Japanese imperialism resulted in a discontinuity
in Korean military band history. Siwidae Kunaktae was officially disbanded in
1907, when the military forces of Taehanjeguk were dissolved during the course
of the Japanese colonization. The band continued performing for royal ceremonies
and events for about a decade thereafter, but the changes in its name and affiliation
indicate how the military band was deprived of its authority and capacity while
imperialist Japan was dismantling Taehanjeguk. The band had become affiliated
with an administrative department for the Korean royal family and was relabeled
as yangaktae, which means a Western-style band, not a military band any longer.
Moreover, when the band eventually lost its affiliation with the administrative
organization in charge of Korean royal family affairs, some of its members
regrouped as a private band. This band lasted for more than a decade, offering
11
Chang, Yŏmyŏngŭi Tongsŏ Ŭmak, pp. 189–98; No, Hanguk Kŭndae Ŭmaksa,
pp. 484–7. Franz Eckert also taught music to Japanese military musicians and was involved
in other musical activities in Japan. See Sarah McClimon’s chapter in this book for more
information on Franz Eckert’s activities in Japan.
12
Lee, ‘Taehanjeguk Akcheŭi Sŏngnip Paegyŏnggwa Sŏnggyŏk’, pp. 90–2; No,
Hanguk Kŭndae Ŭmaksa, pp. 391–4.
13
Chang, Yŏmyŏngŭi Tongsŏ Ŭmak, pp. 176–7; Lee, ‘Taehanjeguk Akcheŭi Sŏngnip
Paegyŏnggwa Sŏnggyŏk’, 99–101; No, pp. 481–3.
concerts for civilians in urban areas. Some musicians from Siwidae Kunaktae also
started teaching music at schools and training school bands, while others found
jobs at theatres and other commercial music venues.14
About four decades after the disbanding of the military bands of Taehanjeguk,
Korean military bands resumed activity in 1946, following the independence of
Korea from imperial Japan, inheriting what was left of the early twentieth-century
Korean military bands. The most notable example of this inheritance is found in
the effort made by the ROK Navy Band, which was one of the earliest established
among the newly created Korean military bands. One of the officers of this band,
Yoyŏl Namgung, writes in his book that he interviewed members of Siwidae
Kunaktae who were still alive in the late 1940s; furthermore, he collected the
band’s notations and concert programmes as well as pictures and books related
to Franz Eckert’s activities, though most of these materials were lost during the
Korean War.15 Ŭnok Lee, a former ROK Air Force Band warrant officer, reports
that his band invited Sain Chŏng, a march composer and former member of
Siwidae Kunaktae, to conduct the band while the band members played Chŏng’s
marches.16 According to Pyŏngsun Cho, a one-time warrant officer of a ROK Army
Band, a former member of Siwidae Kunaktae visited his band and played music
together with Cho’s band.17 These written and oral reports suggest ties between the
mid-century ROK military bands and the Siwidae Kunaktae of Taehanjeguk in the
early twentieth century.
In addition to these direct contacts with former members of Siwidae
Kunaktae, ROK military bands were indirectly tied to Siwidae Kunaktae
through school bands. The complete story of school bands in Korea before the
Korean War has not yet been fully investigated, but previous research indicates
that, at the very least, multiple school bands were taught by former members
of Siwidae Kunaktae, and one school was granted some of the instruments of
Siwidae Kunaktae.18 Siwidae Kunaktae’s heritage was incorporated into some
school bands, and school bands became a primary source of personnel for ROK
military bands, although band members were also recruited from professional or
semi-professional music careers.
14
See Chang, Yŏmyŏngŭi Tongsŏ Ŭmak, pp. 222–3; Namgung, Kaehwagiŭi Hanguk
Ŭmak: Franz Eckert-rŭl Chungsimŭro, pp. 97–114; and No, Hanguk Kŭndae Ŭmaksa,
pp. 528–43. See also Lee, ‘Taehanjeguk Akcheŭi Sŏngnip Paegyŏnggwa’, pp. 101–4.
15
Namgung, Kaehwagiŭi Hanguk Ŭmak, pp. 114 and 129–41. See also Chang,
Yŏmyŏngŭi Tongsŏ Ŭmak, pp. 212–13.
16
Ŭnok Lee, personal communication.
17
Pyŏngsun Cho, personal communication.
18
See Namgung, Kaehwagiŭi Hanguk Ŭmak, pp. 97–114; No, Hanguk Kŭndae
Ŭmaksa, pp. 542–3; and Pang-song Song, ‘Taehanjeguk Sijŏl Kunaktaeŭi Kongyŏn
Yangsang’ [Aspects of a Korean Military Band’s Performances during the Period of the
Korean Empire], Hangugŭmaksahakpo [Journal of the Society for Korean Historico-
Musicology], 35 (2005): 99–115, at 112–13.
While directly and indirectly inheriting Siwidae Kunaktae (through their

connection to former members of Siwidae Kunaktae and school bands), the ROK
military bands were also establishing a relationship with the US. This relationship
unfolded within the post-colonial and transnational Cold War contexts. After the
US defeat of Japan and Korean independence from Japan, the US Army entered
Korea, south of the 38th Parallel, as an occupation force, while the USSR Army
entered north of the Parallel. Prior to the establishment of the ROK government
in 1948, its military bands first began to form during the period of the US Army
military government. US power was a dominant force in the southern half of
Korea, and this profoundly affected Korean military music. For example, Hŭijo
Kim, a former ROK Army Band officer and march composer, reports in his
posthumously published article: ‘After the 15 August Liberation [from Japan],
the military marches that we usually heard were US military marches composed
by Sousa, such as ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’, ‘The Washington Post March’,
‘Liberty Bell’ and ‘Fairest of the Fair’.19
During the formative period of the ROK military bands before the Korean War,
around ten military bands were created, and the ROK military band organizations
expanded swiftly during the Korean War in response to the demand for music to
accompany war efforts. The band organizations experienced severe hardships for
about three months at the beginning of the war, but from the autumn of 1950 to
the mid-1950s the number of ROK military bands almost tripled, and the bands
became actively involved in military operations.20
The Versatile Musicianship of ROK Military Band Members
The ROK military bands’ performance venues and audiences during the Korean
War were diverse. The bands performed in South Korean and UN military spaces
and non-military spaces in the South Korean territory, including northern areas
of Korea occupied by ROK and UN forces during their advance, where they
played music for military ceremonies and formations, political events, concerts
and marching parades. Their audiences covered a broad spectrum, from high-
ranking government officials and military officers to soldiers, both Korean and
non-Korean, and South and North Korean citizens. For example, these military
musicians played music at the railway stations to see off soldiers leaving for
the war front; in the military camps to welcome soldiers returning from the war
19
Hŭijo Kim, ‘Taech’it’a P’yŏnsŏngŭi Hyŏndaejŏk Hwaryong’ [A Modern
Application of the Taech’it’a Instrumentation], in Chunggang Yun and Yonghyŏn Kim
(eds), Pugenŭn Kim Sunnam Namenŭn Kim Hŭijo [Sunnam Kim in the North and Hŭijo
Kim in the South] (Seoul, 2002), pp. 59–65, at p. 59.
20
Konggun Yŏksagirok Kwallidan, Konggun Kunaksa, pp. 56–9; Haegunbonbu,
Kunaktae Unyong [The Operation of Military Bands] (Taejŏn, 1995), pp. 2–17;
Yukkunbonbu, Yukkun Kunaksa, pp. 20–23.
front; at the port city of Pusan for incoming UN troops; at hospitals for wounded
soldiers; at marching parades in the cities with civilian audiences gathered around;
at concert halls for military personnel and citizens; at military formations for
military units; and at military and political events for high-ranking officials and
officers, such as the presidents and generals of the ROK and the US.
The ROK military bands’ repertory was as varied as their performance venues
and audiences. Military marches were predominant in the ROK military bands’
repertory, performed at such occasions as ceremonies, military formations,
marching events and concerts. The band members also invested significant efforts
into learning classical music pieces, mostly concert band arrangements of overtures
and other classical music pieces that were featured in their concerts. Although not
as central as military marches and classical music, patriotic songs were also a part
of their repertory. Additionally, the bands’ repertory expanded during the Korean
War to include more popular music than before, although such music was the most
peripheral, as I will discuss further below. In sum, to assist military events and
ceremonies, to display the strength of the State and the military, and to stimulate
militant spirits on the one hand and accommodate emotional stability on the other,
ROK military bands played many types of music from military marches and
civilian compositions to classical transcriptions and popular music.
Military Marches
Among the various types of music played by ROK military musicians during the
Korean War, the most representative was military marches. ROK military bands
had played Western military marches since their formative period and continued
playing them during the war. In particular US marches had prominence in the
ROK military bands’ repertory because of the ROK military’s collaboration with
the US military as the most significant ideological ally in the war. The strengthened
ideological place of US marches in the ROK military bands’ repertory stood in
stark contrast to that of Russian marches. According to veteran musicians from a
ROK military band, they had played some Russian marches in their school bands
before the war, and the marches had strongly appealed to them aesthetically.
However, they were not allowed to play these marches as ROK military musicians
during the war because the USSR was collaborating with the communist North
Korean military.21
Although the performance of US marches suited the political and military
structure of the developing Cold War, ROK military bands needed their own
marches to represent their own State and military. Hŭijo Kim is one of the most
important composers in the development of Korean military marches. Based
on available records, his march ‘Ch’ungsŏngŭl Tahara’ (Devote Your Loyalty
Completely), composed in 1948, was the first military march composed for the
ROK military, and he continued composing Korean marches during and after the
21
Tŏkhyŏn Kim and Ponggi Lee, personal communication.
war, including his 1952 composition ‘Taehan Yukkunŭi Charang’ (The Pride of
the ROK Army).22 In his posthumously published article, Hŭijo Kim comments on
the early history of ROK military marches:
Since military marches are played, not in concert halls, but outdoors and on
the streets without programme notes, I felt that it was necessary to insert into
my marches some tunes that were already familiar to everyone, such as our
folk songs, our art songs, or patriotic songs of the time, in order to indicate
that the marches were ours. Therefore, in the first march that I composed as a
military officer, I inserted the tune of the Korean national anthem into the trio,
in the middle section, and I entitled the march, ‘Ch’ungsŏngŭl Tahara’ (Devote
your Loyalty Completely). When this march was played, everybody noticed
that it was our own march … Later I composed a few more marches using
my newly created tunes in the trio sections, but these marches didn’t attract
attention. This was not because of the quality of the musical works themselves,
but because they could not easily be distinguished from foreign marches. When
they were indistinguishable from foreign marches, famous foreign marches had
advantages for being selected. At that time, military marches that incorporated
familiar tunes, such as ‘Arirang’, ‘Toraji’, ‘Ch’ŏnansamgŏri’ and ‘Pandal’, in
the trio sections or that used those tunes as march themes were published under
the name of Kwanak Yŏnmaeng – a private organization, in the form of card
notations for marching purposes, and these marches spread widely.23
Hŭijo Kim emphasizes the expression of Koreanness in his recollection of his

own march composition and in his observations of the ROK military bands’
performances and audience reception of marches. Given that ROK military
forces are an important component of the state system, the ROK military bands’
performances of marches that represent the military ultimately became an
important manifestation of the State and served the State’s nationalist goals. For
the nationalist function of ROK marches as a musical representation of the ROK
and its military, the expression of Koreanness was an important element in the
creation of ROK marches. One strategy for expressing Korean identity in the
marches was to utilize widely known Korean tunes as thematic materials.24
Other military band members and composers besides Hŭijo Kim composed
Korean military marches in the 1950s, and my investigation reveals that these
22
Hŭijo Kim, ‘Taech’it’a P’yŏnsŏngŭi Hyŏndaejŏk Hwaryong’, pp. 60–61;
Yukkunbonbu, Yukkun Kunaksa, pp. 73 and 281. There are also Korean marches composed
during the colonial period, and Sain Chŏng, who was mentioned above in this chapter, is
one of the march composers. See Lee, Kim and Min, Uri Yangak 100-nyŏn, p. 156.
23
Hŭijo Kim, ‘Taech’it’a P’yŏnsŏngŭi Hyŏndaejŏk Hwaryong’, pp. 60–61; translated
from Korean to English by this author and emphasis added.
24
Regarding the issue of the representation of the State, see Aradhana Sharma and
Akhil Gupta (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Malden, MA, 2006), p. 357.
composers commonly borrowed themes from existing Korean songs that had
lyrics or musical elements relevant to Korean identity or the nationalist agendas of
the ROK. For instance, ‘Haegun Haengjingok’ (March ROK Navy), composed by
Kyosuk Lee, a former ROK Navy Band officer, also contained a theme based on
the melody of the Korean national anthem.
However, the creation and performance of Korean military marches did not
fully bloom during the 1950s. It seems that Hŭijo Kim’s description above of
the frequent performance of Korean marches is more accurate for the decades
following the 1950s. All the veteran military musicians whom I interviewed
reported that during the 1950s their bands had played mostly foreign marches
and most frequently Sousa marches. My understanding is that only a very small
number of marches among the ROK marches composed before or during the
1950s were played by multiple military bands or for many years.
The development of ROK military marches in the 1950s was hindered, first
of all, by the conditions in the field of music in South Korea. Musical resources
were neither sufficient nor well structured in South Korea in the 1950s. Western
music resources in South Korea had been gradually growing since the late
nineteenth century, but the growth in wind band music had not yet reached the
level necessary for composers to produce military marches prolifically and
effectively. For example, when the Korean War broke out, there were only three
music schools at institutions of higher education in South Korea, and only one
of them offered a programme in wind instrument performance.25 With regard to
compositions in Western musical styles, new compositions were mostly vocal
music and solo instrumental pieces, and composers rarely wrote music for wind
orchestras or wind bands.26 As for Korean indigenous music, its development was
hampered during the 36-year period of the Japanese imperial invasion, during
which the music was controlled in order to strengthen Japanese colonial policies.
For instance, the Korean institution in charge of Korean royal court music shrank
significantly during the Japanese colonial period.27 Moreover, elementary and
secondary schools under Japanese control rarely taught Korean traditional music
or new compositions based on Korean traditional music.28 The indigenous musical
25
Heejin Kim, ‘20-segi Chungban Taehanminguk Kunakchojigŭi Kyoyukchŏk
Kinŭng’ [The Educational Function of Mid-Twentieth Century ROK Military Music
Organizations], Ŭmakhak [Musicology], 24 (2013): 7–38, at 18–9; Tŏkhŭi Ryu, Sŭnghyŏn
Ch’oe and Sŏkwŏn Lee, ‘Singminjisidaewa Kwangbok ihuŭi Hanguk Ŭmagŭi Tonghyang’
[The Conditions of Korean Music during the Colonial Period and the Post-liberation
Period], in Kwangbok 50–chunyŏn Kinyŏm Saŏp Wiwŏnhoe and Hanguk Haksul Chinhŭng
Chaedan (eds), Kwangbok 50-chunyŏn Kinyŏm Nonmunjip, 7 [A Collection of Papers in
Commemoration of the Fiftieth Year of Liberation, vol. 7] (Seoul, 1995), pp. 229–44.
26
See Lee, Kim and Min, Uri Yangak 100-nyŏn, pp. 156–62.
27
Myŏnghŭi Han, Hyejin Song and Chunggang Yun, Uri Kugak 100-nyŏn [One
Hundred Years of Korean Traditional Music] (Seoul, 2001), pp. 104–6.
28
Lee, Kim and Min, Uri Yangak 100-nyŏn, p. 84.
resources had not yet been either sufficiently or systematically restored to be

incorporated into newly composed marches when the Korean War broke out only
five years after the end of the colonial period.
Moreover, the socio-political conditions of the Korean War complicated the
nationalist agendas revolving around the ROK military bands’ march repertory
and performances. The Korean War erupted at the intersection of the transnational
Cold War and Korean nationalism. The DPRK administration started the war
in order to destroy the capitalist government of the ROK, linking this goal to
their premise that all Koreans are one people, a people that the communist
DPRK administration demanded to govern. The ROK administration, facing
the communist DPRK military forces’ invasion, also hoped to eventually
form a unified nation-state governed by its own capitalist system. However,
the nationalist agendas of both South and North Korea were complicated by
international military and political interventions as part of the development of
the transnational Cold War. In this transnational context of the war, the American
other, a stranger to Korean selfhood, had become the most significant ideological
and military supporter for South Korea in its fight against the other part of Korea,
communist North Korea.
South Korean military bands were located at this complicated crossroads
between Korean nationalism and the transnational Cold War, and the ROK military
bands’ march repertory and performances were shaped accordingly. Performances
of marches by ROK military bands were part of the South Korean State apparatus,
and marches composed for the bands were a significant component of the musical
nationalism of the ROK, which is well demonstrated in Hŭijo Kim’s recollection:
‘I started composing military marches while serving as a military band chief. I
thought it should not be our greatest ambition to play foreign music as well as
possible for foreign audiences. I wanted to work on our own music rather than
play completely Western music’.29 However, within the military collaboration
during the development of the transnational Cold War, the ROK military bands’
performances of US marches also gained legitimacy and became more frequent.
The US military brought its military music to South Korea, including its bands’
music, but ROK military bands also needed to play music for the US troops to
welcome and support them. The ROK military bands’ performances of US marches
for the US troops provided a musical representation of the military collaboration
between the two capitalist countries. Moreover, ROK military bands utilized US
marches not only for the support of the US military but also for other military
occasions. Having entered the war during their formative period with limited
musical resources, ROK military bands had not yet developed a repertory of ROK
military marches to meet the demands of the war, and they appropriated, more
29
Hŭijo Kim, ‘Pangsong Naeyong’ [An Interview with KBS], in Chunggang Yun
and Yonghyŏn Kim (eds), Pugenŭn Kim Sunnam Namenŭn Kim Hŭijo [Sunnam Kim in the
North and Hŭijo Kim in the South] (Seoul, 2002), pp. 193–207, at p. 201; translated from
Korean to English by this author.
than any other foreign marches, US marches, which had ideological legitimacy
within the context of the Korean War and whose notation became more readily
available through the ROK–US military collaboration.
The incorporation of US military marches in the ROK military bands’ repertory
could be interpreted as an intrusion into the nationalist agendas of the ROK
military bands, but Thomas Turino’s ‘functional-processual definition’ of musical
nationalism provides an alternative view of this matter. According to Turino,
musical nationalism is defined through consideration of the purpose to which
the music is put, that is, whether the music is used or appreciated for nationalist
goals or movements, rather than solely based on stylistic characteristics, such as
‘indigenous’ musical styles and elements.30 Without doubt the use of identifiably
Korean marches was an effective way to highlight the nationalist aspect of the ROK
military bands’ march performance, as Hŭijo Kim explained in the passage quoted
earlier in this chapter; however, this does not necessarily mean that the bands’
performances of non-Korean marches did not advance the nationalist goals of the
military as well. Depending on the performance context, the ROK military band’s
performances of these marches could still assist the ROK military in achieving its
nationalist goals with their unifying rhythms, boisterous sound and inspirational
musical expressions. In fact, in interviews veteran ROK military musicians
revealed that the musical qualities of march pieces were no less important than
their national origins when selecting marches for performances. My understanding
is that during the Korean War the nationalist effort to create Korean marches was
growing, on the one hand, while, on the other, ROK military musicians did their
nationalist duties by utilizing non-Korean marches that they considered musically
excellent and ideologically suitable for their military goals.
The complex relationship between musical nationalism and transnationalism
is found in another aspect of ROK military march history. Hŭijo Kim’s creation of
Korean military marches was motivated by an awareness of foreign others and the
desire to create musical representations of the ROK and its military distinguishable
from foreign marches. Nevertheless, his marches were conceived within the
musical framework of the Western military march because the concepts, forms and
practices of Western military marches and Western military systems were already
dominant in the transnational political and cultural formations, and Hŭijo Kim was
not free of these transnational military, political, cultural and musical forces. My
examination of ROK marches composed before and during the 1950s reveals that
almost all of the marches were composed in the typical Western march framework,
comprising an introduction, a section with multiple strains and a trio section with
modulation.
The case of the military band organization of Taehanjeguk shows a similar
irony, with a different manifestation. The establishment of the Western-style
military system and military music system of Taehanjeguk had a dual purpose:
30
Thomas Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe
(Chicago, 2000), p. 190.
1) to strengthen the Korean military in order to maintain independence in the

midst of imperial harassments, and 2) to equip the State with an apparatus
comparable to that of other imperial powers in order to confront them as an
equal. To protect its polity from imperial foreign powers, the dynastic Korean
State needed to appropriate the military and military music systems of those
same imperial powers. The dynastic Korean State’s agenda of independence was
actualized in its military music performed by ensembles modelled on Western
military bands, paralleling the use of Western-style marches by ROK military
bands during the Korean War period.31
In sum, during the Korean War the main repertory of ROK military bands
consisted of military marches, and in their march repertory and performance we
witness a complex convergence and divergence of nationalism and transnational
forces. During the Korean War, the nationalist effort to create ROK marches was
growing, but the effort was made in the embrace of the transnational norms for
military marches. Simultaneously, the bands appropriated transnationally available
non-Korean marches considered musically effective for the achievement of their
military goals during the initial stage of Korean march development. Before the
Korean War, US marches motivated Hŭijo Kim to compose his first military
march with nationalist intentions for the ROK military. Ironically, however,
during the Korean War, ROK military bands became more open to playing US
marches in order to support US military participation in the war and their own
military as well within the transnational military structure of the developing Cold
War system.
Popular Music
While military marches were a main component of the ROK military bands’
repertory from their formative period before the Korean War, popular music
gradually became a part of their repertory during the 1950s as a result of the musical
flows and encounters within the transnational Cold War context. Different from
the ROK military bands that focused on military marches and classical musical
works, US military bands stationed in South Korea frequently performed popular
music as well as marches and classical music. In encounters with US military band
members and, more broadly, with the US military, which systematically included
popular music as part of its music programmes, ROK military band musicians
personally became more interested in playing popular music than before and some
ROK military bands incorporated popular music into their repertory.
Kangsŏp Kim is a good example of how military musicians’ personal interests
in popular music grew during this period. Kangsŏp Kim recollects his conversation
with members of a US Army Band whom he first met during the war while both
his band and the US military band were parading in the city of Pusan, the main
31
For more discussion on the basic paradox of nationalism, see Turino, Nationalists,
pp. 15–16.
port city for the arrival of US troops participating in the war: ‘They told me not
to play only military marches but also to play popular music’. After the initial
encounter with the US Army Band during the parade, his band interacted with the
US military band. The relationship established between the two military bands
helped Kangsŏp Kim continue exploring American popular music, learning from
US military musicians, reading the Song Folio series (a monthly music series
of American popular music provided for the US soldiers’ leisure activities) and
listening to music on jukeboxes in clubs at US military bases. Kangsŏp Kim, who
studied Western classical music before the war, developed his interest in popular
music through these encounters with the US military and its music.32 Kyosuk Lee
is another example. Kyosuk Lee, then a non-commissioned officer in the Navy
Band stationed in Chinhae, a southern port city, recollects that a US officer, who
was a good trumpet player, frequented his Navy Band base and introduced US
popular music to some of the Navy Band musicians there. Kyosuk Lee was one of
the musicians who learned popular American music from the US officer.33
Alongside direct contact with US military musicians, the prevalence of US
popular culture brought into South Korea by the US military also provided an
opportunity for ROK military musicians to develop their interest in popular music
and incorporate it into their bands’ repertory. According to Ŭnok Lee, a veteran Air
Force Band musician, his band chief initially did not allow them to play popular
music, so the band musicians who were fond of popular music joined together to
play the music after the band chief left for the day. On one occasion, however,
popular music was deemed necessary for a party at a military base where ROK
and US military personnel collaborated. The request for popular music was made
at a time when dance culture was spreading in South Korea under the influence
of the dance culture of the US military. The members of the ROK Air Force Band
who had been practising popular music together successfully performed at the
party, and this incident made it clear that this music could be useful to the military.
Thereafter the musicians no longer needed to hide their interest in playing popular
music, and later this music was included in the Air Force Band’s performance
events for Koreans.34
Although more ROK military bands began to incorporate popular music into
their repertory during the 1950s, the music was still peripheral to the bands’
repertory. Not all ROK military musicians were interested in playing it, and not all
ROK military bands featured popular music in their programmes for ROK military
operations either. Also, when ROK military bands played popular tunes at their
concerts for Korean audiences, they tended to play them during the second part
of the concerts as an entertaining supplement to the main programme comprising
primarily the performance of military marches and classical pieces.
32
Kangsŏp Kim, personal communication.
33
Kyosuk Lee, personal communication.
34
Ŭnok Lee, personal communication. See also Konggun Yŏksagirok Kwallidan,
Konggun Kunaksa, p. 208.
Military musicians’ performances of popular music remained subsidiary to the

military bands in the 1950s, but their personal activities outside the military bands
as individual musicians left a legacy for the development of South Korean popular
music. As an example, Kangsŏp Kim, who had initially developed his interest
in popular music through his encounter with the members of a US Army Band
stationed in South Korea, later joined with Korean musicians interested in playing
American popular music and performed this music at US military camp clubs.
These experiences led Kangsŏp Kim to change his career goal. Before the war
he focused on learning classical music, but after discharge he became a popular
music performer, composer and bandmaster. He played a significant role in the
South Korean popular music sector, writing popular songs, and for decades he
led the band of the KBS, the government-run broadcasting system. Like Kangsŏp
Kim, many discharged military musicians who were interested in playing popular
music turned into professional civilian musicians, merging with non-military
musicians. These musicians played popular music at US military camp clubs
through the arrangements of Korean civilian booking agencies, which cooperated
with the Special Services Section of the Eighth US Army Headquarters. They also
played this music outside the US military camps, either at clubs near the camps for
the US soldiers or in dance halls, music cafés and hotel night clubs in urban areas
for Korean customers. The dissemination of American popular music to South
Koreans through these venues as well as through radio programmes and films
accelerated the creation of new syncretic styles of South Korean popular music
that incorporated musical elements and structures of US popular music, such as
the formal structures, tonal harmony, rhythmic organization and instrumentation
of US pop, country, swing and other dance music.
Whereas the core activities of ROK military musicians, military march
composition and performance, displayed the profound convergence and divergence
between the military bands’ nationalist agendas and the transnational military and
cultural conditions, many of the musicians’ increased interest in popular music
remained peripheral to the bands’ activities but contributed to a South Korean
popular music development circumscribed by the transnational conditions of the
Korean War. By incorporating popular music into their repertory, ROK military
musicians expanded their musical versatility, and it, in turn, increased the extent
of their contributions to the development of Korean music culture.
The Battlefield, the Field of Music and the Field of Power
The military musicians’ performance of military marches and popular music

had significant implications for the field of music in South Korea beyond the
boundaries of military music. First of all, the ROK military bands’ performances of
military marches were arguably the earliest examples of institutionalized musical
nationalism sponsored by the ROK government. As a part of the ROK state
apparatus, the military bands were fundamentally rooted in the State’s nationalist
projects, and their performances of military marches were a significant component

of musical nationalism in the Republic of Korea, which intersected in complex
ways with transnational military, political and cultural forces.
At the same time, military musicians’ encounters with the US military in the
transnational space of the Korean War motivated the musicians to expand their
repertory to embrace popular music, especially American popular music, and these
encounters also led to the unforeseen and unofficial role of the musicians in the
development of new Korean popular music styles and practices, although civilian
musicians’ involvement in this development was also important. Some of the ROK
military musicians were among the groups of South Korean musicians who had
musical interactions with the US military even before the civilian agencies were
established to connect the US military and South Korean performers. Afterwards,
many discharged military band musicians played music in the US military camps
and South Korean popular music domain. In addition, the aforementioned Navy
Band officer Kyosuk Lee’s music theory classes for South Korean musicians were
an important part of the development of South Korean popular music. Chunghyŏn
Sin, regarded as one of the most influential South Korean popular songwriters
and guitarists in the 1960s and 1970s, acknowledges that his successful career
was made possible because he had the opportunity to study music theory with
Kyosuk Lee.35 Lee’s theory classes helped many musicians in the popular
music sector gain competence in song writing and arranging. The ROK military
musicians’ contributions to the institutionalization of musical nationalism and,
simultaneously, to the development of South Korean popular music were made
possible, on the one hand, by their position in the field of music and, on the other
hand, by their versatile musicianship.
The ROK military musicians, whether they were drafted or had voluntarily
joined the military bands, were located at the forefront of the state-sponsored
musical promotion of nationalist agendas, and this positioning granted the
musicians protection within the military and the state system and drove the military
musicians towards nationalist awareness and its realization in music. ROK military
musicians were able to invest most of their time in practising music during the
war because of the South Korean State’s support, such as providing food and
shelter, and help with their musical training and activities, such as instruments,
teachers, music classes, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces and audiences. This
advantageous position enabled the musicians to continue enhancing their musical
skills and knowledge within the state system despite the turmoil of the war. As
musicians who were supported and protected by the State, the military musicians
did their duty, composing and performing military marches that assisted the
military events and represented the ROK and the military.
Simultaneously, they were positioned at the centre of the transnational musical
exchanges that occurred through the military collaborations between the ROK and
35
Chunghyŏn Shin, Nae Kit’anŭn Chamdŭlji Annŭnda [My Guitar Continues to
Play] (Seoul, 2006), pp. 82–6.
the US, and this positioning helped the musicians to gain easier access to American
popular music than that available to any other musician groups. This easy access,
such as having personal contacts and obtaining music notation, provided the military
musicians interested in American popular music with learning opportunities to gain
competence in playing this music, which eventually enabled some of them to enter
the popular music sector after discharge as professional musicians playing music
for audiences in US military camps and for larger Korean audiences.
Equally important to the development of Korean music was the fact that the
ROK military band members developed versatile musicianship, playing many
types of music for diverse military purposes, and that this versatility ultimately
contributed in various ways to the field of music in South Korea. ROK military
musicians’ contributions were not limited to the development of musical nationalism
and popular music that I discussed above. As an example, some military band
members and students of Yukkun Kunak Hakkyo [the ROK Army Music School],
who played classical music as well as military marches, participated in Yukkun
Kyohyangaktan [the ROK Army Symphony Orchestra] when the ROK Army
created it for propaganda purposes during the war in collaboration with affiliated
classical music professionals; this orchestra was the predecessor of Kungnip
Kyohyangaktan [the National Symphony Orchestra of the ROK], and some of
the discharged military band members and students of the ROK Army Music
School became members of this orchestra. Likewise, ROK military musicians
filled teaching positions at secondary schools and universities during the post-war
period. Hŭijo Kim and Kyosuk Lee, for instance, taught music at universities and,
in particular, Kyosuk Lee started South Korea’s first harp performance education
programme at a university.
Kyosuk Lee’s case best exemplifies ROK military musicians’ versatile
musicianship and their wide-ranging contributions to music culture in South
Korea beyond the boundary of military music. During the war, he developed his
interest in military march composition, but he also became interested in popular
music through encounters with the US military and its music; after the Armistice,
he studied at the US Navy School of Music, specializing in harp performance.
Drawing from these musical experiences as a military musician, he later taught
in both the popular music and classical music sectors in South Korea, as a music
theory teacher for musicians in popular music and a university professor in harp
performance. These seemingly separate careers are not actually separate, if we see
them as reflecting the qualities of military music: the embrace and integration of
different types of music. This quality of military music made room for the transfer
of musical knowledge and techniques obtained from one segment in the field of
music to another. It was a great strength and a seedbed for military band musicians’
contributions to the development of various types of music in South Korea.
This history is similar to the history of Siwidae Kunaktae. Its musicians, who
were positioned within the state system and whose education was state-sponsored,
made contributions to the development of Western instrumental music in Korea
during the early twentieth century. The outdoor concerts they offered for ordinary
Koreans were the earliest examples of large-scale wind band performances by

Korean musicians. Some of these musicians also contributed to music education
in Korea after their military band was disbanded. Others performed with the newly
formed orchestras and participated in popular entertainment as composers or
performers. Just as the members of the Siwidae Kunaktae had in the early decades
of the twentieth century, ROK military musicians during and after the Korean War
contributed to the development of various music sectors in Korea as significant
cultural agents, due to their versatile and state-supported musicianship.
Echoes of the ‘Trumpet’
During the Korean War period, the military forces took a central role in both political
and cultural power struggles, making their relationship to civilian domains notable
and obvious. Within this context of the war, ROK military bands expanded their
organization and accumulated musical resources, and, though originally created to
produce functional military music, the long-term effects of these bands were not
restricted to the military domain. Based on their position in the power dynamics
created by the war, ROK military band musicians developed their musical and
cultural assets, and their musical versatility eventually contributed to diverse
developments in the field of music in South Korea.
Most of all, the bands in this period made a significant move towards the
Koreanization of Western military marches to promote nationalist sentiments,
though Korean marches were limited in quantity and range of musical styles because
of the conditions in the field of music and the social field. The Koreanization
process continued in later decades, accumulating a fair amount of repertory
and incorporating Korean indigenous musical elements in a more sophisticated
manner. Hŭijo Kim, who began composing marches for the ROK military in 1948,
wrote in the 1980s, ‘Current and former military band musicians have created
many new march pieces, and in recent years, both military bands and school bands
play marches created by Koreans at [almost] all events. On rare occasions when
they play well-known non-Korean marches, it even feels strange nowadays’.36 Not
surprisingly, the central importance of military march composition and practice
by these musicians exerted influence on the development of musical nationalism
in the ROK. Less expected, however, was the influence some of these musicians
would have on the development of South Korean popular music. Since the 1950s
the incorporation of American popular music elements into South Korean popular
music has increased, building on the continued interest of these musicians and
other civilian musicians in the properties of American popular music, and this trend
of syncretic popular music has continued through different stylistic manifestations
to the present day.
36
Hŭijo Kim, ‘Taech’it’a P’yŏnsŏngŭi Hyŏndaejŏk Hwaryong’, p. 61; translated
from Korean to English by this author.
The ‘trumpet’ of the ROK military musicians was a weapon on the battlefields
of the Korean War and it was also an indication of complex musical developments
evolving from the intersection of Korean nationalism and the transnational
Cold War. About six decades after the ‘hot war’, the Korean War, without a
comprehensive peace treaty, continues at the ideological and political levels,
with sporadic military confrontations; and the ‘trumpet’ echoes in many corners
of the field of music in South Korea, playing songs that have not yet been fully
recognized and acknowledged.
Chapter 4
From Processions to Encontros:
The Performance Niches of the Community
Bands of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Suzel Ana Reily
Estava à toa na vida,

O meu amor me chamou
Pra ver a banda passar
Cantando coisas de amor …
[I was just hanging around
My love called me
To see the band go by
Singing the things of love …]
(Chico Buarque de Hollanda)
‘A banda’, by the renowned popular musician Chico Buarque de Hollanda,

is among one of Brazil’s best known songs.1 Awarded first place, along with
‘Disparada’, by Geraldo Vandré, at the 2nd Festival of Brazilian Popular Music,
sponsored by Rede Record television network in 1966, it became an instant and
lasting success by playing on nostalgia in its portrayal of the charm and innocence
of the ‘typical’ Brazilian small, ‘interior’ town. The song depicts the impact of a
civic wind and brass band, or banda de música, as these ensembles are known in
Brazil, upon a community when it comes out to parade through the streets. The
band lifts the inhabitants out of the drudgery of their everyday existence, bringing
life, joy and amusement to all.
The bandas de música that inspired the song are still prevalent in many parts
of Brazil, although the availability of electric amplification has allowed other
ensembles to compete with them for the same outdoor events, reducing demand
for their performances. Fearing that mass culture would eventually erode this
‘rich and joyful Brazilian tradition’, the Brazilian National Foundation for the
Arts (Funarte) began its ‘Band Project’ (Projeto Banda) in 1976. The project was
designed to support community-based bandas de música, to the exclusion of a
range of other ensembles, such as military bands, school bands (fanfarras or
bandas marciais) and folk groups, even if wind instruments may have been central
1
Data used in this chapter derives from funding received from several sources,
including the ESRC, the British Academy and Queen’s University Belfast.
to their line-ups. While there are likely to be several hundred bandas de música in
Brazil that are not accounted for in Funarte’s lists, the foundation has registered a
total of 2,169 bands to date, covering the entire country. Of these, 421 are based
in Minas Gerais, the federal state with the largest number of bandas de música in
the country.2 Following the lead provided by Funarte, the Programme in Support
of Bandas of the State of Minas Gerais was instituted recently, and it has already
registered 685 bandas de música in the state.3
Bandas de música became ubiquitous in many parts of Brazil, especially
Minas Gerais, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Their primary
performance contexts have been religious processions and civic parades, though
they might also be heard at funerals and a range of public events sponsored by
local political authorities as well as in the plaza to entertain their communities
on weekends and during religious festivals and civic occasions. In the first half
of the twentieth century, perhaps the ‘golden age’ for bands in Brazil, many
local communities supported two and even three bandas, and rivalries between
them could be fierce. As the performance spaces for bandas declined, however,
so did their numbers. It would appear, though, that in some parts of Brazil,
bandas de música are making a comeback. One reason for this is the emergence
of the ‘encontro de bandas’ (band meeting), which is adding a new sphere to
the traditional contexts of banda performances. This is certainly the case in
Minas Gerais, where many towns that maintain a band now also host an annual
encontro de bandas that brings together, for an afternoon of music, the wind and
brass bands from surrounding towns.
Bands, Versatility and Niches
In his study of the British brass band, Trevor Herbert notes: ‘In almost all cases
outside Britain, the concept of a brass band is a loose one, and even in those
countries which lay claim to having a brass band tradition, the instrumentation
and repertoire conform only approximately to set parameters of style and
instrumentation’.4 While the British brass band may have become highly
standardized, in other parts of the world the very ‘looseness’ of the model allowed
for its adaptation to a range of cultural settings. Indeed, the sheer number of brass
band traditions across the globe is a testament to the versatility of the model.
But however loose the bands themselves may be in terms of instrumentation and
2
See Funarte, Projeto Bandas – cadastramento de bandas, at http://www.funarte.
gov.br/projeto-bandas-2/ [Accessed 13 August 2011].
3
See Secretaria da Cultura do Estado de Minas Gerais, ‘Lista de bandas cadastradas’,
at http://www.cultura.mg.gov.br/arquivos/FomentoeIncentivo/File/lista-de-bandas-cadastra
das-15.01.08.pdf [Accessed 13 August 2011].
4
Trevor Herbert, ‘Introduction’, in Trevor Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band:
A Musical and Social History (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1–9, at p. 3.
From Processions to Encontros 101
repertoire, to be recognized as a distinct ‘band tradition’ – or, as Trevor Herbert

would have it, a distinct ‘performance domain’5 – within its local setting, each
ensemble has had to develop a series of identifiable characteristics. Moreover,
Rob Boonzajer Flaes has claimed that the hybrid bands that emerged in many
colonial settings developed within clearly defined performance niches, into
which ‘the newborn music [fit] not only perfectly but also exclusively’.6 He also
contended that a successful niche is one in which demand for band performances
is frequent and continuous.
One could, of course, argue that access to regular performance contexts,
whether or not they are occupied exclusively by a single ensemble formation, is
critical to the development and continuity of any musical tradition; after all, an
ensemble without a recognized performance sphere will find it very difficult, over
time, to sustain the interest of a significant enough number of musicians to remain
viable. In this chapter I aim to argue that the same versatility that has allowed
brass bands to adapt to a wide range of contexts across the globe can also be
noted in the ways in which they have adapted to changing circumstances within a
single geographic setting. In effect, as social conditions have shifted, bands have
often found ways of carving out new performance spaces for themselves. In this
way brass bands have not only become widely disseminated across the globe,
they have also remained present as musical institutions for extended periods of
time in an impressive number of locations. Indeed, it even could be argued that
brass bands are the most numerous and long-lasting instrumental institutions in
the world today.
To exemplify this adaptability, this chapter investigates how bandas de música
in Minas Gerais have sustained their activities over the last century and a half. It
asks how bandas de música emerged and developed in Minas Gerais, and how
they have been continuously mutating in response to a variety of forces, ranging
from developments in instrumental technologies and changing aesthetic fashions
to shifts in economic conditions and in the structures of power, both at the local
level and beyond. Moreover, I will also show how they have contributed to the
structuring of local musical life, particularly in small provincial towns, where
they have traditionally played a central role in collective community affairs. Thus,
the agency of the bands must also be taken into account in discussions of the
versatility of the brass band model.
The main ethnographic data for this project was collected in Campanha, a
small former gold mining town in southern Minas Gerais. With regard to bandas
de música, Campanha is quite typical for the region, even though it does not have
as illustrious a past as such mining centres as Vila Rica (now Ouro Preto), São
João del Rei and Tejuco (now Diamantina). While Campanha only generated
limited quantities of gold during the eighteenth century, its economic fortunes
5
Trevor Herbert, Chapter 1 in this volume.
6
Rob Boonzajer Flaes, Brass Unbound: Secret Children of the Colonial Brass Band
(Amsterdam, 2000), p. 131.
turned in the next century, as it was able to shift from mining to supplying meat
and other produce to the newly arrived Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro.7 As
other mining regions fell into decline, Campanha began to flourish, such that
artistic endeavours could be – and were – encouraged and supported. In time,
Campanha gained a reputation as a musical place, which it has sustained to this
day. Coffee reached the region towards the end of the nineteenth century, but
following the decline in coffee prices in the 1920s, Campanha entered a phase
of economic stagnation from which it has yet to recover. The coffee groves have
given way to citrus fruits, but there is also a concerted effort to build up the local
tourist trade. In effect, Campanha today is something of a sleepy ‘interior’ town
with a golden past.
Baroque Sensibilities and Military Bands
The discovery of gold in Minas Gerais in the 1690s coincided with the onset of the
Baroque era in Portugal, though, no doubt, the wealth generated by gold in Brazil
played an important part in allowing for the flowering of baroque sensibilities
in the metropolis as well as the colonies. Pageantry and ostentation became
central aesthetic aims in the mining regions, such that much of the wealth being
extracted from the mines was invested in the construction and decoration of grand
churches, but also in the staging of extravagant religious festivals with magnificent
processions and ceremonious sung masses. The baroque aesthetic that developed
in the eighteenth century has had a lasting hold on the artistic sensibilities of the
mineiros (inhabitants of Minas Gerais) to this day, such that it now stands as a
major emblem of local identity.8
Ensembles of the type we now identify as brass bands were not known during
the gold era, but given the deep-rootedness of baroque orientations in Minas, it
would have to be – as indeed it was – to this aesthetic universe that bands would
have to be adapted if they were to find a niche in the region. However, just as
Trevor Herbert has warned against simple developmental historical trajectories
for the brass band in Britain,9 their adoption in Minas should also not be seen in a
purely linear fashion; indeed, military brass bands were known in Minas several
decades before they were adopted by civilian musicians within religious festivals.
Rather, as I aim to demonstrate, it would appear that bandas de música first found
7
Marcos Ferreira de Andrade, ‘Família, fortuna e poder no império do Brasil:
Minas Gerais, Campanha da Princesa (1799–1850)’ (PhD thesis, Universidade Federal
Fluminense, 2005).
8
Maria Lúcia Montes goes even further, suggesting that baroque sensibilities
permeate the Brazilian national identity. See Maria Lúcia Montes, ‘Entre o arcaico e o
pós-moderno: heranças barrocas e a cultura da festa na construção da identidade brasileira’,
Sexta-feira, 2 (1998): 142–59.
9
Trevor Herbert, Chapter 1 in this volume.
a performance niche outside the festival sphere, and only then did they displace
the wind instruments traditionally used in the processions. Yet the link between
bandas de música and religious processions became very strong, and persists to
this day, a relationship that almost certainly drew on practices preceding their
ultimate adoption. In order to understand how bandas de música negotiated their
way into the religious context, it is useful to begin by looking at the practices they
displaced as well as at the arrival and dissemination in Brazil of the model they
adopted – the military band.
Baroque Processions
In the major gold mining towns of Minas Gerais, the annual cycle was propelled
by the religious festivals sponsored by confraternities (irmandades) and local
government (câmaras do senado).10 The highlight of most festivals was the grand
procession, for which wind and percussion instruments were required, since
their sound could project in open spaces. In his renowned account of the grand
procession of the Triumph of the Eucharist (Triunfo Eucarístico) that occurred in
1733 in Vila Rica, for instance, a certain Simão Ferreira Machado documented the
participation of a German horseman who ‘broke the silence with the harmonious
voice of a bugle’; he identified eight slaves playing shawms (charamelas); a
snare drummer flanked on either side by a piper and a trumpeter; and the cortège
also included a bagpiper, several trumpeters and a number of drummers.11
While no manuscripts have survived to indicate what these musicians actually
played, Machado did note that the calls of the bugler alternated with those of
the charamelas, suggesting the instruments were used less for their melodic
possibilities and more for their noise-making potential. The fanfares of wind
instruments and drums alerted the local population to the extraordinary event that
was taking place in the town, a sonic atmosphere further heightened by church
bells, firecrackers and musket shots.12
10
The organization of musical life in the mining regions has received considerable
academic attention. See, for instance, Francisco Curt Lange, A organização musical
durante o período colonial brasileiro (Coimbra, 1966); Francisco Curt Lange, ‘A música
em Minas Gerais – um informe preliminar’, in Rui Mourão (ed.), O alemão que descobriu
a América (Belo Horizonte, 1990 [1946]), pp. 99–179; José Maria Neves, Música sacra
mineira: catálogo de obras (Rio de Janeiro, 1997), pp. 9–20; Suzel Ana Reily, ‘Music,
Minas and the Golden Atlantic’, in Philip Bohlman (ed.), The Cambridge History of World
Music (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 223–52, among others.
11
Simão Ferreira Machado, ‘Triunfo Eucharistico do Divinissimo Sacramento da
Senhora do Pilar em Vila Rica, Corte da Capitania das Minas’, Revista do Arquivo Público
Mineiro, Year 6 (1901 [1734]): 985–1062.
12
Júnia Ferreira Furtado, ‘Os sons e os silêncios nas minas de ouro’, in Júnia Ferreira
Furtado (ed.), Sons, formas, cores e movimentos na modernidade atlântica (São Paulo and
Belo Horizonte, 2008), pp. 19–56.
From the 1770s onwards the musical style commonly referred to as the Baroque
of Minas Gerais (barroco mineiro)13 came into vogue, and with it new processional
practices also emerged. During Holy Week in particular, it became common for
a small ensemble reminiscent of Harmoniemusik,14 made up of flutes, French
horns and a serpent, to accompany a choral group that sang motets15 at designated
stopping points along the route. The motets, however, were not performed while
the procession was on the move; after their performances the charamelas, trumpets
and drums resumed, and the faithful progressed to the next station.
With the decline in gold production towards the end of the eighteenth century, the
funds available to the confraternities and local government to invest in commissions
for new music for festivals and to pay the fees of professional musicians became
ever scarcer. While local musical life in nineteenth-century Minas remained vibrant,
it shifted progressively from a professional activity to an amateur community affair,
though it continued to be driven by the aesthetic ideals of the late eighteenth century.
To sustain those aims, the work of esteemed colonial composers was copied and
reused, often in simplified versions to make it accessible to non-professionals. In
time, the repertoires for annual religious festivals tended to become fixed, since
amateurs were unable to learn a whole new festival repertoire from one year to the
next, let alone from one festival to the next. In Campanha, for instance, the music
performed during Holy Week, the only religious festival in the town still performed
with baroque grandeur, has remained fairly stable for at least a century.16
As in the colonial period, nineteenth-century religious festivals were divided
between indoor and outdoor ceremonies. While masses centred on choral groups
accompanied by string-based ensembles, drums and wind instruments were
required for the streets. The musical director contracted to provide the music for
a given festival was expected to organize singers and instrumentalists for both
spheres, a practice that encouraged performance versatility; the more instruments
13
Though called ‘barroco mineiro’, the style is closer to the pre-classical. For stylistic
analyses of this repertoire, see Gerard Béhague, Music in Latin America: An Introduction
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979), pp. 78–85; Silvio Augusto Crespo Filho, ‘Contribuição
ao estudo da característica da música em Minas Gerais no século XVIII’ (PhD thesis,
Universidade de São Paulo, 1989); Maurício Dottori, ‘Ensaio sobre a música colonial’ (MA
thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 1992), among others.
14
On Harmoniemusik, see Roger Hellyer, ‘Harmoniemusik: Music for Small
Wind Band in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’ (PhD thesis, Oxford
University, 1973); and Stephen L. Rhodes, ‘A History of the Windband’ (2007), at http://
www.lipscomb.edu/windbandhistory/RhodesWindBand_04_Classical.htm [Accessed 20
August 2011].
15
In eighteenth-century Minas the word motet was used to refer to choral pieces based
on biblical passages with instrumental accompaniment; the term was generally limited to
processional pieces in order to emphasize the religious narrative being collectively dramatized.
16
Suzel Ana Reily, ‘Remembering the Baroque Era: Historical Consciousness,
Local Identity and the Holy Week Celebrations in a Former Mining Town in Brazil’,
Ethnomusicology Forum, 15/1 (2006): 39–62.
a musician could play, the greater his chances of being summoned by the musical
director to assist with the festival, as he could be used in both indoor and outdoor
ensembles, according to demand.17 Interestingly, the ensembles were referred
to most frequently as ‘músicas’ (musics), a generic term indicating that some
members of the contracted ensemble would be available to perform wherever the
festival called for music.
Ensembles closer to contemporary brass bands started to appear in Minas
from around the 1830s, but for the most part they remained exclusively military
institutions until around the mid-nineteenth century. Yet, it would take a few more
decades before bandas de música were able to carve out clear performance niches
for themselves that would establish them as visible and recognizable local music
institutions. These ensembles set themselves apart from the músicas by modelling
themselves on the military bands. While a dialogue between military and civilian
musical spheres existed in Minas throughout the eighteenth century,18 the formation
of civilian ensembles explicitly modelled on military bands became particularly
marked from the 1870s onwards. To assess how and why this happened, I now turn
to the emergence and dissemination of the military band model in Brazil.
Military Bands in Brazil (A Brief Historical Overview)
Within the military, there were several ‘harmony bands’ in the Brazilian colony by
the early nineteenth century. These ensembles were typically composed of one flute,
two oboes or clarinets, one bugle, two French horns, one bassoon, a bass drum and
a snare drum.19 They began to increase in number after the arrival of the Portuguese
court in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, but they were especially encouraged after 1831,
the year that marked both the start of the Second Reign and the restructuring of
the imperial armed forces.20 The instrumentation of the military bands was in
constant flux, following developments in instrumental technologies taking place in
Europe. By the mid-nineteenth century the serpent was replaced by the ophicleide,
the bassoons by the clavicorn (trombão), distinctions emerged between the bugle,
the piston and the cornopean (corneta de chave), and the percussion section was
commonly enhanced to include cymbals, kettledrums, a triangle and a bell tree.21
17
Until well into the twentieth century, all instrumentalists in the festival context
were male.
18
On the dialogue between military and civilian musicians in eighteenth-century
Minas, see Aldo Luiz Leoni, ‘Os que vivem da arte da música, Vila Rica, século XVIII’
(MA thesis, University of Campinas, 2007).
19
Fernando Pereira Binder, ‘Bandas militares no Brasil: difusão e organização entre
1808–1889’ (3 vols, MA thesis, Universidade Estadual Paulista, 2006), vol. 1, p. 21.
20
Vinícius Mariano de Carvalho, ‘Observações acerca da música militar na Guerra
do Paraguai’ (Juiz de Fora, 2008), at http://www.ecsbdefesa.com.br/defesa/fts/MMGP.pdf
[Accessed 14 August 2011], p. 9.
21
Binder, ‘Bandas militares no Brasil’, vol. 1, pp. 120–24.
In 1831, the National Guard – something of a paramilitary organization that

operated as an urban police force – was founded, and almost immediately several of
these divisions set up ensembles modelled on the military bands.22 It was also in the
1830s that the military police forces began establishing bands that mimicked their
military counterparts; in fact Fernando Pereira Binder’s research indicates that the
first military police band was founded in Minas Gerais in 1835.23 By the 1840s it
had become common practice for the bands of these forces to play in public spaces
as a service to the community.24 Thus, by the mid-nineteenth century, performances
of military bands were a familiar part of the urban soundscape across the country.
Outside the military sphere the first civilian bandas de música modelled on the
military ensembles were emerging in the mid-1800s in Minas Gerais as elsewhere.
The Banda de Música Euterpe Cachoeirense, based in the vicinity of Ouro Preto,
for instance, claims to have been founded in 1856.25 The sheer expense of brass
instruments, however, limited the ambitions of most would-be bandsmen until
prices decreased significantly a few decades later.26 This coincided with the end of
the Paraguayan War (1864–70), officially known as the War of the Triple Alliance,
which effectively led to the dissemination of brass band culture into civil society.
To confront the enemy, the imperial government recruited nearly 40,000 volunteers,
the so-called voluntários da pátria (volunteers of the nation). Campanha sent at
least four groups to the front, the final two with 44 and 27 men, respectively.27
Many of the volunteer regiments formed bands, as these ensembles helped
sustain morale among the men, both on and off the battlefield. As Vinícius
Mariano de Carvalho has argued, the co-existence of the volunteer bandsmen with
experienced military musicians had a lasting impact upon the musical sensibilities
of the volunteers.28 It is also noteworthy that the volunteer bands adopted
saxhorns,29 which could be learned quickly. Alongside the introduction of new
22
José Ramos Tinhorão, História social da música popular brasileira (Lisboa,
1990), p. 141.
23
Binder, ‘Bandas militares no Brasil’, vol. 1, p. 75; see also Tinhorão, História
social da música popular brasileira, p. 141.
24
Binder, ‘Bandas militares no Brasil’, vol. 1, p. 75.
25
Robson José Peixoto, Banda Euterpe Cachoeirense, at http://www.
cachoeiradocampo.art.br/acervo.htm [Accessed 14 August 2011]. While many bands in
Minas today could be said to ‘descend’ from early bandas de música, these ensembles
typically define the date of their foundation as the date on which their current music director
took over, at which point they commonly change names.
26
Trevor Herbert has linked the dissemination of the British brass band to the mass
production of instruments, which made them accessible to the working classes. This seems
also to have been the case in Brazil. See Herbert, ‘Introduction’, p. 5.
27
Thalita de Oliveira Casadei and Antonio Casadei, Aspectos históricos da cidade da
Campanha (Petrópolis, 1989), p. 115.
28
See Carvalho, ‘Observações acerca da música militar na Guerra do Paraguai’.
29
Ibid., p. 16.
instruments, the war popularized the dobrado, or ‘double march’, which would
become emblematic of bandas de música across Brazil.
When the war ended, bandsmen of the volunteer veterans returned to their
hometowns bringing their military musical practices with them. According to
Robson José Peixoto, volunteers returning to Cachoeira do Campo brought their
instruments and eagerly shared their new skills with local musicians, promoting
significant changes in local musicking.30 This is a narrative that repeated itself
across the country, contributing to the relative homogeneity in the Brazilian band
domain of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
When the war ended, Brazil had changed greatly. Nationalist sentiments
were strong; republican ideas were gaining favour, and the Catholic Church was
becoming more forceful in its endeavours to break away from the imperial state.
New aesthetic sensibilities were also taking shape in the wider society, and secular
spheres for the appreciation of art were being instituted. Together these forces
contributed to shifts in local orientations to music and musical practices. In Minas,
a distinction began to emerge between orquestras (also called filarmônicas in
some places) and bandas de música; the orchestras became string-based indoor
ensembles, whose subscription and fee-paying audiences represented polite
society,31 while the wind-and-percussion based ensembles played in the streets for
‘everyone’, often involving predominantly mulatto musicians.
Bandas and Orquestras
The 1874 almanac for southern Minas Gerais listed two ‘Musical Societies’ for
Campanha: the Philarmonica Campanhense, directed by José Luiz Pompeu da
Silva (1852–1924), and the União 7 de Setembro, directed by Tristão Coelho Neto
(c. 1839–1902).32 In effect, Campanha provides a very clear example of just how
rapidly local music scenes changed following the war. At the start of the 1870s the
most active ensemble in the town was still very much structured like a música; it
was known as the Sociedade Musical Santa Cecília, and its membership included
both vocal and instrumental performers capable of fulfilling both the indoor and
outdoor commitments of a festival.
It is nonetheless worth noting that from at least the 1860s Campanha may
have had a band, a fact made evident in the following press announcement: ‘On
2 December a Te Deum was celebrated at the request of the municipal chambers,
and in the evening the town was illuminated and a banda de música wandered the
streets’,33 but the ensemble itself was neither named nor described. Around 1870,
30
Peixoto, Banda Euterpe Cachoeirense.
31
On the organization of such ‘music societies’, see Cristina Magaldi, Music in
Imperial Rio de Janeiro: European Culture in a Tropical Milieu (Lanham, MD, 2004).
32
Benedito Saturnino da Veiga, Almanach Sul Mineiro (Campanha, 1874), p. 80.
33
Sul de Minas, 8 December 1860.
another ensemble – the Corporação Musical União 7 de Setembro – starts to be

mentioned in local documents. In contrast to the Santa Cecília, named after the
patron saint of musicians, the 7 de Setembro chose a name that linked it to a date
of patriotic significance – the Declaration of Independence. This is a notable shift
as it suggests that the ensemble was seeing itself primarily in civic and patriotic
terms, rather than as a religious institution.
In his memoirs, Hildegardo Moraes identifies some of the core members of
the 7 de Setembro and the instruments its members played: Constantino (clarinet),
Tristão Coelho Neto, Augusto Azevedo, Antão Trant and Bernardo Meirinho
(trombone), Vicente Ferreira de Souza (piston), José Maria Lopez and Isidoro
Garcia Ferreira, the latter two said to be ‘admirable singers’ who could play various
instruments, including strings, woodwinds and brass.34 On several occasions the
local press reported on the ensemble’s street performances, but on 8 September
1872, the 7 de Setembro provided the music for the mass commemorating the
ensemble’s anniversary, for which a chorus and strings would have been required.35
In effect, this band could just as easily constitute itself as a música when required.
The versatility of the musicians was undoubtedly a factor contributing to
the decision to form a single ensemble, which was announced in the local press on
15 February 1874:
Philharmonica Campanhense: this is the name under which the previously

existing music societies of this town – the Santa Cecília and the 7 de Setembro
– will function from now on. In their last meeting new statutes were approved
and by absolute majority the citizen José Luiz Pompeo da Silva was elected to
the position of [music] director.36
Interestingly, in the very same edition of the newspaper, Tristão Coelho Neto
announced that ‘The music corporation União Sete de Setembro is ready to take
any calls pertaining to musical services, both in [Campanha] and beyond, for the
cheapest possible prices’.37
The Philharmonica was modelled on the European orchestra, and its
performances centred on ‘concerts’ for subscribers; what funds the Philharmonica
could muster were directed towards the upkeep of the ensemble. Thus, many of the
musicians who belonged to the orchestra also joined other ensembles, such as the
7 de Setembro, to engage in functional musical activities associated with religious
festivals and civic events, where they received some payment for their services.
The bandas de música were to receive an important boost with the rise in
republican sentiments, in which politicians and local authorities became keen
to communicate their deeds to their potential constituents. In an era preceding
34
Hildegardo Moraes, ‘Reminiscencias da Campanha’, Minas do Sul, 6 January 1935.
35
Monitor Sul-mineiro, 8 September 1872.
36
Monitor Sul-mineiro, 15 February 1874.
37
Ibid. Sete translates as seven.
electronic amplification, brass bands provided an ideal frame for such public
announcements. From the late nineteenth century onwards, hardly a public event
took place without the presence of a band. In fact the opportunities for bands were
becoming so numerous that even the military bands started making themselves
available for hire.38
In Campanha bands formed and dissolved at an alarming rate in response to
this new demand, such that there was always at least one band available to support
local authorities and politicians. On 14 June 1880, for instance, the Monitor Sul-
mineiro covered the arrival of the Portuguese consular agent, Antonio de Souza
e Silva Brito, on his visit to Campanha. The editor claimed that he had been met
by a ‘banda de musica, accompanied by nearly all the inhabitants of Campanha’,
and the entourage processed through the streets, as firecrackers exploded in the
skies.39 In 1881, the Banda de Música União e Liberdade (Union and Liberty
Music Band) was contracted to play for the unveiling of a portrait of the Baron
of Itapuá, donated by an influential resident to the local hospital.40 In 1883, two
bands are said to have turned out to honour José Luiz Pompeu da Silva, when the
emperor dropped charges against him for separatist activities.41
Following the establishment of the First Republic in 1889, the demand for
bands increased even further. As Francisco Curt Lange noted, by the late nineteenth
century there was rarely a town in Minas with just one band, as rival political
factions each supported a different local band; in turn, the ensembles trumpeted
the accomplishments of their patrons.42 For major political feats, several bands
could be mustered. Indeed, on 15 August 1898 the authorities of Campanha
engaged two local bands as well as two bands from out of town – one from Águas
Virtuosas (now Lambari) and the other from São Gonçalo do Sapucai – to play for
the inauguration of the town’s new waterworks system.43
In response to this rise in demand, bandas de música began embracing a
militarized image; most notably they took to wearing uniforms that mimicked
military attire and their repertoire became increasingly centred on dobrados,
the genre linked to the victorious Brazilian forces in the Paraguayan War. These
military insignia seemed to herald the victory of the authority figures the bands
represented. Furthermore, these practices gave the bandas a corporate image,
which progressively distanced them from other types of local musical ensemble.
Alongside the demand for bands in the political arena, from the late nineteenth
century onwards the structure of religious festivals was undergoing a number of
changes that would also have an impact on local musicking. With the establishment
38
In 1877 it was decreed that military bands were not to perform for free for festivals
and private functions. See Binder, ‘Bandas militares no Brasil’, vol. 3, p. 23.
39
Monitor Sul-mineiro, 14 June 1880.
40
Monitor Sul-mineiro, 20 August 1881.
41
Monitor Sul-mineiro, 2 May 1883.
42
Lange, ‘A música em Minas Gerais’, p. 177.
43
Monitor Sul-mineiro, 14 August 1898.
of the republic, Church and State were officially separated, and the Church
set about taking control of the religiosity of their parishioners in a processes
commonly referred to as the Romanization period. Among the first targets of the
Church were the traditional lay confraternities, which they set about replacing
with new associations, such as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Daughters of Mary,
the Marian Congregation among others, which were placed squarely under clerical
direction.44 As the confraternities folded, the festivals they sponsored were also
discontinued.45 Moreover, the late eighteenth-century baroque repertoires of
the músicas associated with them in Minas were not always suitable to the new
devotional orientations and festival structures being encouraged by the clergy, and
the new repertoires being proposed, most notably the compositions of Father João
Baptista Lehmann (1873–1955), could not always be adapted to string ensembles.
In time the only traditional festival in Campanha that would still call for a string
ensemble was Holy Week. It is also worth noting that within some of the new
‘confraternities’, particularly the women’s associations, choral ensembles were
being encouraged, and they began taking on vocal roles in religious festivals.
Eventually bandas de música, small string ensembles and female choral groups
were constituted as independent ensembles, which joined forces to provide the
music for the festivals.
While the choral groups strengthened the new women’s associations within
the Church, the military model of the late nineteenth-century men’s bandas de
música also suited the Church’s aims. The image of a banda parading in military
formation, in smart uniforms while playing the military marches of the victorious
troops, reinforced the image of discipline the Church was striving to project.
Thus, the same dobrados used for political events found their way into religious
processions.
The dobrado – the core repertoire of the bandas de música – had a strong
impact on the formation of the ensemble. As its instrumental requirements became
more or less standardized, they came to define the ensemble’s instrumental line-
up: piccolo clarinet; 1st and 2nd clarinets; 1st, 2nd and 3rd trumpets; 1st, 2nd and
3rd saxhorns; tenor trombone (in C); 1st, 2nd and possibly 3rd bass trombones;
44
On the Romanization of the Brazilian Church, see Riolando Azzi, O estado
leigo e o projeto ultramontano (São Paulo, 1994); and Thomas C. Bruneau, The Political
Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge, 1974). For accounts of the
implementation of alternative confraternities, see Ioneida Maria Piffano Brion, ‘As Filhas
de Maria: a história social da Pia União’ (MA thesis, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora,
2009); Raymundo Heraldo Maués, ‘Tradição e modernidade conservadoras no catolicismo
brasileiro: o Apostolado da Oração e a Renovação Carimática Católica’, in X Jornadas sobre
Alternativas Religiosas na América Latina (Buenos Aires, 2000), available at http://www.naya.
org.ar/religion/XJornadas/pdf/4/4-maues.pdf> [Accessed 20 August 2011]; Gustavo de Souza
Oliveira, ‘Em favor da virtude: romanização e as Filhas de Maria’, Temporalidades – Revista
Discente do Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da UFMG, 1/2 (2009): 246–53.
45
This process has been carefully documented for the coastal town of Paraty by
Marina de Mello e Souza in Paraty: a cidade e as festas (Rio de Janeiro, 2008).
Figure 4.1 Banda de Música Giulietta Dionesi, 1900
bombardon; tuba; percussion (bass drum, snare drum and cymbals).46 These have
been the instruments most commonly found in the bandas de música in Minas
Gerais until recently, though smaller bandas typically eliminate the third part –
and possibly even the second – of an instrument where necessary. Nowadays the
saxophone is becoming popular, and some bandmasters lament that it is becoming
increasing difficult to find new recruits willing to take up the clarinet. By the turn
of the century, the combination of these circumstances contributed towards the
establishment of the banda de música as a recognized local performance domain
throughout Minas Gerais: it was an ensemble with a specific repertoire, a distinct
set of performance practices and its own performance niches.
Bandas de Música in Campanha
In December 1898 Antonio Faustino de Figueiredo Brasil (d.c. 1901) and Zoroastro
Pamplona de Azevedo (c. 1874–1920) joined forces and founded the Banda de
Música Giulietta Dionesi (see Figure 4.1). While the group’s instrumentation
centred on wind, brass and percussion, it ironically honoured an Italian violinist
46
On the musical characteristics of the dobrado, see José Roberto Franco da Rocha,
‘O dobrado: breve estudo de um gênero musical brasileiro’, available at http://xa.yimg.
com/kq/groups/17912635/1931934746/name/dobrado.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2011].
Figure 4.2 Banda de Música Memória de Dom Pedro II, 1899
who had visited Campanha towards the end of 1898 and played on several
occasions with local musicians in the São Cândido Theatre. The band dissolved in
1901, when Antonio Faustino moved to São Paulo,47 and this ensemble was almost
immediately replaced by the Banda Musical Campanhense, under the directorship
of Zoroastro Pamplona de Azevedo,48 though before the year was out the band had
come to be known as Banda Concórdia.49
The Banda Concórdia had a rival, the Banda de Música Memória de Dom Pedro
II (in memory of Dom Pedro II, the deposed emperor), formed under the musical
leadership of the Grillo brothers in the late nineteenth century.50 Made up primarily
of mulattos and blacks, it was considered to be ‘humbler’ than Concórdia,51 but
nonetheless it secured a steady stream of contracts, until its dissolution in the
1930s (see Figure 4.2).
According to Marcello Pompeu (1885–1988), son of José Luiz Pompeu da
Silva, the rivalry between these two bands was intense.52 Their directors supported
47
Antônio Casadei, Voz Diocesana (Campanha, 25 December 1979).
48
A Campanha, 11 July, 1901.
49
A Campanha, 4 October 1901; Monitor Sul-mineiro, 27 October 1901.
50
Vinícius Vilhena de Morais, Campanha que conheci e vivi (Campanha, 1988), p. 80.
51
Ibid.
52
Marcello Pompeu, Subsídios para a história da música da Campanha (Campanha,
1977), pp. 8–10.
opposing political factions, which motivated them to strive to outdo one another
in their public performances, to the delight of the local population. The Banda
Concórdia remained active until the death of its director in 1920. When it folded,
its members split into the Corporação Musical Santa Cecilia and the Corporação
Musical Zoroastro de Azevedo, though it was the Zoroastro de Azevedo that
followed on the traditional rivalry with the Dom Pedro II. The most public aspect
of this rivalry was played out in the retretas (outdoor performances) that took place
on Sunday afternoons in front of the Our Lady of Sorrows Church. On alternate
weekends each band took over the bandstand that once stood there, surrounded
by its supporters. These performances so mobilized the local population that
the local press began publishing each band’s programme in anticipation of the
next performance. On 7 February 1921, for instance, it was announced that on
the following Sunday the Banda Dom Pedro II planned to play the following
programme:53
Part I
José Bento – ‘Estado de Minas’
Giuseppe Verdi – extracts from Il Travatore
F. Soriano – ‘Não faça isso, Alice’ (modinha)
Franz Lehár – Fantasia from ‘The Merry Widow’
Part II
Oscar Lourena – ‘Não diga’ (dobrado)
Carlos Gomes – extracts from Il Guarany
João Brandão Filho – ‘Lágrima de Noiva’ (waltz)
Antonio Manoel do Espírito Santo – ‘Sargento Caveira’ (dobrado)
This list provides a good indication of the diversity of genres the local bands were
able to deliver. Alongside the functional repertoire used in processions and civic
parades, they also played presentational genres for a listening audience,54 such as
extracts from operas and operettas, and the lighter popular dance styles of the day.
In the early 1930s both the Santa Cecília and the Dom Pedro II folded, while the
Zoroastro de Azevedo operated until 1939, when it was dissolved only to regroup,
now calling itself the Corporação Musical Dom Ferrão. There was also a second
band in Campanha at the time, the Banda Musical Ginásio São João, linked to a
local secondary school; though its activities centred primarily on school affairs
and public holidays, it could be recruited for other commitments when necessary.55
Alongside their participation in the bands, many musicians also took advantage
of the new performance opportunities that emerged with the dissemination of
53
Colombo, 27 February 1921.
54
On ‘presentational’ music practices, see Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life: The
Politics of Participation (Chicago, 2008).
55
See Vilhena de Moraes, Campanha que conheci e vivi, p. 84.
Figure 4.3 Campanhense Jazz-Band
casinos into the region. In southern Minas Gerais in particular, where natural
mineral waters were plentiful, the casino culture expanded in tandem with a growth
in tourism. Local bandsmen formed so-called ‘jazz bands’, which performed the
popular musics of the day, such as waltzes, polkas, marches, foxtrots and sambas
among other genres (see Figure 4.3). There was fierce competition for the best jazz
bands among casino owners, and any young talented performer could easily find
work for the weekend in one of the neighbouring spas; for those willing to travel,
there was full-time work further afield. But jazz bands also found opportunities to
perform in their own town, as bailes (balls) in local dance halls were all the rage.
Just as suddenly as this niche emerged, it vanished. In 1946, games of chance
were declared illegal and the casinos were closed down. This was a devastating
blow not only to musicians, but also to the vast tourist industry that had grown up
around the mineral water spas. In effect, the demise of the casinos heralded the
final days of the golden age of the bandas de música. From then on the niches
for their performances dwindled rapidly: the Church had already reduced the
number of processions and festivals it sponsored, and the State was also striving
to rationalize national holidays. The number of commitments for jazz band
performances for bailes also declined as a taste for the new amplified versions of
guitar-based popular music came into vogue. This same shift in ‘modern’ tastes
also reduced the audiences for the Sunday afternoon retretas, which no longer
mobilized opposing loyalties as they had only a decade earlier.
These same adverse conditions were affecting the local orchestra and choral
groups as well. In effect, musicking in Campanha was facing a crisis, and fewer
and fewer recruits were coming forward to renew the ranks of the various local
ensembles. The Corporação Musical Dom Ferrão actually folded in 1945.
According to its leadership, this was because the band was finding it impossible
to pay off the bank loan taken out to buy new instruments for the band at the time
of its establishment.56 Former band members, however, claimed that internal strife
also played an important role in the matter. At any rate, for the first time in nearly a
century, Campanha was a town without a banda de música. For the next few years
local government and the church had to contract bands from neighbouring towns
for major public holidays and religious processions, while local musicians could
be mustered for lesser commitments.
Bandas in Campanha after 1950
Campanha entered the 1950s with its public music sphere in a precarious state.
Over the next few decades the joint efforts of musicians and the institutions they
serviced set about instating what became a more or less stable arena for band
performances as well as for the activities of other local ensembles. The central
pillar in this process was constituted by a concerted effort to preserve the town’s
Holy Week celebrations, an emblem of local identity that all agreed needed to
be safeguarded. The main arenas for band performances within Holy Week have
traditionally been the various processions throughout the week, in which the
ensemble is expected to perform either dirges (marchas fúnebres) or dobrados. A
choir and orchestra are required for the masses and indoor celebrations as well as
the motets for the Tuesday and Wednesday evening processions.57 While this had
long been the structure of the festival, the decline in other musical spaces for the
main local ensembles gave Holy Week a heightened significance.
Local efforts to sustain the baroque character of Holy Week started with
the re-establishment of a band in 1951. This band, which came to be known as
the Parish Band (Banda da Paróquia), was organized by the then parish priest
Mons. João Rabelo de Mesquita, a strong supporter of the ‘modern’ (Romanized)
Church. He aimed to retain control of the band by restricting membership to men
enrolled in the Marian Congregation and he placed himself as the ensemble’s
‘permanent director’.58
Mons. Mesquita not only established a band; according to founding members
of the Coral Campanhense (Campanha Choir), he was also a prime instigator in its
56
Ibid., p. 85.
57
An extended illustrated description of Holy Week in Campanha can be found at
Suzel Reily, ‘Holy Week in Campanha’ (2005), at http://www.qub.ac.uk/sa-old/resources/
HolyWeek/index.html [Accessed 15 August 2011].
58
Campanha Parish Tome, vol. 2, p. 101.
establishment in 1958, though it appears that those put in charge of the choir, Ilza
and Lúcilia Pompeu, both daughters of Marcello Pompeu, had been long-standing
members of the former Cathedral choir, the Coral Santo Antônio.59 Current choir
members claimed that the ensemble had been established to ensure that the parish
had a group of trained singers for the choral sections of the Holy Week repertoire,
such that the first years of the choir were devoted to learning these pieces, which
included selections from eighteenth-century mineiro composers as well as from
the Harpa de Sião by João Baptista Lehmann.
From the 1950s onwards, there were fewer and fewer local contexts for string
performances, such that by the early 1970s it was becoming increasing difficult to
muster a small orchestra for the Holy Week celebration. By the mid-1970s these
musicians were being contracted from out of town; in 1976, for instance, around
one-third of the parish budget for Holy Week was spent on music, a significant part
to pay the costs of the string players drafted in from Belo Horizonte.60 The outlook
for the band and the choir, however, was not as bleak, given that, alongside Holy
Week, they could count on a somewhat steady string of commitments: the choir sang
regularly for weddings and graduation ceremonies, while the banda was recruited
for a number of other religious processions and civic parades throughout the year,
commitments that still provide performance opportunities for both ensembles.
While the duties of the band remained more or less stable from the 1950s
onwards, the band went through a series of incarnations. Soon after its establishment
the Parish Band began absorbing a few musicians from former bands, most notably
Alfeu do Nascimento, known locally as Dunga, who had received his initial
training from the Grillo family. Dunga was appointed musical director of the band
in 1955, a position he held until the ensemble finally folded around 1965.61 The
demise of the Parish Band created a space for those musicians who had chosen not
to join the Marian Congregation, and they announced the launch of their band –
the Corporação Musical Dom Inocêncio – on 17 December 1967.62 Named after
the second bishop of Campanha, Dom Inocêncio Engleke (in office from 1935
to 1960), this band was directed by Walter Salles (1918–2009), who retained the
position, at least nominally, until his death, when the Dom Inocêncio regrouped
as the Corporação Musical Walter Salles, under the musical leadership of Lucas
Furtado, who had been the effective music director since the late 1990s.
Even though these bandas could count on a small, but stable series of
performance commitments, the rise in electronic amplification shifted music
production away from local musicking to recorded media and professional
performance. Throughout the ‘interior’ of Brazil the public plaza retretas have
59
Vinícius Vilhena de Moraes, Lendas e fatos da Campanha (Campanha, 1991), pp. 82–3.
60
Campanha Parish Tome, vol. 3, p. 98.
61
While I did not locate an official announcement of the folding of this band, it more
or less disappears from the local press at about this time, and in 1966 the Banda do Ginásio
played for the Holy Week celebrations. See the Campanha Parish Tome, vol. 3, p. 66.
62
Vilhena de Moraes, Campanha que conheci e vivi, p. 85.
been displaced by powerful loudspeakers blasting out the latest national and
international popular hits from the boots of cars. In Campanha, as in small
towns across southern Minas Gerais, major secular street festivals, such as
carnival, are now serviced by professional itinerant ensembles that perform
amplified popular styles from a stage on the back of a lorry. The sponsors of
bailes in the town also turn to professional popular dance bands from out of
town. While some young people in Campanha have tried to start up pop bands,
the equipment necessary to compete with the professional groups is far too
expensive for them; moreover, to make such an investment viable, they would
need to shift their base to a larger economic centre, just as the vast majority of
such itinerant bands have done.
With the decline in performance opportunities, band members once again
began losing interest in the ensemble. In this climate bandas de música effectively
ended up appearing to be nostalgic relics of a past age, precisely as Chico Buarque
depicted them in his song. And yet bandas have always been extremely lively
contexts of music sociability that are deeply cherished by those closely involved
in them.63 Without doubt it has been the pleasure that participation has brought
to legions of local musicians over the decades that has been a prime factor in
sustaining banda activity to this day. Nonetheless, if bandas de música were not
to have the same fate as the region’s orchestras, new performance spheres would
have to be found for them.
On the initiative of bandmasters across Minas Gerais and further afield, a new
arena for bandas has emerged – the ‘band meetings’ (encontros de bandas) – in
which anywhere from five to fifteen or more bands converge upon a host town on
a given Sunday to play to one another. Through the encontros de bandas, wind and
brass bands in Brazil have instituted a new niche for their performances, which
is re-igniting interest in band activity and facilitating the recruitment of a new
generation of young musicians.
The Encontro de Bandas
According to Ricardo Tacuchian, Funarte launched its Band Project with the
organization of an encontro de bandas back in the 1970s,64 suggesting that the
encontro model has been around for some time. Bandmasters in southern Minas
63
A similar observation is made by Elizabeth Lucas, ‘Bandas de música do Rio
Grande do Sul: temas para uma interpretação etnomusicológica’, in Mary Angela Biason
(ed.), Anais do I Seminário de Música do Museu da Inconfidência: bandas de música no
Brasil (Ouro Preto, 2009), pp. 54–63.
64
Ricardo Tacuchian, ‘Quinze anos de atuação no movimento de bandas civis e
escolares no Estado do Rio de Janeiro’, in Mary Angela Biason (ed.), Anais do I Seminário
de Música do Museu da Inconfidência: bandas de música no Brasil (Ouro Preto, 2009),
pp. 13–21, at p. 16.
told me that they got the idea from the encontros de corais (choral meetings) with
which they were familiar. Be that as it may, the Dom Inocêncio first attended an
encontro in 1995, and since then it has participated regularly in encontros around
southern Minas Gerais.
Generally speaking, an encontro de bandas is officially hosted by a
municipality, as local funds are allocated to provide meals and/or snacks to the
musicians of the bands that attend the ‘meeting’ and to award each band a trophy
and certificate of participation. The legwork associated with the organization
of an encontro, however, generally falls upon the bandmaster of the host town
and his closest associates. Host towns may invite bands from distant places,
but generally the ones that turn up are those within a two-hour’s drive from
the location of the encontro. The ability to attract bands from outside this
radius is seen as a sign of regional status for the host band, so where possible,
a special effort is made to entice distant bands to one’s encontro. Even though
bandmasters may aim to stage a large encontro, their aspirations are tempered by
the funds made available to them by their local governments. The encontros de
bandas Campanha has staged, for instance, have all involved between five and
eight bands, in order to keep the costs as low as possible, and they have all come
from within a 100 km radius.
Over time encontros in southern Minas Gerais have developed a rather set
sequence of events. The bands generally arrive in the morning, and their first port
of call is the building (generally a school) where coffee and bread is served. After
the morning snack, all the bands form up alongside one another in the plaza and
side streets, and in turn, they perform a tune, generally choosing a short, light
piece that most of the musicians in the band know by heart. This is a context in
which the band’s ‘traditional’ repertoire of dobrados, marches, waltzes, polkas
and other dances might be performed. After all the groups have had an opportunity
to play, the bandas form a large procession – the so called ‘bandão’ (big band)
– and parade through the town playing dobrados, such as ‘Canção do Soldado’
(Song of the Soldier, by Teófilo Dolor Monteiro de Magalhães), ‘Dois Corações’
(Two Hearts, by Pedro Salgado), ‘Cisne Branco’ (White Swan, by Antonio Manoel
do Espírito Santo) and others, which form part of the repertoire of all bandas in the
region. The procession ultimately leads to the location where lunch is served, and
all the bands enjoy a hearty meal.
The main event of an encontro takes place in the afternoon, when one band at
a time takes the ‘stage’, and seated in symphonic formation, they perform a few
pieces – generally three – to an audience made up almost exclusively of the members
of the other bands, even though these events are open to the general public (see
Figure 4.4). The repertoire for this section shifts away from the functional music
associated with processions and parades to focus on presentational genres. For
the most part, the pieces chosen for encontros derive from ‘international’ popular
music repertoires, as they are considered to be ‘modern’; transcriptions of works
derived from the art music repertoire as well as popular Brazilian pieces may also
be played. Preference is given to pieces that showcase the band’s technical skills,
Figure 4.4 Corporação Musical Dom Inocêncio playing at an encontro de

bandas in Varginha, Minas Gerais, 2008
though some bands, particularly those with a large elderly membership, stick to
the old repertoires they remember from their youth. The encontro repertoire of
the Campanha band includes such pieces as Ravel’s ‘Boléro’, Manuel Pennella’s
pasodoble ‘El gato montés’, John Kander and Fred Ebb’s ‘New York, New York’
as well as arrangements of Brazilian popular songs by Roberto Carlos, Tim Maia
and others.
Interestingly, this structure provides a space for the range of repertoires
associated with bandas de música since their emergence: there are dobrados,
popular tunes of the past and the present, transcriptions of art music repertoires,
and increasingly, with the growth in Protestantism, instrumental versions of
gospel songs. One could, of course, agree with Boonzajer Flaes with regard to the
exclusivity of the dobrado to the banda, but the versatility of the brass band model
has allowed bandas de música to engage with a wide range of musical styles, and
the encontro has developed a structure that encourages bandas to continue playing
their traditional repertoires while adding new pieces to them.
Although encontro performances are not officially staged as competitions,
they are, nonetheless, contexts of considerable unofficial comparison, and much
informal discussion centres on the evaluation of each band at the encontro.
Central topics of assessment include the quality of each band’s performance; their
choice of repertoire, particularly its novelty value, and/or level of difficulty, the
appearance of the band, the size of the band and so on. The assessments made
of each ensemble’s performances form the basis of their reputation within the
region, and are thought to influence the number of invitations the band receives,
particularly from distant locations.
Lucas Furtado claimed that the Campanha band now receives around three
invitations to encontros a month, but the band can only attend about one a month,
as the municipality funds the bus to take them. Each invitation has to be negotiated
independently, and the mayor’s obligations to neighbouring towns make it easier
to negotiate the shorter trips. Encontros, then, have heightened the role of bands
as ambassadors of their hometowns, and this is the prime incentive for local
governments in sponsoring these events and funding their town’s band to other
municipalities, as the success of the band is deemed to reflect upon them and their
administration.
Playing alongside and for people linked to the band world has increased the
competitive orientations within bandas, as they now understand that they are
being closely evaluated by peers, even though no official judges are involved in
the process. This atmosphere has significantly heightened the commitment of band
members, as they now feel encouraged to put more time into individual as well
as group practice, and there is a strong incentive to learn new pieces, since it
would be shameful to show up at one encontro after the other always playing the
same repertoire. According to the Campanha bandmaster, since the band started
becoming involved in encontros, band membership has stabilized, and for the
first time in years the group appears to be developing musically; even the older
members who have been playing at the same level for decades, he said, are now
demonstrating marked improvement in their musical skills.
It is significant that encontros de bandas, which are now hosted regularly
by practically every town that has a band, emerged from within the band world
in response to their need for regular performance contexts. The structure of
encontros, which makes bandsmen and women their own primary audiences,
draws out the competitive impulse, motivating the musicians to strive to outdo
one another from one encontro to the next. The fact that encontros are not set up
as official competitions, however, allows for intense debate and relativization
with regard to which band is actually ‘the best’, and they can all feel a sense of
achievement.
The Corporação Musical Walter Salles has become a very vibrant association
through its involvement in encontros. Many of its members told me that the band
has never been so enjoyable and fulfilling to be in, and they spoke of their pride
in representing Campanha each time they set off on an encontro. Be that at it may,
when they organized an end-of-year retreta in the plaza in Campanha in 2008,
they were very disappointed to see that only a small number of people turned out
to listen to their performance.
Conclusions
In this chapter I have attempted to provide a detailed ethnographic account of how

the versatility of the brass band model has been harnessed in the construction of
local musical life within a constantly changing environment. Just as the versatility
of the brass band has allowed it to adapt to a wide range of social settings, it has
also mutated in accordance with historical shifts. In this way, brass bands have not
only found niches all around the world, they have persisted as recognizable music
institutions of considerable durability.
The ethnographic focus of the chapter has been the bandas de música of
southern Minas Gerais, which have sustained activities since at least the second
half of the nineteenth century. I have endeavoured to depict these ensembles
as dynamic institutions, showing how they have continuously responded to the
changing circumstances around them. Just as historical forces have impacted
upon bandas, their members have also made choices and taken actions that have
contributed to the structuring of local musical life.
The gold rush that attracted thousands of people to the region coincided with
the emergence of the Baroque era which left a lasting mark on the aesthetic
orientations of the region. Despite the economic decline of the region, local
populations continued striving to stage the grand festivals of the past, and
ultimately they came to constitute the focus of local identity. Even though military
bands became common in the region from around the 1830s, religious musical
practices remained tied to the late eighteenth century. Following the Paraguayan
War, however, bandas de música started to adopt military band practices,
particularly in their uniforms and repertoire, effectively distinguishing them from
the músicas. The militarization of the civilian bands was especially appealing to
local politicians, as it drew attention to their political roles and ambitions. The
clergy also encouraged the trend, since military practices gave the band an aura of
discipline and respectability coherent with their ideals. Soon the dobrado became
the emblem of the banda de música, used in both religious processions and civic
parades. With their popularity rising, bandas took it upon themselves to entertain
the local population, and bandstands started being built in town plazas for their
retretas. Fuelled by band rivalries, these events attracted ever larger audiences,
extending repertoires from the fundamentally functional genres to a range of
presentational styles, repertoires that could then be transposed to other settings,
such as bailes and casinos, but also theatres and subscription concerts.
Ultimately the arrival of electric amplification shifted local tastes away from
the repertoires of the local ensembles to guitar-based popular musics, displacing
local string ensembles and the bandas de música. The do-it-yourself environment,
which tied local musicking into the social life of towns like Campanha, was rapidly
dwindling. While, as in Campanha, many towns in Minas invested in safeguarding
their traditional Holy Week celebrations, the decline in regular performance niches
affected morale within local ensembles. But the satisfaction musicians derived
from collective musicking motivated them to carve out a new space specifically
dedicated to banda performances: the encontros de banda.
While the encontro has created a niche for regular performances and its
underlying competitive dynamic has served to motivate bands to improve their
musical skills and to both preserve traditional repertoires and expand them, it has
also distanced the ensembles from their local communities. They now focus on
presentational genres played for other bands during events that take place away
from their hometowns.
This shift from a functional role at the heart of community sociality to a marginal
niche position fuelled by competition is not unique to the bandas de música of
Brazil. Indeed, it is something of a trend in many parts of the world, a consequence
of technological developments in sound engineering. One may lament this shift,
but these new niches do provide settings for community musicking. Moreover,
in Minas, where local communities still come together each year to collectively
stage their Holy Week celebrations with as much baroque grandeur as they can
muster, it is the continuous opportunities provided by the encontros that ensure
that each town still sustains a banda de música, a choir and in some cases even an
orchestra. For these celebrations, the banda fulfils its musical responsibilities to
the community, contributing to the grand annual collective drama that mobilizes
the whole town.
Chapter 5
The Representational Power of the
New Orleans Brass Band
Matt Sakakeeny
Each year, on the Sunday afternoon of Labour Day weekend, thousands of people
fill St. Claude Avenue in the Seventh Ward neighbourhood of New Orleans, usually
waiting under a hot sun for a parade to begin. Inside Sweet Lorraine’s nightclub,
the members of a club called Black Men of Labor (BMOL) make their final
preparations, putting on their brimmed hats, dress shirts stitched from imported
West African fabric, suspenders, pleated trousers and leather dancing shoes
(Figure 5.1). Directly outside the door, twenty or so brass band musicians warm
up behind a police barricade, waiting for their cue to begin the up-tempo spiritual
‘Over in Gloryland’.1 At this point, the club members will exit Sweet Lorraine’s
one-by-one, strutting their dance moves for the cheering crowd. BMOL then leads
the procession through the backstreets of the adjacent Tremé neighbourhood, onto
the Claiborne Avenue thoroughfare, and out into the Sixth and Seventh Ward
neighbourhoods where many of the members live, making stops at bars and other
significant local landmarks before looping back to Sweet Lorraine’s.
The procession, which will cover six miles and last four hours, is called a second
line parade. BMOL is one of several Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs throughout
the city that sponsor a second line parade each Sunday from September to May.2
These organizations and their parades have a long history in New Orleans, dating
to the period immediately following Emancipation, and further, to ritual practices
of enslaved Africans.3 Yet, no one would argue that the nature of the parades, the
circumstances that surround them and the club members, musicians and second
liners who populate them have remained static over time, least of all those in
BMOL. To the contrary, BMOL was organized in 1993 precisely because the
1
In New Orleans, wind bands are called ‘brass bands’ even though they include reed
instruments. The bass instrument in these ensembles is the sousaphone. However, I follow
brass band musicians in referring to the instrument more generally as the tuba.
2
Helen Regis, ‘Second Lines, Minstrelsy, and the Contested Landscapes of New
Orleans Afro-Creole Festivals’, Cultural Anthropology, 14/4 (1999): 472–504.
3
Matt Sakakeeny, ‘New Orleans Music as a Circulatory System’, Black Music Research
Journal, 31/2 (2011): 291–325; Michael White, ‘The New Orleans Brass Band: A Cultural
Tradition’, in Ferdinand Jones and Arthur C. Jones (eds), The Triumph of the Soul: Cultural
and Psychological Aspects of African American Music (Westport, CT, 2001), pp. 69–96.
Figure 5.1 Members of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club
pose for a picture before their parade, 3 September 2006
founding members believed that there were too many changes in the music and
dancing at second line parades, changes that they felt were detrimental to tradition.
This is partially why founding member Fred Johnson organized a press
conference in the moments before the 2006 parade, in order to explain the
particular mission of BMOL and distinguish the club from those that parade on
other weekends. There was a shooting at a recent second line parade and Fred
wants everyone to know that violence is antithetical to the values of parading and
will not be tolerated at this parade. Since Hurricane Katrina struck almost exactly
one year ago, there has been a media blitz focusing on New Orleans’ distinctive
cultural traditions, including the documentary film When the Levees Broke by
director Spike Lee that prominently featured Fred and other BMOL members.
With the spotlight on the second line parade and ears attuned to the sounds of the
New Orleans brass band, Fred wants to ensure that spates of violence do not lead
spectators and listeners to associate these venerable traditions with ‘foolishness’.
Addressing a small crowd of news reporters, Fred suggests that the violence
can be linked to the performance of contemporary brass band music, in which
younger musicians channel the twenty-first-century sounds and aesthetics of
hip-hop through the nineteenth-century ensemble of the brass band: ‘as a result
The Representational Power of the New Orleans Brass Band 125
of the wrong music getting played’, says Fred, ‘then you have the wrong people
showing up for the wrong music. That’s my theory’. Fred appeals to other
organizations and musicians to cultivate traditional brass band performance:
Some people like moderate music. Some people like not-so moderate music. We
ain’t against nobody. Everybody do their thing. But our thing is, we want to do
what makes New Orleans special. Everybody around the world knows that New
Orleans is special [but] sometimes, most cases, it seems like we the only ones
who don’t know … People come here looking for the music of Louis Armstrong,
Buddy Bolden and the Olympia Brass Band … because that is what made New
Orleans famous.
Fred’s argument hinges on an understanding of local black culture as exceptional

(‘what makes New Orleans special’), and because of its exalted status, brass band
music is a powerful representational medium (‘people come here looking’ for
traditional music). But there are conflicting approaches to harnessing this power,
particularly across generational lines (‘our thing’ vs. those ‘who don’t know’) as they
relate to certain musical genres (‘moderate music’ vs. ‘not-so-moderate music’).
Fred assesses brass band and parading traditions as spaces for the articulation of
black identity, and within these contexts, music and dance can project positive or
negative images of blackness.
This chapter is based on my observation of Black Men of Labor parades and my
interactions with the three founders of the club – Fred Johnson, Gregg Stafford and
Benny Jones – between 2006 and 2009. Like most members of BMOL, they are black
men in their fifties and sixties who are committed to retaining certain ways of dancing,
marching and playing brass band music at parades and funerals. The intensity with
which they discuss their beliefs and put them to action in the streets of New Orleans
draws attention to tradition as both a vital forum for social communication as well as a
public display that invites debate about the representation of people and place. I begin
by situating the words and actions of these men within scholarly discourse about the
representation of race, then review the foundational premises of their organization
and finally present an account of their 2007 annual parade.
African American Culture and the Burden of Representation
The critical role that expressive cultural practices play in the representation
of race has been a recurring theme in black studies. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
writes that intra-racial disagreement over the ‘burden of representation’, or
the ‘Responsibilities of the Negro Artist’, is ‘one of the oldest debates in the
history of African American letters’.4 For those denied full participation in the
4
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ‘The Black Man’s Burden’, in Gina Dent (ed.), Black
Popular Culture (Seattle, 1992), p. 75.
political, economic and social spheres, expressive culture becomes a powerful

forum for the marginalized to ‘speak’. Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer suggest
that the dilemma is one of ‘representation as a practice of delegation’; that
each cultural artefact or event is ‘burdened with an inordinate pressure to be
“representative”, and to act, as a delegate does, as a statement that “speaks” for
the black communities as a whole’.5 Once the power to represent is delegated to
an artist, they are expected to present ‘positive images’ of blackness, the logic
being, as Michele Wallace writes, ‘the first job of Afro-American mass culture …
should be to “uplift the race”, or to salvage the denigrated image of blacks in the
white American imagination’.6
In assessing themselves as delegates of local black culture, the BMOL founders
identify differences among parading organizations and musicians who represent
tradition. In a conversation at his office in the Central Business District, where he
works as an outreach specialist with the Neighborhood Development Foundation,
Fred urged me to recognize the full spectrum of black musics and black identities
and not, as he put it, ‘misread the uniform of this culture’. Fred lamented that the
shootings at second line parades ‘allowed business people, politicians, lawmakers’
to ‘lump us all together … as a bunch of weed smoking, Heineken drinking, pistol
toting, shoot-’em-up bang-bang’. By stressing differences between BMOL and
other Social & Pleasure Clubs, Fred’s frustrations over racial classification resonate
with theories of anti-essentialism in critical race studies. Stuart Hall writes that
cultural identity is invoked as ‘stable, unchanging, and continuous … [yet] there
are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute “what
we really are”’.7 For members of BMOL, a key indicator of difference is the music
performed at parades.
Because of its prominence within the public sphere, black music has
historically been called upon to represent black people. Cornel West writes, ‘Since
black musicians play such an important role in African American life, they have a
special mission and responsibility: to present beautiful music which both sustains
and motivates black people and provides visions of what black people should
aspire to’.8 Nominating black musicians as delegates, and calling upon them to
produce ‘beautiful music’ – the sonic correlate to ‘positive images’ – is indicative
of a particular subject position, based as much on generation as on class and social
status. As a black intellectual and spokesperson for the generation that organized
and mobilized the Civil Rights movement, West recognizes the power of music to
5
Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer, ‘Introduction: De Margin and de Centre’, Screen,
29/4 (1988); reprinted in Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara and Ruth H. Lindeborg
(eds), Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader (Chicago, 1996), pp. 194–209, at p. 197.
6
Michele Wallace, Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory (New York, 1990), p. 1.
7
Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity:
Community, Culture, Difference (London, 1990), pp. 222–37, at p. 223.
8
Cornel West, ‘The Paradox of the African American Rebellion’, in Cornel West,
Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York, 1993), pp. 271–91, at p. 289.
foster a sense of black pride and unity. West’s generational counterparts in BMOL
also believe that musicians shoulder this burden of representation.
The name of their organization also suggests that the performance of black
music in parades represents a particularly black male subjectivity. Fred says
that BMOL brings together in public ‘a group of men who work and do all the
things that a man’s supposed to do in terms of taking care of his responsibilities’.
The words he uses to describe traditional practices – dignity, beauty, respect,
integrity – suggest how music that spills outside the boundaries of tradition may
be antithetical to those values.
Fred and most of the other members of BMOL grew up during the Civil Rights
era and they embody particular notions of blackness that were espoused in the
movement. They are men who have delegated themselves to represent their race
through the cultural displays of the jazz funeral and the second line parade, in
which they project positive images and sounds of blackness. In the following
section I discuss the debates over the performance of brass band music as they
relate to the founding ideologies of Black Men of Labor.
A Brass Band Renaissance
Contemporary brass bands such as Rebirth, New Birth, Soul Rebels and Hot 8
have maintained the currency of brass band music by updating tradition with the
sounds and aesthetics of contemporary music, especially hip-hop. These bands are
the most recent example of a musical revitalization that began in the late 1960s
and is referred to locally as a ‘brass band renaissance’.9 Many New Orleanians
remember this period as one of stagnation, a point when up-and-coming musicians
were abandoning brass band and other forms of local tradition in favour of soul and
funk. It was at this moment of decline that a charismatic individual began his efforts
to recruit young musicians into the brass band tradition and initiate a revival.
Danny Barker came up through the tradition in the first decades of the twentieth
century, indoctrinated into brass bands and jazz through his grandfather Isidore
Barbarin, leader of the Onward Brass Band. Barker was a cosmopolitan musician,
a traveller who was based in New York for much of his life and played in the
swing bands of Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder and Benny Carter. Beyond his
performance career, Barker was a researcher and author, conducting oral histories
of his bandmates, studying the history of jazz and publishing books and essays
about New Orleans music.10 After moving back to New Orleans in 1965, Barker
continued his life as both a performer and researcher of New Orleans music. He
could be found playing in the French Quarter, sipping a beer at the Caldonia Club
9
Mick Burns, Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band
Renaissance (Baton Rouge, 2006).
10
Danny Barker, A Life in Jazz, ed. Alyn Shipton (New York, 1986); Danny Barker,
Buddy Bolden and the Last Days of Storyville, ed. Alyn Shipton (New York, 1998).
or conducting tours at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, where he assumed the
position of Assistant Curator in 1972.
During this time, Barker also single-handedly changed the course of local
music by founding the Fairview Baptist Church Christian Marching Band, a
brass band made up of teenagers who were taught to perform music and present
themselves as traditionalists. Repertoire, performance practices and dress were
intended to replicate the brass bands Barker remembered from his youth. The
Fairview band, and the later Hurricane Brass Band, sparked a revival of traditional
brass band music and became a training ground for more musicians than any other
performing outfit in the city. The musicians who launched professional careers out
of the Fairview band have followed two divergent, though not unrelated, paths:
those who were keen on experimenting with the brass band format and those who
were intent on sustaining traditional practices.
The first path was laid by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in the late 1970s and
early 1980s. Four musicians who had played in the Fairview and Hurricane bands
– Gregory Davis, Charles Joseph, Kirk Joseph and Kevin Harris – then joined
with Roger Lewis, Ephram Townes, Benny Jones and others from the Sixth Ward
Dirty Dozen Kazoo Band. Beginning on the streets and in local nightclubs, and
eventually on record and touring the globe, the Dirty Dozen blazed a trail that
the majority of younger bands have followed. Though the members of the Dirty
Dozen were schooled in traditional brass band music, they transformed tradition
in several ways, including the following:
1. Musical practices: rhythm, tempo, instrumentation, structural forms and

other musical characteristics have been transformed through a continuous
dialogue with contemporary forms of African American popular music,
especially funk, hip-hop, rap, R&B and modern jazz.
2. Thematic content: new compositions added to the brass band repertoire have
tended to feature more group and solo singing, and cover a wider thematic
range than the spirituals and popular songs of previous generations.
3. Visual aesthetics: musicians once dressed in uniform for every performance,
but since the 1970s musicians have dressed in everyday clothes (with
exceptions described below).
4. Performance context: the venues for brass band performance expanded to
include neighbourhood barrooms, concert halls and international festivals.
Those who forged the other path out of the Fairview band have attended to the past
as much as the present in their attempts to carry forward the sounds, aesthetics and
sentiments of their predecessors. Musicians such as clarinettists Michael White
and Joseph Torregano, trumpeter Gregg Stafford and drummer Benny Jones,
whose music and discourse provide the basis of this chapter, have maintained
successful careers as traditionalists. Performing songs that were standards until
the mid-twentieth century, in a style they learned through conversations with and
recordings of predecessors such as George Lewis and Kid Howard, they have
identified and gathered a group of musicians capable of reproducing the music. In

various aggregations they make frequent tours of Northern and Western Europe,
where large audiences actively support their endeavours. In addition to playing
traditional jazz, these musicians maintain the Liberty and Young Tuxedo brass
bands, which perform traditional music in venues such as Preservation Hall and
the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
These musicians point to the rise of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the
emergence of subsequent bands that built on their innovations as constituting a
profound break within the brass band tradition. Gregg Stafford, who leads the
Young Tuxedo Brass Band as a strictly traditional music ensemble, tells me,
‘Somewhere around the early ’80s, when the new music came onto the street, new
ways of dancing came onto the street, new approaches to second lining, and what
should be done in terms of what you wear and what you’re supposed to wear, if
you were a brass band. All those traditions have been broken’. Michael White, a
professor at Xavier University since 1980, locates this break specifically at a jazz
funeral performed by the elderly Percy Humphrey and his Eureka Brass Band in
1977, which was ‘the last jazz funeral with written scores’.11
The jazz funeral is a productive site for exploring the ideologies of the
traditionalists. As the most iconic and sacred of local performance traditions, the jazz
funeral is at the centre of debates over tradition, and traditionalists have not welcomed
changes in the way that jazz funerals are organized and performed. Once reserved
for musicians, club members and others prominent in local black communities,
jazz funerals are now available to virtually anyone. The jazz funeral tradition has
opened up to include, most notably, young men and women who have died tragically
young. During the period of my fieldwork, I would estimate that, on average, there is
approximately one jazz funeral per day in New Orleans, performed by a handful of
different brass bands. The proliferation and democratization of the jazz funeral has
brought new approaches to music, marching and dress to the tradition.
At a contemporary jazz funeral, the number of dirges performed is drastically
reduced from previous times. Historically, slow dirges were performed all the way
to the gravesite and only after burial did the band begin playing up-tempo songs.
‘Now today, they don’t even play dirges most of the time’, observes Gregg. ‘As
soon as they put the body in the hearse, they going up the street playing ‘Glory,
Glory, Lay my Burden Down’. Up-tempo. All the way’. Changes in repertoire
and tempo have altered the transition from dirges to up-tempo music, the most
essential and celebrated aspect of the funeral ritual. ‘It’s alright if you throw a
party together, or you decide everybody just want to have a jam session and march
around the block and get down a minute, that’s cool’, Fred tells me. ‘But if you’re
going to bury somebody, the African tradition is, you bury people with a richness of
behaviour and a richness all of what you can put into that’. In Fred’s estimation, the
richness of behaviour is impoverished by changes in musical repertoire, including
the substitution of deliberate sacred songs with cheerful secular repertoire.
11
In addition to musical choices, the way musicians dress for a funeral has also
caused friction. Joseph Torregano, who has balanced a career as a professional
musician and a public school teacher for 35 years, remembers his mentor Percy
Humphrey inspecting the younger musicians at funerals. ‘Percy would look at you
over the top of his glasses and check you out: was your shirt white and pressed?
Were your shoes tied? Were your [trousers] neatly creased?’ Even when bands
began wearing T-shirts to parades in the 1970s, they continued to dress in uniform
for a jazz funeral. ‘Now people come any kind of way: short [trousers], T-shirts,
sandals, tennis shoes’, says Gregg. ‘That’s not the tradition that I came through
when musicians were respected. Musicians are respected today but there was
something about the integrity that they had for the music as well as for the way
they appeared and presented themselves’.
Dress is a critical signifier of identity and status, and for African Americans
presenting positive images has been one way of ‘collapsing status distinctions
between themselves and their oppressors’, writes Robin Kelley. ‘Seeing oneself
and others “dressed up” was enormously important in terms of constructing a
collective identity based on something other than wage work, presenting a public
challenge to the dominant stereotypes of the black body, and reinforcing a sense of
dignity that was perpetually being assaulted’.12 For Joseph and Gregg, a group of
musicians ‘turned out’ in their ‘black and whites’, performing in public displays
of black culture, is a celebratory form of self-representation that diminishes in
significance when musicians wear everyday clothes.
Aesthetic alterations are most evident in contemporary jazz funerals that
memorialize young men and women. Helen Regis describes a jazz funeral for Darnell
‘D-Boy’ Andrews, who died of a gunshot wound in 1995 at the age of 17.13 In the
procession, a crowd of thousands cheered as Darnell’s father poured beer on his
son’s coffin, and the mother then danced on the coffin to the up-tempo music of the
Rebirth Brass Band, all of whom were dressed in street clothes. As Regis observes,
the traditionalists perceive funerals such as D-Boy’s as a damaging caricature of a
proud tradition: ‘The fundamental message promulgated by social and pleasure clubs
– the respectability of blackness – is best illustrated in the funerals for those who
lived to become upstanding elders in the community. D-Boy’s funeral is produced
in tension with those parades that commemorate lives of dignity and defiance’.14
This tension arises from conflicting ideologies, which have their basis in different
musical, thematic, visual and contextual approaches to local performance traditions.
Changes in the way jazz funerals are conducted led Michael White to lament,
‘The once reverent and respectful jazz funeral has become a pale shadow of
12
Robin D. G. Kelley, ‘“We Are Not What We Seem”: The Politics and Pleasures of
Community’, in Robin D. G. Kelley (ed.), Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black
Working Class (New York, 1994), pp. 35–54, at pp. 50–51.
13
Helen Regis, ‘Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second
Line’, American Ethnologist, 28/4 (2001): 752–77.
14
Ibid., p. 767.
its original character’.15 According to White, the funeral tradition has changed
irreparably, though he notes that on occasion a ‘rare, orderly jazz funeral does
still occur’.16 One of the exceptional funerals White mentions was given for
Danny Barker in 1994. The story of how the Barker funeral was organized and
executed, and the developments that grew out of the activities surrounding
the funeral, provides some insight into the ideological underpinnings of the
traditionalists.
Danny Barker’s Jazz Funeral and the Founding of Black Men of Labor
Within hours of Danny Barker’s death at the age of 85, his wife Blue Lu Barker
notified Gregg and others that her husband had requested not to be buried with a
jazz funeral. ‘He had gotten to a point where he was so upset with what he had
seen on the streets’, says Gregg, ‘taking the coffin out of the hearse, raising it up in
the air, pouring wine on top, beer on top’. Though he respected Barker’s wishes,
it was inconceivable to Gregg that his musical mentor would not be memorialized
with a jazz funeral. At a meeting at Barker’s house, Gregg stood up and addressed
Barker’s family and others who had gathered to pay their respects:
I said, ‘Look, Danny Barker came back to New Orleans and instilled in me
and several other musicians … the importance of maintaining the brass band
tradition. [He] told us how to play the songs, taught us what songs to play and
taught us about how to present ourselves. So, here is the man that was responsible
for bridging the gap and perhaps saving the brass band tradition, and not giving
him an honourable jazz funeral?’ I said, ‘No, we got to do something’.
Gregg, Fred and others present explained to Barker’s wife that they would organize
a funeral that would meet her husband’s approval. ‘I said to Miss Lu, the music
on the street dictates the mood and the atmosphere of what goes on in the street’,
recalls Gregg. ‘If you give me full control of the music I will guarantee you a
respectful funeral with dignity’. At that point, Fred interjected, ‘I said, “Miss Lu,
I will be responsible for bringing six to ten men who are dressed in funeral clothes
to marshal the funeral”’. Assured that Gregg and Fred would honour her husband’s
wishes, Miss Lu agreed to let the funeral arrangements begin.
By all accounts, Danny Barker’s funeral was a stunning display of traditional
music and culture. ‘It was probably the most powerfullest experience I had in
terms of a brass band funeral because the music was just awesome’, says Fred.
Gregg’s band had kept those in the second line moving slowly and sombrely with
dirge after dirge. Fred and the other marshals had held back the large crowds and
maintained an orderly parade all the way through to its exultant end.
15
16
Ibid.
On a visit to Gregg’s house, he proudly showed me a photo album with

pictures of Barker’s funeral. Dozens of musicians were ‘turned out’ in black suits
with matching band caps and polished shoes, and they were pictured marching in
closed formation in precise order. Gregg smiled as he turns the pages, ‘Look at
that. That’s the way a jazz funeral is supposed to look. This is dignity’.
After Barker’s body was cut loose and the band led second liners on a
joyful march, Gregg, Fred, drummer Benny Jones and other funeral participants
walked down Claiborne Avenue, savouring their achievement. There was talk of
organizing a parade based on the traditional practices and values that the musicians
and marshals had recreated that day. Fred told the others, ‘we need to put a parade
together and put the kind of music on the street that we grew up in, that we
accustomed to’. Over lunch the following Monday, the Black Men of Labor Social
Aid & Pleasure Club was formed with the specific mission of perpetuating second
line traditions in an orthodox manner, which they have done since 1994.
Black Men of Labor is made up primarily of middle-aged and middle-class black
men. The club’s mission statement celebrates the ‘men and women who worked as
longshoremen, domestics, waiters, cooks, fruit and produce peddlers, sack-sewers,
ditch-diggers, seamstresses, street cleaners, tailors, [and] merchant seamen’, and
also lists musicians ‘Louis Armstrong, Danny Barker … The Olympia Brass Band,
the Onward, the Excelsior, Tuxedo, Eureka Brass Band, Doc Paulin Brass Band, E.
Gibson Brass Band, Reliance Brass Band, George Williams Brass Band, Cal Blunt
Brass Band, [and] Royal Brass Band’ among those ‘whose work, toil, and sacrifices
made who we are, possible’.17 This statement is printed on Black Men of Labor
stationery, which features an illustrated graphic of various ‘tools’ along the margins:
a telephone, a stethoscope, an electric drill, a wrench, an electric razor and a trumpet.
Benny Jones, co-founder of BMOL and bandleader of the Tremé Brass Band,
equated musicians’ work with other jobs more conventionally understood as labour:
Benny: If you want to join the club you have to have a job. Like the longshoremen,
the postmen, the carpenters and the bricklayers and the guys [who] work on the
pillar and wagon – the guys been doing all the work around this city – they have
their own skill, or their own trade …
Matt: And do you count musicians in that?
Benny: Well, we count musicians, exactly. Everybody have their own skill, with
their own business. It’s a labour, and that’s why we count them in.
To honour musicians and other labourers, Benny, Gregg and Fred Johnson chose to
schedule their parade on Labour Day weekend because they had grown up attending
the spectacular parades of the Longshoremen’s Union on that holiday. A year of
club meetings, fundraisers and planning sessions culminate in a public display of
17
Black Men of Labor, ‘A Message to the Citizens of New Orleans’ (2006).
culture intended to project positive images and sounds of blackness. Music is a

critical representational device within these displays, and in their yearly parade
members work to sustain specific genres of the past as an ideological response to
genres of the present that they evaluate as detrimental to black culture. I will use
my observation of the 2007 parade, which I documented with audio recording,
photographs and field notes, to demonstrate how the ideologies of the Black Men
of Labor are executed in practice.
Tradition on Parade
Like all second line parades, the BMOL parade takes place on a Sunday afternoon
and is organized by club members who dance and march to the beat of the brass band
through the backstreets and main thoroughfares of the city. In other ways, the BMOL
parade is distinct from those organized by dozens of other contemporary Social Aid
& Pleasure Clubs. Musical, aesthetic and thematic content is carefully monitored to
adhere to an ideological programme that stresses respectability. The large crowd, more
generationally and racially mixed than all other parades, is one indication of BMOL’s
success in organizing an explicitly traditionalist second line (see Figures 5.2 and 5.3).
Figure 5.2 Black Men of Labor founding members Gregg Stafford (far left)
and Fred Johnson (far right), 3 September 2006
Figure 5.3 Members of the Black Men of Labor dance in front of the musicians
and second liners, 2 September 2007
The musical direction of the parade is delegated to Benny Jones, who leaves
his snare drum at home so he can dance to the music of his handpicked band.
Jones typically organizes two bands, asking all of the musicians to sign a contract
agreeing to dress in uniform and limit performance to a set of standard repertoire.
Before a note is sounded, astute bystanders observe something unique about
the BMOL parade: the musicians socializing in the street are wearing white band
caps, white button-down shirts, black dress trousers and black lace-up shoes. While
many of these musicians can be seen wearing uniforms at other events, especially
parades staged for the lucrative tourist market, this is the only day of the year when
musicians ‘turn out’ for a community second line parade. I notice a club member
exchanging words with a musician who arrived in street clothes, and later I spot the
musician wearing a white shirt and black trousers borrowed from another musician.
BMOL club members also distinguish themselves through their appearance.
Unlike the Sidewalk Steppers, Lady Buck Jumpers and other clubs that march in
flashy tailored suits, the BMOL has their outfits designed with West African cloth in
distinctive colour schemes and patterns.18 Some carry matching umbrellas, twirling
18
In addition to BMOL, the Sudan Social Aid & Pleasure Club is another parading
organization that incorporates West African fabrics and symbols into its annual parade, and
there are several men who are members of both clubs.
them as they dance, much like their forebears from West Africa. The appearance of
the members and the musicians, in different ways, underscores the traditionality of
the second line parade as a black performance tradition with deep roots.
The music at the parade also makes explicit links to expressions of blackness
associated with prior ways of parading. In deference to the Eureka, the Tuxedo and
other bands that stopped parading decades ago, the repertoire at BMOL parades
is dominated by African American spirituals and hymns. While sacred music is
a part of all contemporary second line parades, it is most frequently heard when
the parade goes by the house of a member who recently passed away. At BMOL,
on the other hand, second liners hear ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’, ‘Over in
Gloryland’ and ‘Down By the Riverside’ throughout the parade. The abundance
of sacred music reinforces an unbroken lineage of black spirituality, from African
religious ritual to distinctly African American forms of Christianity.
When the club members begin dancing single file out of Sweet Lorraine’s, the
band plays the spiritual ‘Lord, Lord, Lord’. Heading down St. Claude Avenue and
into the Tremé neighbourhood, the repertoire becomes progressively more modern.
We hear the 1950s popular standard ‘John Casimir’s Whoopin’ Blues’, then Professor
Longhair’s 1953 rhythm & blues song ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’. The body of
repertoire recreates that of the Fairview band in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The musicians perform at slower tempos for BMOL than for other contemporary
parades. ‘Liza Jane’, for instance, is played at the same tempo as the Hurricane
Brass Band played it on their self-titled LP, recorded under the tutelage of revivalist
Danny Barker in 1975. This is far slower than the Dirty Dozen played the song
on their record My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now in 1984, and more conducive to the
orderly marching and dancing that conforms to BMOL’s ideological programme
of black respectability. Benny Jones had earlier explained to me: ‘We don’t want
to be running on the street. We want to take our time’. On the street, his theories
are put to action, as the musicians perform at a leisurely tempo that regulates the
movement of the first and second liners.
A block or so back from the head of the parade is a second band that looks
and sounds subtly different from the first. The tempos are a notch faster and speed
up over the course of the afternoon. The repertoire is slightly more recent than the
first, reaching up to the late 1970s and early 1980s. The song ‘I Ate Up the Apple
Tree’, first recorded by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in 1984, was the newest song
performed that afternoon and the only song that featured a solo vocal. Thematically,
‘I Ate Up the Apple Tree’ was also the most sexually suggestive song, with the tree
acting as a metaphor for a woman’s lower extremities. While this song is nowhere
near as explicit as the material performed by contemporary bands at other parades,
that this second band was able to include it among the spirituals and older repertoire
indicates a level of flexibility even within what is defined as tradition.
This second band includes younger musicians who regularly perform in the
progressive bands. Most strikingly, over half of the Rebirth Brass Band is here –
Corey Henry, Stafford Agee, Derrick Shezbie, Byron Bernard and Philip Frazier
– five progressives filling the ranks of this self-consciously traditionalist band. I
have seen Rebirth march down this same street many times, but never turned out
in their black and whites, playing traditional repertoire at a leisurely tempo.
Looking closely, I took note of minute signs of subversion to the constrictions
of traditionalism. Trombonist Corey Henry stood out in his mirrored sunglasses
and a bandana peeking out from under the band cap. His belt buckle was a shiny
gold skeleton skull. As the temperature rose, Corey unbuttoned and untucked his
shirt, letting it fall almost to his knees.
None of the club members seem to take notice of Corey’s appearance, and
anyway, founders Gregg Stafford, Fred Johnson and Benny Jones are marching
with the first band. When I later ask Fred and Gregg about including the younger
progressives in the BMOL parade, I expect them to explain their presence as one
of necessity due to the inevitable passing of older tradition-bearers. However,
both men tell me that these musicians have been recruited specifically so they can
become knowledgeable about maintaining traditional practices. ‘We got this yin
and yang with the old and the new’, says Fred. ‘My thing to all of the musicians
that play brass band music is, what you want to do is know the traditional music
… If you have the foundation, then you’re alright’. Gregg goes further and links
BMOL’s objectives to those of his mentor. ‘That’s what Danny Barker stood for’,
he tells me. ‘There’s room for them to be able to play the old music and do what
they want to do. And that’s all. We’re trying to make sure that the old traditions are
passed on to the next generation’.
Rather than exclude modern styles from brass band performance, the activities
of the Black Men of Labor allow for the cultivation, sustainability and staging
of prior performance practices alongside more recent developments. Because the
modern brass bands dominate the second line parade schedule – especially Rebirth,
Hot 8 and younger bands such as the Free Agents, To Be Continued and Baby
Boyz – Black Men of Labor provides a space for the dissemination of traditional
music that might not be available otherwise. The traditionalists and their younger
counterparts both believe that a single musician is capable of embodying tradition
and innovation, that these categories are fluid and that the key is in balancing
these performative identities and determining which is appropriate in a given
performance context. The 2007 BMOL parade was a space set aside intentionally
for the recreation of prior modes of performance, yet even within this explicitly
traditionalist space there was some wiggle room for expression that falls outside
the boundaries of tradition.
Conclusion: Productive Friction
In her book Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Anna Tsing writes of

the ‘sticky engagements’ between disparate groups from far-flung locales that are
brought into connection through the global economy. These ‘heterogeneous and
unequal encounters can lead to new arrangements of culture and power’, which
she terms friction.19
In this chapter, I have dwelled upon the friction that exists among musicians
and club members who are members of the same race, inhabit the same city
and participate in the same performance traditions. The internal dynamics of this
group of black New Orleanians, and their disagreements over how they define
their role as tradition-bearers, give us a sense of the heterogeneity contained
within categories. They also tell us something about how music is situated within
the politics of representing race in New Orleans at the beginning of the twenty-
first century.
In closing, I suggest that we assess this friction not only as a sign of antagonistic
relations within a musical community, but as a sign of the richness and vitality
of the brass band, jazz funeral and second line traditions. Friction, according to
Tsing, not only slows things down but also sets things in motion; friction can be
productive as well as destructive. In New Orleans, a diverse set of practitioners
bring their perspectives to tradition and through their arguments and alliances they
ensure that tradition remains a relevant space.
We can measure the productivity of the debates over tradition through the
activities of people and organizations that are working to indoctrinate musicians
into the brass band tradition. Musician and scholar Michael White, for instance,
organized a series of workshops with the Hot 8 Brass Band in order to help them
become more fluent in traditional repertoires and performance practices. Though
the Hot 8 continue to appeal to younger audiences attuned to hip-hop, their
collaborations with White helped them to expand their audience to include fans of
traditional brass and music in Europe and elsewhere.
BMOL has launched a programme called Project Leaf to educate young
people about traditional performance practices. A brass band made up of inner-city
teenagers practises every Saturday morning under the guidance of Benny Jones and
others from the Tremé Brass Band. At the 2007 BMOL parade, the students played
alongside their mentors, looking and sounding like a modern-day Fairview band.
BMOL is an exceptional organization that is perpetuating an exceptional
tradition in an exceptional city. Yet the ideologies and practices of its members point
to the ongoing relevance of tradition in the twenty-first century, the representation
of race through cultural displays and the burden that this representational weight
places on particular African Americans.
19
Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton, 2005),
p. 5.
Chapter 6
Soldiers of God: The Spectacular Musical
Ministry of the Christmas Bands in the
Western Cape, South Africa
Sylvia Bruinders
Around Christmas time in the Western Cape region of South Africa, an annual
ritual takes place that has been documented in the local newspapers since the
mid-1850s.1 This cultural practice, which I refer to as the Christmas Bands
Movement, is one of the marching parade practices that are evident in the city
streets and townships of Cape Town. Christmas bands consist of an ensemble of
wind and stringed instruments, and a marching group of the young children and
teenagers who do not (yet) play musical instruments. Three voorlopers or drum
majors who execute a military style march lead the entire Christmas band of
between 50 and 100 members.
The practice is ensconced among the Creole peoples who have historically
benefited somewhat from a more privileged social status than other black groups
in South Africa. Yet their social position was an unenviable one, as Creoles
were situated within the interstices of the numerically powerful black and
economically powerful white population groupings. Not quite black enough to
suffer the indignity of carrying a passbook to be allowed to live and work in
‘white’ South Africa, they were neither white enough to have the franchise, nor
to enjoy other benefits of the privileged whites. Under apartheid, in existence
from 1948 to 1990, the ‘coloured people’, a racialized designation for the Creole
population, were forcibly relocated from leafy areas close to the mountain and the
city centre to racially segregated townships on the Cape Flats, a desolate wetlands
with a dangerously rising water table in the rainy winter months and very few
amenities for the ever-increasing communities.
Deeply entrenched within the practice of Christmas bands are certain ethics,
which hinge around notions of respectability, discipline and order as well as
Christian beliefs and norms. I contend that the articulation of these ethics in
this practice was a response to the historical social position of the practitioners
1
I would like to thank the editors for their insightful comments, which gave much
depth to this chapter. Suzel Reily’s comments, especially, assisted in giving this chapter
coherence.
within an intensely racist and dehumanizing society.2 Certain cultural practices

have become symbolic of the community and its struggle for both freedom
and respectability. The Christmas Bands Movement is one such expressive
practice socially located within the lower-class Christian coloured community.
Organizations like Christmas bands thus play an important role in dignifying
working-class coloured people who also perceive themselves as Christian soldiers
doing musical ministry in their communities. Furthermore, respectability has
been highly prized in certain coloured communities in the Western Cape of South
Africa. The concept of respectability, which emerged out of the Victorian era
and had a profound effect on civil society, has been an underlying theme in the
historiography of communities in the Western Cape, where it is acknowledged to
be particularly meaningful.3
I contend that in the Christmas Bands Movement, respectability has strong
implications for enacting citizenship.4 This is particularly significant for the
politically marginalized coloured communities for whom inclusion into the nation
was historically rather ambiguous. In my earliest interactions with the Christmas
bands, the notion of respectability emerged strongly in conversations and
interviews with leaders of the movement. This often took the form of distancing
the Christmas bands from the carnival troupes with whom they are often confused
and which the leadership of the Christmas bands view with ambivalence. This
was particularly intriguing to me when I learned through my close involvement
and in interviews that some members and the leaders themselves are – or were
– often part of the instrumental band accompanying the carnival troupes. Of
course in these instances the Christmas bands members were able to increase
their earnings considerably over a culturally significant period through their
participation as musicians, and since they were not strictly speaking members of
these organizations, they did not perceive their involvement as a moral dilemma.
2
See Roy H. du Pré, Separate but Unequal (Johannesburg, 1994); Ian Goldin, Making
Race: The Politics and Economics of Coloured Identity in South Africa (Cape Town, 1987);
Courtney Jung, Then I was Black: South African Political Identities in Transition (New
Haven, 2000); Robert Carl-Heinz Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave
Society at the Cape of Good Hope (Johannesburg, 1994).
3
See Andrea Badham, ‘The Badge of Respectability: Anglicanism in Turn-of-the-
Century Woodstock’, in Christopher Saunders (ed.), Studies in the History of Cape Town
(Cape Town, 1988), pp. 83–95; Vivian Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice
in Victorian Cape Town: Group Identity and Social Practice, 1875–1902 (Cambridge,
1995); Zimitri Erasmus (ed.), Coloured by History Shaped by Place (Cape Town, 2001);
Gavin Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African ‘Coloured’ Politics
(Cape Town, 1987).
4
See Sylvia Bruinders, ‘Grooving and Learning with a Christmas Band’, in
Hetta Potgieter (ed.), The Transformation of Musical Arts Education: Local and Global
Perspectives from South Africa (Potchefstroom, 2006), pp. 106–23; Sylvia Bruinders, ‘This
is our Sport! Christmas Band Competitions and the Enactment of an Ideal Community’,
SAMUS, 26/27 (2006/2007): 109–26.
Soldiers of God 141
Nevertheless, since the notion of citizenship was such an elusive one for the
coloured community throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the
Christmas bands’ embodiment of respectability and the moral constitution of their
collective selves is, I suggest, an enactment of their desire for the recognition of
their inalienable right to citizenship. Even though the democratic elections in
1994 have changed the political situation for South Africans, the working-class
coloured people among whom I did my fieldwork do not necessarily feel that
much has changed for them.
In this chapter I explore the notions of respectability for the larger community
through the creation of spectacular moments in two important practices of the
Christmas bands: the ‘road marches’ (street parades) and the competitions.
Cultural competitions, much like festivals, carnivals and parades by subaltern
groups, are discursive strategies of the powerless, which involve community
spectacles of visual and sonic display. They construct alternate social spaces
and engage notions of selfhood, dignity, power and collective identity. John
MacAloon, who made an incisive analysis of the Olympic Games, asserts that
‘Spectacles give primacy to visual sensory and symbolic codes; they are things
to be seen’.5 Spectacles are events that include spectators, often en masse.
According to Beeman it is the presence of an observing and evaluating audience,
rather than a participatory one that differentiates spectacle from ritual, sports and
games.6 Furthermore, he suggests, ‘Spectacle is a public display of a society’s
central meaningful elements. Parades, festivals and other such events occur at
regular intervals and are frequently deeply meaningful for a society’.7 I contend
that through the spectacle of parades and competitions members of Christmas
bands find meaning for their lives. It is through these activities that they enact a
sense of dignity and respectability denied them by their former oppressors and
their still current social and cultural marginalization.
Introduction to the Christmas Bands Movement
In the living memory of Christmas band members, the movement (not historically
perceived as such by the members themselves) has been in existence for most
of the previous century. Documentation on the movement is almost non-existent
and only rarely referred to in the context of similar cultural practices, such
5
John J. MacAloon, ‘Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle in Modern
Societies’, in John J. MacAloon (ed.), Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward
a Theory of Cultural Performance (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 241–80, at p. 243.
6
William O. Beeman, ‘The Anthropology of Theater and Spectacle’, Annual Review
of Anthropology, 22 (1993): 369–93, at 379.
7
Ibid., p. 380.
as the well‑documented Minstrel Carnival8 and Malay Choirs.9 The earliest

documentation of Christmas bands describes bands of Christian coloured people
soliciting alms for their churches; in 1857 ‘various instrumental bands played
suitable musical selections’ parading on Christmas Eve until the morning.10 The
oldest extant Christmas bands were established in the first three decades of the
twentieth century as family vocal groups that sang Christmas carols to their
extended families and neighbours. Instruments were incorporated through the
years, as I explain later. Although a cultural formation unique to the Western Cape
of South Africa, Christmas bands were influenced by several prototypes in both
South Africa and other parts of the world. These include military and paramilitary
bands as well as church bands, such as the Salvation Army and Moravian Church
brass bands and the Anglican and Dutch Reformed Church Lads Brigades’ drum
and fife bands. As members of the Church Lads Brigades, the founder members
learned about drilling, marching in formation and playing instruments, along
with Christian ethics and notions of respectability that remain fundamental to
the Christmas Bands Movement. Although they exist independently of Christian
churches, bands enjoy close affiliations with several denominations and are
regarded as socially uplifting organizations within their communities. Christmas
bands are formally structured organizations with an executive body, a constitution
and a membership that ranges between 50 and 100 members, although a few boast
of a membership close to 200.
The Christmas Bands Movement consists of three federal organizations called
Christmas Bands Boards, which represent Christmas Bands Unions that each
8
Lisa Mary Baxter, History, Identity and Meaning: Cape Town’s Coon Carnival in
the 1960s and 1970s (Cape Town, 1996); M. Shamil Jeppie, ‘Aspects of Popular Culture
and Class Expression in Inner Cape Town, circa 1939–1959’ (MA thesis, University of
Cape Town, 1990); Denis Martin, ‘“The Famous Invincible Darkies”: Cape Town’s Coon
Carnival: Aesthetic Transformations, Collective Representations, and Social Meanings in
the Twentieth Century’, in Andrew Tracey (ed.) Confluences: Cross-Cultural Fusions in
Music and Dance. Proceedings of the First South African Dance Conference Incorporating
the 15th Symposium on Ethnomusicology, 1997 (Cape Town, 1997), pp. 297–333; Denis
Martin, Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town, Past and Present (Cape Town, 1999);
Gerald S. Stone, The Coon Carnival (Cape Town, 1971).
9
Achmat Davids, ‘Music and Islam’, in Andrew Tracey (ed.), Papers Presented at
the Fifth Symposium on Ethnomusicology, Faculty of Music, University of Cape Town,
August 30th–September 1st, 1984 (Grahamstown, 1985), pp. 36–8; Desmond Desai, ‘Cape
Malay Music’, in Andrew Tracey (ed.), Papers Presented at the Fifth Symposium on
Ethnomusicology, Faculty of Music, University of Cape Town, August 30th–September 1st,
1984 (Grahamstown, 1985), pp. 39–44; Izak David Du Plessis, Die Bydrae van die Kaapse
Maleier tot die Afrikaanse Volkslied (Kaapstad, 1935); Izak David Du Plessis, The Cape
Malays, History, Religion, Traditions, Folk Tales: The Malay Quarter (Cape Town, 1972).
10
Cape Argus (26 December 1857) quoted in Nigel Worden, Elizabeth Van Heynigen
and Vivian Bickford-Smith, Cape Town: The Making of a City: An Illustrated Social
History (Claremont, 1998), p. 195.
Soldiers of God 143
comprise several Christmas bands. There are approximately 80 Christmas bands

in the Western Cape, most of which are affiliated with the three Christmas Bands
Boards. The movement started with individual Christmas bands, which organized
musical parades in their communities around Christmas and New Year. As
mentioned before, in the early twentieth century these were initially vocal groups
that went around carolling and wishing their families and neighbours well for
Christmas and the New Year. In return for their serenades, they were offered a tafel
(table of foods) by their neighbours. This exchange of friendship and community
spirit is still prevalent in the Christmas Bands Movement and the communities
from which the bands hail.
In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, these groups slowly
started to include stringed instruments, which eventually replaced the vocal groups.
Violins and mandolins played the melody and were accompanied by banjos and
guitars, with the cellos or klein bassies (literally ‘little basses’) providing the bass
line. In those early years they were often referred to as sacred string bands. Some
bands still retain this name, such as the Young Guiding Stars Sacred String Band,
which is recognized as the oldest Christmas band. It was formally established
in 1932, although it has reportedly been in existence since 1923. Christmas
bands developed into wind and string ensembles by the 1950s. Saxophones were
introduced first, and then in the 1960s trumpets and later other brass instruments
were included. The introduction of the saxophones apparently paralleled their
popularity in jazz, keenly observed by the local musicians.11 These days the bands
use many wind instruments with a small string section. There is no standard
instrumentation or size for the bands, thus each band has a unique collection of
instruments depending on which instruments the bands or their members own.
The membership of Christmas bands consisted exclusively of adult males until
the 1950s, when groups began to include young boys. Women were not allowed to
be full members, although they were always tangentially involved in supporting
male musicians by raising funds for their uniforms and instruments and providing
food at long rehearsals, competitions and other events. Since the South African
democratic elections, which ushered in a new constitution in 1995 ensuring
gender rights and equality, women have insisted on becoming full members
of the bands.12 Today, all members wear uniforms, which consist of trousers, a
club blazer and badge, shirt and tie, matching socks and shoes, belt and hat. The
membership ranges from the very young to the elderly and is categorized in three
sections: tiny tots (3–10 years old), juniors (11–18 years old) and seniors – the
oldest members are over 70 and 80 years old. The bands perceive themselves as
volunteer organizations offering community services by performing at church and
community events as well as at hospitals and old-age homes.
11
This was confirmed in two initial interviews with Charles Sprinkle (19 July 2001)
and Hannes September (25 July 2001).
12
The issue of gender in the Christmas bands warrants a larger discussion, which is
not the focus of this chapter.
While bands are performing the renewal rites through house visitations in the
summer months, several rounds of competitions occur simultaneously between
January and March; first the Christmas Band Union competitions are held followed
by the Christmas Bands Board competitions. Although the Christmas bands
perform at many different events, mainly associated with community and religious
contexts, this chapter will focus on the two main arenas of band performance: the
‘road marches’ or street parades and the competitions. I assert that both arenas of
performance of the Christmas Bands Movement have become important spaces for
creating cultural meaning for sections of the coloured community in the Western
Cape of South Africa.
The Road Marches
The road marches begin on Christmas Eve and continue on Sundays thereafter
through the months of January, February and March. This marks the time when the
band visits each member in a ritual of renewal of friendship and solidarity between
the band and its members. Performance, feasting and prayer stimulate fellowship
among the band members. What follows is an ethnographic description of my first
road march with the St. Joseph’s Christmas band on Christmas Eve 2003.
The members start to arrive at the clubhouse, the home of the founder member,
from 10 pm in order to leave at 11 pm. Members, from the oldest to the youngest,
shake each other’s hands in a warm greeting. There is immense excitement,
especially among the little children, who participate despite it being already past
their bedtime. Before we leave, a prayer is said by one of the members, in which
he thanks God that they have all arrived safely and asks for protection throughout
the night. They form a semicircle at the gate just outside the clubhouse where
they play a Christmas carol, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, to the members of the
household and interested neighbours. Then they line up in formation, three abreast
behind the three voorlopers (drum majors); one from each age group with the
senior voorloper leading the marching file. The rest of the band line up in their
age categories from the youngest to the oldest, and after the senior voorloper has
called out, ‘by the left, quick march!’, they set off marching vigorously, while
playing ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’ to a march tempo. They are on their way to the
clubhouse of the neighbouring Young Guiding Stars Sacred String Band. When
the members of the other band hear them nearing their clubhouse, they come
outside, solemnly hold their hats over their hearts, and form a guard of honour,
through which St. Joseph’s Christmas Band marches. Once inside the property,
they play two Christmas songs, ‘Oh come all ye Faithful’ and ‘Mary’s Boy Child’,
for which they receive rapturous applause. Then Mr Cecil Tookley, the senior
voorloper of St. Joseph’s, addresses the host band saying, ‘Ek dank die Here, vir
die vriendskap wat daar heers tussen die twee kore. Ek wens julle geluk met die
nuwe jaar en aller voorspoed met die kompetisies as ook God se seën aan die koor
vir die res van die jaar’ [I thank the Lord for the constant friendship between the
Soldiers of God 145
two bands. I wish you a happy New Year and best of luck for the competitions as
well as God’s blessing on the band for the rest of the year]. The senior voorloper
of the host band, Mr Fred de Kock, returns these wishes and hands over a small
donation to the visiting band. Another member of St. Joseph’s prays, after which
they line up in formation in the road before setting off playing another march,
‘Jubilate’. This time, Mr de Kock of the Young Guiding Stars Sacred String Band
leads St. Joseph’s, walking vigorously ahead of Mr Tookley. After a while Mr de
Kock gives way, moves off to the side and stands to attention with his hat over his
heart as they pass.
The band members get on a bus parked close by which sets off for Steenberg, a
working-class neighbourhood where a number of the members live. Once the bus
is close to a member’s house, they disembark, line up in formation and at the call of
the senior drum major, they march to the house to the sounds of ‘Onward Christian
Soldiers’. At the house the family and neighbours await the band eagerly, cheering
them happily with smiles all round. At the house the same ritual of exchange and
renewal is performed with Mr Tookley once again doing the honours. He usually
starts off by acknowledging that a year has passed and that they are at the brink
of another new year. He expresses his gratefulness for the friendship between the
family and the band and that the member is still with the band. He values the role
that each member plays in the band and mentions how each one’s place in the band
is important. At some of the houses, the mother or father of the house responds to
his good wishes, expressing their commitment to the band and their thanks for the
role of the band in their lives.
We visit several members’ houses and finally receive a huge tafel of local foods,
soft drinks and desserts. The men are quite grateful for these replenishments;
in fact, some of the young boys have already started to complain at the lack of
hospitality as some of them are quite hungry – they did not eat much dinner in
anticipation of the feasts awaiting them. The hours pass by surprisingly quickly.
The most beautiful time for me is early in the morning, around 3 am and 4 am.
It is incredibly quiet and the air is fresh. As the band passes the sleeping houses,
performing a Christian march, some of the occupants peep through the windows
and wave at the band sleepily.
Spectacular Moments
The band’s arrival in the communities is quite spectacular in the way that it seizes
attention both visually and sonically (see Figure 6.1). The three voorlopers lead
the junior section that marches in strict file three-abreast, followed by the tiny
tots, whose little legs struggle to keep the pace and to march in file. The seniors
make up the instrumental band that follows, led by the trumpeters, followed by the
saxophones from soprano to baritone, then the trombones and tubas, and finally
the ‘background’ (strings and piano accordion). In some respects, the arrival of
the bands in the community could be compared to that of the charivari and the
Figure 6.1 St. Joseph’s Christmas Band on parade in Woodstock, 2009
callithumpian bands of the early 1800s in East Coast cities of the USA, in which
musical instruments and noise were used to register discontent with the authorities.13
I do not mean to imply that the Christmas bands are merely capable of vociferous
clamour, but like the East Coast working classes signalling a groundswell of
power and claiming of city space, the Christmas bands spectacularly announce
their arrival in the communities they visit.
Several writers have addressed the importance of the appropriation of
public space in relation to the annual New Year Carnival in Cape Town. They
suggest that its importance is connected to the fact that the coloured people
were forcibly relocated to far-flung areas on the Cape Peninsula under apartheid
and symbolically reclaim the central city space during the carnival. The use of
powerful imagery in the writers’ descriptions of this appropriation alludes to
its significance. Denis Martin writes that the revellers ‘invade the city and take
possession of it’,14 while M. Shamil Jeppie has written that ‘[a]n event of singular
significance on the calendar of working class culture’, the New Year’s Carnival
involves the ‘occupation of public space by the dispossessed’.15 The significance
of this appropriation is connected not only to the literal city space, but also to the
13
Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World
(New York, 1997).
14
Martin, Coon Carnival, p. 30.
15
Jeppie, ‘Aspects of Popular Culture’, pp. 39 and 42.
Soldiers of God 147
figurative city space, which is perceived as indexical of the coloured communities.

The coloured underclasses are acutely aware of the importance of their presence
to the city’s character, which adds to the vibrancy of its cultural space. They are
often heard to say, ‘We are Cape Town’,16 or ‘without us, Cape Town would have
had no history and no culture’17 or even, ‘without us, Cape Town is nothing!’18
The contested nature of this appropriated space is inherent in these expressions.
These claims are particularly interesting considering that historically both whites
and blacks throughout segregationist colonial and apartheid periods perceived
coloured people to lack a distinct culture and heritage.19 This negative view,
unfortunately, is still prevalent in South African society: a more recent case in
point is the exposure by the media of a website of Blackman Ngoro, the former
communications official of Cape Town, who referred to coloureds as ‘culturally
inferior’ and in need of ‘ideological transformation’.20
Although the Christmas bands have not necessarily converged on the city
centre, symbolically storming it annually,21 they do ‘take possession’ of certain
communities on the outer edges of the city and parts of the Western Cape. Historically,
Christmas bands were established in ghettos and suburbs close to the city centre,
as well as further afield in the greater Cape Town. Through the Group Areas Act
of 1956, the apartheid state declared many of these areas white, and people who
were not classified as such were subjected to the policy of forced removals during
the 1960s and 1970s. This often included the destruction of the ancestral homes
and clubhouses of the bands. It is noteworthy that, even though most members of a
particular Christmas band do not live in the same neighbourhoods since the forced
removals, they now hire buses to take them to greet their former neighbours on
Christmas morning and throughout the festive season. The buses stop a distance
from the former neighbours’ homes; the members disembark and then parade to
these homes. In this way they map out and enact a sense of community and place
through the memory of, and nostalgia for, those places once regarded as home.
Despite the dislocation of these communities through apartheid policies, the
members have almost defiantly retained old neighbourhood connections.
The community members’ responses are often very jubilant, and for some older
people, particularly tearful. There could be several reasons for these emotional
16
Martin, Coon Carnival, p. 30.
17
Martin, ‘“The Famous Invincible Darkies”’, p. 315.
18
I have often heard this sentiment expressed.
19
See Daria Caliguire, ‘Voices from the Community’, in Wilmot Godfrey James, Daria
Caliguire and Kerry Cullinan (eds), Now That We are Free (Cape Town, 1996), pp. 9–15.
20
Quoted in Wilmot James, ‘“Ngoro Insult” Unmasks a Poorly Read Chauvinist Who
Draws Racist Conclusions’, Cape Times, 26 July 2005.
21
Before the Group Areas Act, the bands performed on the first Saturday in December
in the commercial district of Claremont, which was close to many coloured neighbourhoods.
It is only since 2003 that they have marched in the city on the Sunday before Christmas as
part of a government initiative.
displays. One of these is that the band personally recognizes them through the
special visitation. This is especially the case for widows of former bandsmen who
no longer receive regular annual visits. They are thus overjoyed when the band
does visit them and recognizes their significant role in the band in their former,
active years. For many, the band evokes the memory of their former homes and
neighbourhoods from which they were forcibly removed and have never quite
healed; the visitation thus highlights the loss of home.
The notion of the home regarded as a safe, wholesome place in contrast to
the streets, which are dangerous and depraved, presents an interesting dichotomy.
While carnival street parades are historically spaces of wild abandonment and
an express lack of decency, the Christmas band parades are distinctly opposed to
those sentiments. Notwithstanding their earlier displacement, these parades seem
to affirm the respectability of Christian homes. In his seminal book on Brazilian
culture, Roberto DaMatta describes the Catholic ritual of the feast day of a saint, in
which an image of the saint is processed through the streets and into the devotees’
houses, ‘sacralizing’ the streets and dissolving the boundaries between street and
house.22 Here, too, the Christmas bands ‘sacralize’ the streets temporarily as they
march from the bus to the home of the member.
While the road marches are significant annual rituals for the bands’ profile
within their communities, the competitions are important for the bands’ status
within the Christmas Bands Movement.
Competitions
Competitions are contentious events that convey critical evaluation in a highly

public manner. Like festivals, Christmas band competitions are community
spectacles of musical and visual display. These displays are completely focused
towards the local community and as such are symbolically significant. Although
tourism has played an increasingly important role in the staging of cultural
events since the democratic elections in 1994, Christmas band competitions have
remained inward-reaching, marking community events that ‘are staged entirely
within and for a community’ rather than being folkloric and outward-reaching.23
The bands perform for the local Christmas bands’ communities, composed of the
families and supporters of the bands.
Christmas band competitions are framed by the wearing of uniforms, by
prescribed or ritualized behaviour and personal constraints imposed upon the
competitors. Through these framing devices, competitions transform the everyday
into the extraordinary and raise the expectation for spectacle. On the morning of
22
Roberto DaMatta, Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the
Brazilian Dilemma, trans. John Drury (Notre Dame, IN, 1991 [1979]), pp. 75–6.
23
Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman, ‘Hawaiian Hula Competitions: Event, Repertoire,
Performance, Tradition’, Journal of American Folklore, 109/434 (1996): 357–80, at 357–8.
Soldiers of God 149
competitions the bands travel by bus to the stadium where the competition will
be held. While bands wait to assemble outside the stadium, musicians exchange
friendly greetings, size up other bands and performers, and the captain and
bandmaster give last minute instructions. When most bands are ready, they make
a grand entry onto the stadium grounds. The bands enter individually with a short
break between each one. The band members walk in a marching file in strict march
tempo accompanied by the horns and strings. Two members at the back of the
marching file carry the banner of the band. As soon as the bands enter the arena, an
announcer informs the spectators which band has just entered and their supporters
cheer vociferously, shouting the band’s name or even names of band members.
These days the cheering is often punctuated by the vuvuzela,24 adding to the sports-
like atmosphere.
Several group categories are adjudicated on the day, which are repeated for each
age division. The three group categories I discuss in detail below are the prescribed
piece, best-dressed band and grand march past. The drum major in each division
is also adjudicated for his or her ability to lead the ‘grand march past’, twirl the
mace expertly and address and execute salutes to the adjudicators as well as to the
executive members of the Christmas Bands Unions or Boards, in the respective
competitions (see Figure 6.2). The ‘grand entry’ march is still adjudicated in the
oldest Christmas Bands Board, but is no longer adjudicated in the newer Boards.
Figure 6.2 St. Joseph’s Christmas Band performing at the Union Competition
24
A long slender conical-shaped plastic trumpet, with a particularly rasping sound,
commonly used at sports events, and at football matches in particular.
The ‘Solo’
The ‘solo’ is the first category to be adjudicated in most competitions and is

the prescribed competition piece in which the most musically competent band
members perform. The use of the word ‘solo’ reflects their appropriation of
Western classical terminology but does not correspond to that meaning at all. The
senior ‘solo’ (which I will focus on) is the most crucial category for the band’s
identity as an important contender in the competitions. The ‘solo’ can range from
a favourite classical piece to religious music. In the past they have performed
pieces such as ‘The Lost Chord’ by Arthur Sullivan, ‘In a Monastery Garden’ by
Albert Ketèlbey, the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni,
and religious music such as ‘Sun of My Soul’ by Edmund Turner. These pieces
form the staple of the bands’ competition repertoire as they are handed down
through the generations and can be performed at the competitions at least once
in a decade.
In the previous year, the bandmaster is given a copy of the ‘solo’, which is
often an arrangement for solo voice or vocal choir and piano. This is appropriately
rearranged to suit the individual instrumentation of the band. The trend these
days is for the bands to overwhelm their rivals with an exciting arrangement for
a large ensemble. The larger bands are more spectacular in their performative
effects, appealing to the audiences’ musical sensibilities by foregrounding the
sounds of unusual instruments such as sousaphones and bass tubas contrasted
with flutes and clarinets as well as excessive contrasts in dynamics. The bands
model themselves on the symphony orchestra, adhering to strict discipline at
rehearsals, with the conductor being the unquestioned authority. Unlike at a
symphonic performance, where the emphasis is not on the spectacular nature of
the visual or sensory, the audience erupts into applause at any moment to show
their appreciation of these timbral and dynamic contrasts, almost drowning out
the carefully staged effects with their vociferous display. Nevertheless, the ‘solo’
category is the most prestigious, not only because it awards the largest trophy, but
also because it is essentially what the bands are about: playing music together.
The adjudicators for this category are often university professors or teachers at
local music institutions.
Best-Dressed Band
The adjudicators for this category usually come from the navy, army or the police
force. Here the band members do some basic military drilling and almost stand
to attention, much like a military review. The voorloper calls out the routine then
reports to the adjudicators, saluting and addressing them in militaristic tones and
informing them that the band is ready for inspection. The miniaturized spectacle
in this category is the tension-filled scene on the side of the field, as band members
arrange themselves in straight lines with erect and attentive body stances at arm’s
length from each other. Again the attentive supporters applaud to show their
Soldiers of God 151
appreciation for the proficiency of the band members’ execution of this military
spectacle. In the original exhibition of the military parade this review would be
accompanied by the display of the might and grandeur of the armaments of the
state – indeed, a spectacle to instil awe and respect by the subjects of the state.
In the Christmas band competitions, although this category does not possess the
power of the military review, its symbolic significance lies in its representation
of disciplined bodies splendidly clothed despite their social and economic
marginalization.
Grand March Past
The ‘grand march past’ is similarly adjudicated by military men and women. In this
category immense pressure is placed upon the voorloper who is simultaneously
adjudicated for her or his skill at signalling and controlling the band through the
expert handling of the mace. If the voorloper does not have the correct alert and
upright body stance and the discipline to lead a focused squad, then the team is
simply not a contender. The ‘grand march past’ is framed by the interaction of
the voorloper with the adjudicators. She or he reports to the adjudicators: ‘Sir,
band number one is at the ready!’ Then the voorloper takes measured paces ahead
of the marching file and at her or his command – ‘By the left, quick march!’
– the group sets out on a military march accompanied by a strident Christian
march tune. St. Joseph’s enjoys playing ‘My Anchor Holds’ by William Martin
and Daniel Towner; other bands may play ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ or ‘When
the Saints Go Marching In’. Once they have rounded the stadium grounds, the
voorloper has to give the correct indication for the marching file to end the march
together, precisely. Then he or she marches towards the adjudicators to give the
closing salute. The spectators keenly observe the adroitness of the voorloper in
this category, especially at the beginning and ending of the march, which when
perfectly executed receives rousing applause. Unlike the ‘solo,’ which is the most
important category for the band members themselves, there is less mystery around
the ‘grand march past’ for the spectators: it is where the visual predominates rather
than the sonic. They judge whether the band did well by following their parade
around the stadium, keenly watching them execute all the aspects significant for
adjudication.
Performative Analysis
These two main arenas of band performance not only bond local communities of
supporters but also constitute a performance of identity – an annual enactment
of an ideal coloured community as upright and honourable members of society.
Although the two arenas seem to target different facets of the bands’ performance
activities and even different communities – local neighbourhoods in the road
marches and the Christmas Bands Movement as well as a larger, yet still local,
more discerning audience at the competitions – their purpose of Christian ministry

is at the heart of these activities.
While notions of respectability are evident in their dress and deportment,
the use of spectacle, wittingly or unwittingly, is awe-inspiring. Contrary to the
appropriation of space in a carnivalesque context, the underlying nature of this
awe is quite different: here the bands march as soldiers of God. The road marches
are also perfect, serving as practices for the competition. The drill captain walks
alongside the band with a long cane with which he taps the ground when energies
dissipate, ensuring that everyone marches in step. The very nature and intent of
competitions almost guarantees that everyone does his or her best on the day.
The lure of winning trophies and being the envy of most bands seems to be the
overriding factor at competitions, although the leadership at the event reminds the
band members of their Christian ethics and duties.
John MacAloon suggested that spectacles have a certain size and grandeur.25
However, Baz Kershaw refutes this suggestion and reminds us that the human
sense of scale has been radically transformed in the last 400 years, particularly
in the last 30 years, and even more so with the advent of the internet.26 The
result of this global shrinkage, he claims, is that spectacle has been miniaturized.
It is the emphasis on the visual, sensory and the symbolic importance of such
events that make Christmas band activities, both the street parades and the
competitions, spectacular, despite the miniaturized scale of these events compared
with, for instance, the Cape Town Carnival or other carnivals around the world.
Furthermore, through their striking display on the streets, Christmas bands call
attention to their collective potential, which is empowering. Although not on a
comparative scale to displays like the military review or grand baroque culture,
in which the dominant class uses spectacle to intimidate the underclass, in street
parades, the subaltern muster their resources and put on a spectacle, which can be
the source of considerable pride.
In his work on social dramas, Victor Turner suggested that social dramas
involved a break with reality allowing individuals to enter liminal transitory states
and these individuals were later reincorporated into a reconstituted order.27 Drawing
on the work of Handelman, Beeman suggests that public events as spectacles
reconstitute the whole community, by means of their structure and enactment.28
Viewing the spectacle from this analytic perspective, the public events of the
Christmas bands reconstitute these lower-class Christian communities, bonding
them in very special ways that transcend temporal boundaries and reach back
beyond apartheid-era traumas.
25
MacAloon, ‘Olympic Games’, p. 243.
26
Baz Kershaw, ‘Curiosity of Contempt: On Spectacle, the Human, and Activism’,
Theatre Journal, 55/4 (2003): 591–611, at 596.
27
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (London, 1969).
28
Beeman, ‘Anthropology of Theater and Spectacle’.
Soldiers of God 153
Conclusions
In the few years in which I have researched the Christmas bands, it has become
quite obvious to me that the Christmas bands represent something larger than
themselves. There are often emotional displays at their events, which are brought
on purely by their supporters and others observing their disciplined practice on
the road marches or at the homes they visit, and not necessarily by the fraught
competitions. Although the coloured community is far from being a homogeneous
one, this expressive practice is certainly perceived to be representative of the
lower-class Christian community. The coloured community in Cape Town, both
middle and working classes, experienced untold misery through the apartheid
government’s notorious Group Areas Act of 1956, which forcibly removed and
relocated vibrant communities from places close to the city and their places of
work. This social upheaval disrupted some bands for a few years, but surprisingly
not many of the members that I interviewed recall the upheaval to their bands,
although the names of many bands that are no longer in existence or former
names of extant bands refer to the places from which they were uprooted. Other
interviewees have an air of resignation when asked about this historical blight.
I want to suggest that the memory of these difficult times for these communities
is embodied in the Christmas bands. The jolly way in which they perform the
hymns and Christmas carols is reminiscent of the vibrant communities in which
people once lived, where they knew their neighbours well and where they felt safe
and happy. The townships to which they were relocated are known to be gang
and drug-infested. The work of the Christmas bands of musical ministry is much
harder in these contexts.
Respectability in this particular practice is tied up with Christian ethics as
well as a certain religiosity, which the Christmas bands represent through their
performances of religious music, offering of prayers and their neat appearance
whenever they come together as a band. Through their practices, the bands
emphasize such Christian ethics as the value of being respectful of each other by
always greeting one another with a handshake, the adoption of a certain formality
and militarism on their parades,29 formality in addressing their community,
remembering the sick and elderly by performing at their homes, hospitals and
old-age homes during the road marches, as well as volunteering their services for
performances at community fundraising and other events. These ethical concerns,
which are passed on from one generation to the next, are wrapped up in the
aesthetics of their daily living and of being a member of a Christmas band. These
aesthetic and ethical dimensions are reminiscent of Foucault’s notion of ‘moral
agency’, which he develops in his seminar ‘Technologies of the Self’.30 The kind
29
Often militarism and Christian missionization in the colonies were two sides of the
same coin as the mission stations introduced brass bands and rhythmic marching.
30
See Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (eds), Technologies of
the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (London, 1988), pp. 16–19.
of old-world morality imparted within the structures of Christmas bands is hardly

visible in the fast-paced twenty-first-century living experienced by most of the
youth, and sometimes the older men have to insist very strongly on abiding by
these principles, which were important when the bands emerged.
Schechner has suggested that in modern societies competitions take the
place of ritual. 31 I would rather say that competition contexts are special spaces
for extraordinary experience such as intense bonding among band members
and between bands and their audiences approaching what Turner referred to as
communitas.32 I contend that through the spectacle of Christmas bands parades
and competitions, people find meaning for their lives. With their dashing suits,
upright deportment and military-like marches, they enact a sense of dignity and
respectability that powerfully displays their notions of citizenship.
31
Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction (2nd edn, London, 2005).
32
Turner, Ritual Process.
Chapter 7
Composing Identity and Transposing Values
in Portuguese Amateur Wind Bands
Katherine Brucher
The statue Homage to the Musician stands in Covões’s central square, Largo do
Santo António. Where other villages valorize soldiers and politicians through
public monuments, Covões celebrates its musicians. The bronze figures depict
an older man dressed in a martial uniform playing the tenor saxophone and a
young boy gazing up in admiration as he holds the music the saxophonist plays.
Before lyres – metal clips used to fasten sheets of music to wind instruments
when marching or standing – were common, musicians depended on volunteers,
often children, to hold the music notation from which they played. In 1993, the
Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões commissioned the monument to commemorate
the 125th anniversary of its founding on 13 June 1868. By showing the man
and boy, the statue portrays the band as a musical tradition passed down from
generation to generation, echoing an old saying in Covões, ‘Born a man, born a
musician’1 (see Figure 7.1).
This essay examines how Covões becomes a place of music. I argue that the
musical training one receives in the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões not only
transmits musical knowledge specific to the aims and duties of an amateur wind
band in Portugal, but also emphasizes sociability and loyalty to one’s band and
community. This facilitates the emplacement of the band within Covões. Although
the band is an independent organization, separate from the town government and
Roman Catholic Church, the statue indicates that the band is closely associated
with the place Covões, so much so that it is simply called the Banda de Covões.
According to Steven Feld and Keith Basso,2 musical performances play a
significant role in creating emotionally intense symbols of place. I examine the
role that music education plays in laying the groundwork for linking the musical
organization, the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões, to the place it calls home,
Covões. Beginning with musicians’ entry into the band through its community
music school, experienced adult musicians instruct new members – often children
or teenagers – on how to be both musicians and community members. After
1
Federação das Bandas Filarmónicas no Distrito do Coimbra. Programme notes for
‘VI Encontro Distrital de Filarmónicas’ (Coimbra, 10 June 2003), p. 24.
2
Steven Feld and Keith Basso, ‘Introduction’, in Steven Feld and Keith Basso (eds)
Senses of Place (Santa Fe, NM, 1996), pp. 3–12, at p. 11.
Figure 7.1 The statue, Homage to the Musician, Largo do Santo António,
Covões, 2011
joining the band itself, new musicians learn the performance styles and skills
appropriate to the demands of playing for concerts, parades and processions both
at formal rehearsals and through experience. The social hierarchy within bandas
filarmónicas and their system of music education transmits social values that band
members identify as central to maintaining a sense of community. I argue that it is
through the inculcation of shared musical and social values that the band takes on
its importance as a symbol of Covões as a place of music.
This specific case study has relevance to a broader understanding of the
importance of wind bands and musical training to individual musicianship. Wind
bands have long been musical training grounds that enrich their communities’
musical practices and, in some cases, provide an important stepping stone to
becoming a professional musician. Ruth Finnegan calls the ways that individuals
become active in an amateur music scene their ‘pathways’ to music making.3 While
connections between the amateur and professional music spheres are important to
3
Ruth Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town
(Middletown, CT, 2007 [1989]), p. 305.
Portuguese Amateur Wind Bands 157
bandas filarmónicas and music in Portugal, these pathways to amateur musicianship

are also crucial to understanding music making as a social activity. By examining a
few musicians’ pathways to the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões, the case studies
reveal how participation in the band shapes ideas of community and locality.
This chapter draws on fieldwork I conducted with the Sociedade Filarmónica
de Covões over several years. I played saxophone with the Covões band for the
summer feast seasons from 2001 to 2009 and for an extended period from 2002 to
2003. In addition to performing with the group, I also observed lessons at the band’s
music school and interviewed local band directors, musicians and community
members. In the discussion that follows, I trace entry into the band through
Covões’s music school, its rehearsal process and its performances for arruadas
(street marches) and despiques (band ‘duels’) to explore how participation in a
filarmónica shapes notions of community and locality.
Bandas Filarmónicas in Portugal
Bandas filarmónicas like the Banda de Covões play a central role in amateur
music making in rural central and northern Portugal. Bands run community
music schools, provide music for both sacred and secular events during patron
saint feasts and operate as social clubs. The Portuguese government recognizes
nearly 800 bandas filarmónicas as amateur recreational societies,4 yet these
bands, perhaps because of their affiliation with Western art music through their
instrumentation and use of music notation, have historically been overlooked
in academic studies of Portuguese music.5 Early scholars of Portuguese culture
and folkways paid little heed to the bands participating in Portuguese festivals.
In an account of religious pilgrimages in northern Portugal at the turn of the
twentieth century, Alberto Pimentel included two photographs of large wind
bands in militaristic dress processing,6 and ‘bandas da música’ are one of many
participants listed in his description of the Feast of Sameiro in the city of Braga.7
Although Pimentel was attuned to musical detail – he provided detailed musical
transcriptions and texts for various songs sung by parishioners during feasts –
he did not describe any of the bands’ music during the feasts. Rodney Gallop,
a British folklorist who produced one of the seminal English language texts on
Portuguese folk traditions, dismissed instrumental music as professional and
inherently contaminated by foreign influences.8 More recent scholars, many of
4
Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco and Maria João Lima, ‘Prácticas musicais locais:
alguns indicadores preliminares’, OBS, 4 (1998): 10–13, at 10.
5
Ibid., p. 12.
6
Alberto Pimental, Alegres canções do norte (facsimile edn, Lisbon, 1989 [1907]),
pp. 148, 150.
7
Ibid., pp. 148–9.
8
Rodney Gallop, Portugal: A Book of Folk-Ways (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 202–3.
whom initially studied music in their local band, have turned their attention to
the importance of bands to Portuguese music culture, and their careers reflect
the ways that bandas can be a pathway to becoming a professional musician or
music researcher. Paulo Lameiro, a band director and musicologist from the city
of Leiria, documented local bands’ repertory and role in feasts.9 The National
Institute for the Enjoyment of Workers’ Leisure Time (O Instituto Nacional para
Aproveitamento dos Tempos Livres dos Trabalhadores, or INATEL) published
Colóqio sobre Música Popular Portuguesa (Colloquium on Popular Portuguese
Music), which included several essays on bandas filarmónicas and music
education.10 Research conducted on bandas filarmónicas reveals the importance
of these bands to an education in Western music in Portugal, and it suggests the
potential of bandas for understanding how music and performance figure in the
creation of rural Portuguese identities.
The antecedents to contemporary bandas filarmónicas were likely regimental
bands formed by the Portuguese military following the Napoleonic Wars. The
presence of both French and English regimental bands during Napoleon’s invasion
of the Iberian Peninsula led the Portuguese crown to mandate the formation of
regimental bands in imitation of the French model.11 Initially, Portuguese bands
depended on foreign musicians, but soon King João IV ordered that these bands be
composed of Portuguese-born musicians.12 By the middle to late nineteenth century,
ensembles were being founded in rural villages around Portugal. Decommissioned
military musicians and priests who attended the seminary likely had sufficient
musical training and organizational skills to form bands in their communities.
Mass manufacturing of band instruments and the growth of the music instrument
factories in Portugal increased the availability of instruments.13 The popularity of
bands during this period can be linked to associativismo – a movement to form
democratic civic mutual aid groups or social clubs based on the right to freedom of
association and reformation of the monarchy.14 Within this movement the ability
to read music notation and play music suggested that an individual had some
9
Paulo Lameiro, ‘Práticas musicais nas festas religiosas do concelho de Leiria’, Actas
dos 3º Os Cursos Internacionais de Verão de Cascais (8 a 13 De Julho 1996) (Cascais,
Portugal, 1997), pp. 213–54; Paulo Lameiro, ‘“Corêtos Sagrados”: algum repertório
litúrgico das Filarmónicas do concelho de Leiria’, Cultura, iiª serie, X (1998): 255–90.
10
INATEL (ed.), Colóquio sobre música popular portuguesa: comunicações e
conclusões (Lisbon, 1984).
11
Katherine Brucher, ‘A Banda da Terra: Bandas Filarmónicas and the Performance
of Place in Portugal’ (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2005), p. 102;
Pedro de Freitas, História da música popular em Portugal (Lisbon, 1946), p. 55.
12
Brucher, ‘A Banda da Terra’, p. 102; Freitas, História da música popular em
Portugal, p. 56.
13
Brucher, ‘A Banda da Terra’, pp. 102–3.
14
Costa Goodolphim, A Associação: história e desenvolvimento das associações
portuguesas (Lisbon, 1974 [1876]).
level of education and with that came an awareness of high art culture, including
orchestral music and opera.15 In rural communities, far from the theatres and music
halls of Lisbon and other cities, bands played a central role in disseminating this
music to communities by performing transcriptions. The roots of the community
band movement in associativismo suggest why values of loyalty and community
permeate contemporary bands and why communities continue to support bands as
symbols of culture.
Covões
Covões is a parish within the municipality of Cantanhede in the District of Coimbra,

located about 240 km north of the capital city of Lisbon. About 2,500 individuals
live in the parish, which encompasses several smaller hamlets.16 The village is
rural and historically most people worked in agriculture. This region industrialized
following Portugal’s entry into the European Union in 1986, and European Union
funds helped pay for the construction of improved roads and infrastructure. Now,
many people work in businesses or factories located in Cantanhede or the larger
cities of Coimbra and Aveiro.
The geography of the village is not unusual for this part of Portugal. A white
stucco church with a tall steeple stands in the centre of the village with a walled
cemetery on the far side. Across the street from the church, in the central plaza,
there is a bandstand and the statue Homage to the Musician. The festivities and
procession for the annual Feast of Saint Anthony take place at the church and
central plaza. The band’s new meeting hall, completed in 2007 on land donated
by emigrants to the United States, is on the far side of the cemetery, close to the
recently constructed indoor soccer field, public library and community centre. The
band’s meeting hall has a rehearsal room, practice rooms and auditorium, and here
the band conducts its regular lessons, rehearsals and community concerts.
The Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões was founded on 13 June 1868 by Manoel
Francisco Miraldo to accompany the annual Feast of Saint Anthony, the patron
saint of Covões. All church records from the period were destroyed in 1910 when
the First Republic claimed church properties,17 but according to Manuel Francisco
Miraldo, a retired band musician in his nineties, who shares the founder’s name
but claims no relation, Miraldo was a local resident, who sold land to raise funds
15
Rui Cascão, ‘Vida quotidiana e sociabilidade’, in Luís Reis Torgal and João
Lourenço Roque (eds), O Liberalismo, vol. 5 in História de Portugal, ed. José Mattoso
(8 vols, Lisbon, 1993), pp. 517–41, at pp. 524–6; Rui Ramos, A Segunda Fundação, vol. 6
in Historia de Portugal, ed. José Mattoso (8 vols, Lisbon, 2001), p. 78.
16
Dinis Bento, ‘Covões: terra antiga rica e amiga’, Freguesia de Covões, available at
http://www.covoes.com/covoes.html [Accessed 26 July 2011].
17
Father Henrique José Ribeiro Figueiredo Maçarico, personal communication with
author (Covões, Portugal, 22 June 2009).
for the purchase of instruments and trained the new musicians.18 The ensemble has
operated continuously since 1868, although it did not register with the national
government as a social organization until 1934.
Today, the Covões band continues to describe itself as an amateur ensemble, but
like most bandas in the area, it funds itself through contracts to perform at feasts.
A fixed portion of the payment from the parish or feast committee that hired the
band goes to the general fund, another portion to pay the director Fausto Moreira
and the rest is divided among the musicians who played the feast to be paid out
at the end of each month. The band rehearses year round, but most performances
take place at patron saint feasts on summer weekends. A typical service for a feast
day begins at 9 am and lasts until at least 7 pm, with a long break for the midday
meal. At the time of writing, roughly forty men and women, ranging in age from
8 to 84, regularly perform with the Covões band. Women did not join the band
until the late 1970s, following the social changes ushered in after the revolution in
1974 and the liberalization of Portuguese society.
The instrumentation of the band is similar to other bandas in this region of
Portugal. The band performs with a mixture of woodwinds, brass and percussion
instruments: a few flutes, one piccolo, clarinets and trumpets typically play lead
melodies. Alto saxophones, marching horns, tenor saxophones, baritone horns,
euphoniums and trombones provide harmonic support and play counter melodies.
The baritone saxophone, tubas and sousaphones anchor the bass line while bass
drum, snare drum and cymbal keep time. In concerts onstage, the percussion
section may be augmented with auxiliary instruments (triangles, tambourine,
various shakers), a drum set and even timpani. The majority of the musicians in the
Covões band joined the band and learned their instrument through its music school.
Playing Community, Learning Your Place
Formal Music Education
Education is a key aspect of the Banda de Covões. Through a systematic, graduated

process new members learn not only how and what to play, but they also begin
to see themselves as participants within a social value system that governs the
band and its relationships with the communities where it plays. Musicians follow a
series of steps leading from beginner to full member of the band. Today, Covões’s
musical education begins at its music school and continues in rehearsals and at
services. The school, which is directly affiliated with the band, offers free lessons
for students of any age. First, a student learns solfège and basic instrumental
technique. If satisfactory progress is being made, the band promotes the student
18
Manuel Francisco Miraldo, interview with author (Covões, Portugal, 4 September
2002). Miraldo is a very common family name in Covões and it is coincidental that the two
men share very similiar names.
to apprentice, and he or she begins to play in public with the band. Initially,
musicians play for free, but gradually, after attending enough services, they earn
half-pay, three-quarters pay and then full pay. In every phase of training, aspiring
musicians engage in ear training and acquire music literacy as well as instrumental
techniques, performance etiquette and the social norms and traditions shared by
the Covões band. Analysing different stages of learning offers an opportunity
to consider which musical and social values are emphasized and why. Training
focuses on a specific kind of musicality needed for religious festivals and outdoor
concerts, but membership also stresses loyalty to the Banda de Covões, respect for
its past and camaraderie, all contributing to a sense of identity rooted in the band
and Covões. The band requires fidelity to the organization: its statutes prohibit
members of the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões from belonging to ‘any other
musical association’ or performing ‘with other musicians that do not belong to this
association with the ends of organizing any musical activities’.19
The Music School
The creation of a formal music school within the band originated in music education
reforms when the Portuguese government sought to professionalize the bands.
Before officially chartered music schools, the pedagogical process within bands
was less formal.20 During the 1970s, the government began to encourage bands to
establish music schools and to sponsor formal training for band directors. In 1971,
the National Foundation for Happiness in Work, or FNAT (A Fundação Nacional
para a Alegria no Trabalho) began its National Course for Musical Leaders (Curso
Nacional de Regentes Musicais), and it launched the Plan of Support for Bandas
Filarmónicas (Plano de Apoio às Bandas Filarmónicas).21 The following year,
FNAT began its Cycles of Improvement (Ciclos de Aperfeiçoamento) – workshops
geared towards amateur band directors with no formal musical training.22
Following the Revolution of 25 April 1974, INATEL took over the role of FNAT
in providing a national infrastructure for music education. Today, Covões receives
some financial support for the music school from INATEL. In rural Portugal,
the most accessible musical training is found in community-level organizations
outside the school system.23 Bands’ music schools – like that of Covões – provide
19
Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões, Estatutos da Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões
(Covões, 1934), article 17.
20
Fausto Moreira, interview with author (Samel, Portugal, 3 September 2002).
21
Brucher, ‘A Banda da Terra’, p. 159; Nuno Domingos, ‘INATEL (Instituto Nacional
para o Aproveitamento dos Tempos Livres dos Trabalhadores)’, Enciclopédia da música em
Portugal no Século XX, ed. Salwa Castelo-Branco (4 vols, 2010), vol. 2 (C–L), p. 631.
22
INATEL, Colóquio sobre música popular portuguesa, p. 5.
23
Manuel Maria Baltazar, ‘Problemas das bandas civis e sua possível solução’, in
INATEL (ed.), Colóquio sobre música popular portuguesa (Lisbon, 1984), pp. 99–102;
Humberto da Costa Biu, ‘A valorização das bandas de música’, in INATEL (ed.), Colóquio
an important avenue for education in Western classical music that might otherwise
be inaccessible to many in small towns. Portuguese public schools teach only
general music in the fifth and sixth grades.
In Covões, the band’s musical director, Fausto Moreira, runs the music school
and teaches most of the instrumental lessons. Experienced musicians from the band
often assist with instruction in solfège and some lessons on instruments. Students
attend lessons twice weekly on Saturday afternoons and Wednesdays after school.
The majority of students in the music school are between the ages of 8 and 14,
though adults join the band from time to time. Often new students have a family
member or friend who plays or has played in the band; others have heard it perform
at local events. Students begin by learning solfège and how to read Western staff
notation through a series of progressive exercises from a photocopied lesson book
Solfejo: exercícios de ritmo e leitura musical by Francisco de Freitas Gazul. For
each lesson, the student must learn the exercise and recite the pitches in rhythm
for the instructor. Only after a student makes satisfactory progress in solfège does
the band provide an instrument. The choice of instrument depends on the student’s
ability and interest, availability of instruments and the band’s current needs. Once
a student has learnt basic techniques, usually taught from a method book, he or she
begins to play marches from the band’s repertory. After learning several marches
and showing progress on the rest of the repertoire, the student joins the band as an
apprentice. Fausto follows no specific formula, and he admits students to the band
according to his judgement of their ability and enthusiasm. Most musicians enter
the band within a year or two of beginning solfège. Some students progress more
quickly, while others take years.
On a bright Saturday afternoon in late April 2003, the music school was in full
swing. When I arrived with Fausto at 3 pm, the wooden door to the band’s old
meeting hall was already propped open. A few cars were parked nearby; a handful
of bicycles and a moped leaned against the building. Activity and noise came from
every corner of the building. Just inside the front door, Mário Silva, principal
trumpeter of the band and addressed as Senhor (Sr.) Mário by his students as a
sign of respect, taught solfège lessons to three schoolgirls. Nearby, two teenage
girls practised reciting solfège in the defunct bar area. Upstairs, a few older kids
honked on their instruments and talked to each other while an alto saxophonist
warmed up by playing scales. Fausto walked around and greeted everyone with
a kiss or a handshake before sitting down to start the alto saxophonist’s lesson.
All afternoon a steady stream of young students arrived at the rehearsal hall. The
friendly cacophony masked the serious aims of the music school.
Solfège lessons, for example, provide instruction in basic musical skills but
also teach students patience within a group setting. On this occasion, Sr. Mário sat
with three schoolgirls in a group lesson. Although each student received individual
sobre música popular portuguesa (Lisbon, 1984), pp. 93–8; Joaquim Fernandes and Manuel
Gonçalves, ‘Música popular portuguesa’, in INATEL (ed.), Colóquio sobre música popular
portuguesa (Lisbon, 1984), pp. 83–7.
attention from the instructor, the others watched and sometimes joined in. One
girl kept reciting the wrong solfège syllables and confusing the rhythms. Her
frustration mounted as the two other girls chimed in with the correct answers.
Without reproach, Sr. Mário held her right hand and helped her conduct crochets
at a slow even tempo, while she chanted, ‘Sol, si, ré, fá-a’.
Fausto believes that this method of instruction lays a solid foundation for
reading pitches and rhythms. Before picking up an instrument, his students are
expected to be able to decipher relatively complicated passages of staff notation.
By conducting the beat while chanting solfège, students learn to feel the pulse
kinaesthetically while reading written notation. Through recitation and repetition,
beginning students gain a strong aural association with the written pitches. This
method of learning has direct application later on, as Fausto often explains
complicated passages in lessons or rehearsals by singing the music in solfège.
The music school teaches students musical competency, but it also prepares
them for the social and musical tasks necessary to play in the band. The group
dynamic of lessons confirms music making as social activity and reinforces the
notion that experienced musicians are responsible for students. There is no such
thing as a private lesson in Covões – students must learn to wait patiently for
their turn and tolerate criticism of their performance. Music as an expression of
individualism was noticeably absent from the school of music. This contrasts
with my own experience as an oboe and saxophone student in the United States
and with ethnomusicologist Henry Kingsbury’s observations of the importance
of individualism among students and teachers and in the curriculum at ‘Eastern
Metropolitan Conservatory’.24 Both group lessons and the atmosphere of the
school, instead, encouraged music making as a social activity. Students enter a
social hierarchy stressing respect for senior musicians. Older musicians routinely
asked younger musicians to demonstrate what they had prepared for that day’s
lesson, and Fausto and Sr. Mário would often call on advanced students to help
new students or even teach a lesson. This sets an example for the younger students:
experienced players should be regarded as resources, and one day, they, too, may
be responsible for teaching the students who follow in their footsteps. This social
structure provides a means for passing on musical knowledge and traditions of the
band to new musicians.
The music school is only one step towards joining the band, for Fausto
acknowledges that fewer than 50 per cent of the school’s students actually play in
the ensemble. Although the school offers free lessons, many students lack patience
or an enduring interest in music. Nevertheless, the school focuses on preparing
students for the band. Beginners hang around the rehearsal hall before and after
their lessons, so they see what other musicians do and what the instruments
sound like. The school also functions as a social hub for the community. Students
form friendships, playing in the street outside the music hall and joking around
24
Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory System
(Philadelphia, 1988).
with each other before, during and after lessons. Fausto invites the music school
students to watch the band’s rehearsals and attend local performances, and when
the band performs in Covões, music school students can often be spotted standing
closest to the band.
Rehearsals
The band’s weekly Friday night rehearsals are another forum for the instruction
of musical and social values. Musicians work to create the sound of the band,
a key aspect of the band’s identity, and they learn to listen and respond to each
other as interdependent members of the ensemble. Interactions between the
conductor and the group and between musicians are central to the development of
the group’s sound. Musicians learn from Fausto’s instruction, but they also learn
from repetition and emulation of principal players. The bonding (or banding)
between musicians contributes to the ways that members identify with the band
as a social institution.
On the evening of a rehearsal, the band hall buzzes with activity. Shortly
before 10 pm on Friday evenings, parked cars line the street in front of the band’s
rehearsal hall and fill the small square in front of the health clinic next door.
Musicians begin by greeting each other: women kiss each other on the cheek; men
shake hands. Before rehearsal, many of the men and women stand in the street
smoking and talking. For many of the younger players, band rehearsals give an
opportunity to socialize and flirt outside the context of school and family. Even
after Fausto carries his large wooden trunk filled with scores, parts and music
supplies upstairs from his car, musicians loiter outside the building, as they know
from experience that rehearsals tend to start fifteen to twenty minutes late. Around
10.20 pm, people find their seats, assemble their instruments and open their music
folders. Visitors also frequent the rehearsals. Parents, retired band musicians,
prospective band members, neighbours and visiting emigrants often drop by to
listen. Only one café in Covões stays open at night, so the band rehearsal is one of
very few local evening activities.
The conductor provides the principal guidance and is, ultimately, the
authority on musical decisions in the band. Fausto conveys his musical goals
through a variety of rehearsal techniques. He emphasizes accuracy, phrasing,
tone and technique, and his conducting helps perpetuate the style of playing
the band is known for. Fausto encourages the band to use legato phrasing and
hold decrescendos for semibreve value. Some musicians sustain minims and
semibreves at the ends of phrases longer than the notated duration as they taper
off the volume. In addition to conducting, he gives musicians verbal and non-
verbal instructions. He may call out, ‘Watch intonation’, or raise an eyebrow
and mouth, ‘É?’ (What?), in the direction of the offending instrumentalist when
he hears a wrong note. Fausto requires musicians to apply the basic skills they
learned in the music school when he sings a difficult passage in solfège and
requests that the musicians play it back on their instruments.
Social hierarchies also guide the rehearsal process within each section of the
band. Those in the principal chairs are responsible for leading the other musicians
who play the same instrument, and interactions between principals and less
experienced musicians often echoed the interactions I observed at the school of
music. Players with the most seniority usually hold the principal, or first chair, of
each section. In 2003, all the principals, except for the piccolo player, were men,
and the majority had played in the band longer than anyone else in their section.
In contrast to many bands and orchestras in schools in the US, musicians do not
challenge the principal chair of their section and musicians do not audition for this
position. Rather, Fausto assigns new musicians third or second parts – often lower
in the instrument’s range and sometimes simpler than first parts. Fausto promotes
a musician to the first part only after someone vacates one of the first chairs. This
system emphasizes respect for older musicians who have played in the band for the
longest, and it also minimizes the notion of individualism. Principals and soloists
earn their position through commitment to the band as well as musical ability.
Emulating section leaders contributes to the development and consistency of
a Covões sound. The distinct sound of Covões’s trumpets reflects how principal
players perpetuate the music traditions of the band. The Covões sound is sometimes
described as the ‘traditional banda filarmónica style’.25 Mário Silva, the principal
trumpeter in Covões, played with a pronounced vibrato. He was extremely facile
in the high register of his instrument, and his sound had few harsh overtones
and little edge. Sr. Mário joined the band in the 1940s when he was 6 years old,
and he learned to play trumpet with Américo Padeiro, then director of the band.
Sr. Mário emigrated to the United States in the 1960s, but after he and his wife
retired to Covões in the early 1990s, he rejoined the band.26 When he passed away
in 2003, he had served for nearly a decade as the band’s principal trumpet, assistant
conductor and teacher to most of the brass players in the band. The younger players,
having studied with him at the music school, also played with vibrato and a similar
timbre. By contrast, musicians trained in the state-run conservatories played with
very little vibrato and a brighter tone. Sr. Mário’s legacy remains audible in the
sound of the brass section of the band.
The Covões band’s choice of instruments further facilitates its signature
homogeneous sonorities. Covões normally tunes between A440 and A444 Hz
because most of its instruments were manufactured in France or the United States.
In contrast, bands using older Portuguese-manufactured instruments tune to a
sharper standard (approximately A450 Hz) in a tuning system called afinação
brilhante (bright tuning). Covões changed to afinação normal (normal tuning)
in the mid-1990s when the band bought new instruments and mended remaining
instruments by elongating tube lengths. Covões also favours large-bore orchestral
tubas, trombones and baritones that contribute to a rich sonority. Large-bore brass
25
Maria João Vasconcelos, personal communication with author (Fermentelos,
Portugal, 2003).
26
Mário Silva, interview with author (Covões, Portugal, 28 June 2003).
instruments lend themselves to a darker tone and an even timbre at loud and soft
dynamic levels. Small-bore instruments are easier to overblow in loud passages.27
Since Covões usually performs outside where the band must project over large
areas, large-bore instruments provide a more stable intonation. The band also tries
to provide its musicians with identical instruments. In September 2003, the band
bought three new French-made Buffet clarinets for its first clarinettists because
Fausto believed that the musicians would be able to blend more easily if they all
played the same model.
The social and musical dynamics of the band stress accuracy, social hierarchy,
teamwork and tradition. While the Covões band strives for musical excellence, the
value system underlying the band differs greatly from the talent-based approach
documented by Henry Kingsbury in a North American conservatory. Kingsbury
calls talent, ‘a cultural symbol, which in this case constitutes a transformational
link between the “political” and the “musical”. An attribution of talent interprets
musical expression in terms of the recruitment of the elite.’28 In contrast, the
Covões band ranks experience and loyalty to the organization over talent. Fausto
works through the bands’ social dynamics to achieve his musical goals. By
stressing the ensemble’s sound instead of individual musicians, he emphasizes the
importance of playing as a team. Likewise the practice of awarding prestigious
principal chairs to the musicians who have played in the band for the most time
implicitly emphasizes that the band is a lifelong commitment. Younger musicians
look to the eldest for leadership, as experienced musicians with many years in the
band also tend to be the best versed in the band’s history and traditions. Above
all, the friendly rehearsal atmosphere where musicians joke around and converse
drives home the notion that the band is both a musical and a social club. However,
music is the medium of musicians’ social interactions; Fausto and the musicians
work hard to make that music their own.
Learning While Playing Services
‘On-the-job’ training is a significant part of the learning process in the Banda de

Covões. While rehearsals often focus on concert repertoire and honing a sound,
most of Covões’s services are religious feasts where the band plays street marches,
processionals and short pop songs. A student might learn some of this repertoire
in lessons at the music school, but he or she rarely has many opportunities to
rehearse it with the band before playing in public. I experienced a steep learning
curve during my own first few services with the band, and I also observed this
when other musicians joined. Individuals’ stories about joining further confirmed
that the first few services are especially challenging. Through immersion and
repetition, musicians in Covões learn repertoire, performance etiquette and the
27
Scott Whitener, A Complete Guide to Brass: Instruments and Pedagogy (New
York, 1990), p. 7.
28
Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance, p. 79.
choreography for processing and parading during services. New musicians must
learn how to march in time for up-tempo parades and slow, sombre processions.
This kinaesthetic process fosters an embodied learning of how one moves and
performs if one belongs to the Banda de Covões. Moreover, to become part of the
band, one must overcome the physical and mental demands of playing for long,
outdoor services.
Repetition is an important way that musicians learn new repertory in the
course of performance. The bands perform their repertoire time and time again for
services that tend to be very similar. In 2001, the Covões Band played over seventy
services. A street march such as ‘Vinho do Porto’ may be played several times
during a service, and the band may repeat a processional such as ‘Transfiguração’
during especially long processions. This means that the band may play these
marches hundreds of times in a single year. Even concert pieces may be repeated
several times a season, and the band keeps them in its repertoire for many years.
Consequently, little emphasis is put on playing something perfectly the first time.
My first day with the Banda de Covões at the annual feast in the village of
Covoa de Lobo differed greatly from any first day I had experienced in amateur
bands in the United States. When I arrived at 9 am, I was presented with a stack
of photocopies of handwritten marches that had been reduced to fit on four-by-
six-inch paper and given a lyre to hold the marches to the saxophone. I found
it difficult to read the small handwritten music notation. Sight-reading was a
challenge, yet I also needed to walk in step while I played. I tried to coordinate my
steps to the meter and tempo. Meanwhile, I had to mentally disconnect my head
and hands from the lower half of my body to keep my embouchure and fingers
from bouncing when I marched over uneven footing. To complicate matters, the
arruada (street march) and procession were several kilometres long and included
steep hills. As I tired, my concentration and coordination dulled. Since feasts were
new to me, I also had to learn when it was appropriate to take a break and when
to stand to attention and wait for the conductor’s next command. I thought sitting
in the church during the afternoon mass might offer a moment of rest, but instead,
it presented new challenges. Since the band regularly sings for mass as part of its
services and rarely rehearses this music, I found myself sight singing the women’s
parts for several pieces of choral music. At 8 pm, when we finished playing a
concert that followed the procession, I was completely exhausted. After talking to
other musicians about their first day in the band, I learned that despite my relative
unfamiliarity with feasts in Portugal, my experience was not unique.
Most musicians struggle when they join the band. Paula Santos, a tenor
saxophonist, joined the band as an adult in 2003 because her children and husband
took part. While her situation was atypical, she articulated the difficulties facing
any newcomer in the band. As a baritone saxophone player, I stood next to her in
the band’s formation, so I had an opportunity to observe and talk with her about
her first few services with the band. Paula’s first day illustrates both the importance
of learning in the course of performance and the need to rely on the social support
system developed within the music school and at rehearsals. Paula’s first service
was the Feast of the Holy Spirit in Vilarinho do Bairro on 8 June 2003. The morning
arruada and afternoon processions were especially long. Repertory presented the
first challenge that Paula faced. During the arruada, Paula and I marched with a
smaller subset of the band led by the band’s principal clarinettist, Pedro. He began
by asking us to play the march ‘António Conde’ by Carlos Marques. Paula had
never played it before so Yanneth, a baritone player, talked her through the counter
melody. Tenor saxophone and baritone parts are usually similar in street marches
in that both instruments play the counter melody. Yanneth sang the line in solfège,
and Paula sang it back until Yanneth was satisfied that she understood the part.
Marching presented another hurdle. After playing a few strains of the march
and stumbling along, Paula exclaimed that she did not understand marching.
Eduardo, a horn player marching in our row instructed, ‘You always begin with
your left. Start with your left.’ He continued, pointing out that the band always
marches in tempo with the music – left foot on the first beat, right on the second.
He demonstrated marching left, right, counting off the drum signal and singing the
melody to the march. Paula tried to follow along, stepping left and then right, until
she began to feel comfortable marching.
In the end, the length of the service and the constant barrage of new information
proved to be the greatest difficulties of all. A few days after the service, I asked
Paula how she felt about her first day. ‘I cried during the whole procession’, she
replied. ‘You cried! Why?’ I asked. ‘Because I was frustrated. I had trouble playing
the marches.’ I reminded her that the other musicians had already played the
marches many, many times. She laughed, ‘Yes, but when you play a wrong note,
you always think that everyone is looking at you.’29 A year later, Paula was still
in the band. Both ordinary performance expectations and social rites like teasing
challenge new musicians’ patience; however, overcoming adversity strengthens
musicians’ commitment to the group. Everyone I spoke with described the first
days in the band as a challenge, and this difficulty becomes part of musicians’
shared experiences.
Performances for concerts stress additional musical skills beyond those learned
in street marches. Bands like Covões usually perform three kinds of concerts: brief
concertos a pé, concerts of novelty pieces and marches played while standing in
formation at the end of a procession; afternoon or evening concerts on a bandstand
or auditorium stage; and despiques, band ‘duels’ that pit two bands against one
another on side-by-side stages. While all three types of concerts are important to
the Banda de Covões, the competitive nature of despiques aids development of
musical skills necessary for concerts and emphasizes loyalty and local identity.
A despique typically takes place in the afternoon or evening as secular
entertainment during the celebration of the feast of a patron saint. To say that
these concerts are competitive is an understatement, as the two bands exchange
repertory and receive enthusiastic applause from their supporters, yet there are no
judges or rulebooks. Instead, despiques follow guidelines outlined in oral tradition
29
Paulo Santos, personal communication with author (Covões, Portugal, 2003).
that emphasize comparison of the two bands and provide plenty of opportunity
to discuss and dispute the merits of the two ensembles. Musicians and audiences
discuss despiques as if they were football or soccer matches. The ‘home’ band
(a banda da casa) is usually the hometown band at the feast, and they play ‘against’
the ‘invited’ band (a banda convidada). The organizers of the feast contract both
bands to play the despique, and pairing bands with a history of rivalry and that are
similar in size and skill leads to a more exciting concert.30
The despique between the Sociedade Filarmónica de Covões and the Banda
da Mamarrosa that took place at the Feast of Saint John the Baptist in the hamlet
of Quinta da Gorda in 2009 illustrates some of these features. I was staying with
Fausto Moreira, director of the Banda da Covões, so my perspective primarily
reflects that of Covões band. Musicians take sides even though they might be
schoolmates or neighbours of musicians from the opposing band. Had I more
opportunity to talk to the Banda da Mamarrosa about this despique, I would expect
a similarly rich experience but one that reflects its perspective on a rivalry with
Covões. On this occasion, the Banda da Mamarrosa was considered the ‘home’
band because Quinta da Gorda is a hamlet within the parish of Mamarrosa. Covões
was the ‘invited’ band even though Covões is only a few kilometres away. These
two bands have played despiques against one another for several decades and have
a rivalry that has varied in intensity over the years.
On this occasion, the two bands arrived around 9 pm in time to set up on two
stages erected side-by-side at one end of the field along the main road in Quinta
da Gorda. Lights and banners marked the arraial, or social space of the festival.
At 9.30 pm each band gathered at an intersection a few hundred metres down the
road, and although it was nearly dark, each band marched in to the arraial with an
up-tempo march to announce that the despique was beginning. Their supporters –
family and friends of musicians, neighbours and visiting emigrants – clapped for
their favourite band but stood quietly while the opposing band passed. Each band
ascended its bandstand, and the musicians took their seats. Because Mamarrosa
was the ‘home band’, the director chose the first piece of the concert, and he stuck
to tradition by starting with a concert march. Moments before the conductor’s
downbeat, a young musician sitting near the front of the stage placed a sign with
the name of the first march on an easel facing the audience. This practice informs
the audience and ensures the concert programme will be kept secret from the rival
band. As the visiting band, Covões followed with a piece of the same genre with a
similar feel. Next, the Banda da Mamarrosa performed an orchestral transcription.
The Banda de Covões did not have an orchestral transcription to answer the
Mamarrosa Band, but Fausto selected Tó, an overture for concert band. For the
next two and a half hours, the bands went back and forth, with Mamarrosa setting
the tone with their choice of repertory, gradually progressing from more ‘serious’
concert works to arrangements of Portuguese folk songs to contemporary popular
songs. Audience members responded enthusiastically to their favourite band by
30
Brucher, ‘A Banda da Terra’, pp. 201–3.
clapping and cheering. Generally, they exhibited good sportsmanship by clapping

politely for the opposing band, but they also talked among themselves. People
critiqued the bands’ performances and choice of repertory and gossiped about the
latest news and events around town.
The style of performance differs greatly from that learned in the context of the
street march or religious processions that draw on a relatively small repertory of
marches and the functional demands of moving groups of people through outdoor
spaces. The participants in the procession are not focused solely on the band, so a
wrong note will not be noticed in the noisy street. By contrast, the concert stage at
a despique requires more technical skill, greater attention to ensemble playing and
knowledge of a wider range of repertory. Although the Covões band only plays a
few despiques a year, the Friday night rehearsals emphasize this repertory. Instead
of preparing just a few concert pieces for a single occasion, the band must have
several pieces in each genre to answer the other band effectively, and regardless
of genre, the pieces must be played with skill and showmanship to garner the
audience’s applause. Audiences evaluate the ensembles based on the relative
difficulty of the repertory, technical prowess, intonation, ensemble playing and
perhaps, most important but most elusive, the ensemble’s energy. At the despique,
these musical skills translate to both social prestige and economic and cultural
capital. An exciting despique will be discussed among musicians and community
members in the days following the performance. If the despique attracts a big
crowd, the community hosting it has more opportunity to elicit donations from the
audience, who, in turn, also buy things like beer, snacks and raffle tickets while
listening. In turn, a town might be inclined to contract the bands the following
summer for the annual feast, and this means more funds for the coffers and local
prestige, as bands fight to distinguish themselves from other ensembles.
The competitive atmosphere of a despique enhances a band’s group identity,
as the musicians define their organization in contrast to that of the opposing
band. An individual musician can demonstrate his or her loyalty to the band by
contributing to a successful performance and playing the best he or she can. The
success of the band is often elided with that of the place the band comes from, so
a good band signals that their town is a place that can support a musical ensemble.
Loyalty and group identity take on a historical trajectory within the context of a
despique. Experienced musicians discuss an evening’s performance and compare
it to previous ones, and in telling these stories, each despique contributes to
the bandlore. On the evening of the despique in Quinta da Gorda, a few older
musicians told stories of a despique against Mamarrosa in which they alleged that
partisans of Mamarrosa’s band built Covões’s bandstand out of wagons that had
previously been used to haul manure. Through these stories and their experiences
on the bandstand, musicians learn to see themselves as participants in the history
of the band and in a community of musicians.
Loyalty and musicianship are built through an established process in the Banda
de Covões. Musicians learn in more than one context, and divisions between
the music school, rehearsals and performances blur as musicians learn different
aspects of musicality, performance, social norms and traditions. Overcoming

the initial difficulty of the first services and making them routine is a key part
of becoming a band member. The pay scale ranging from unpaid to half-pay
apprentice to full-pay member echoes that process. At all points from the music
school to rehearsals to performances, musicians rely on experienced musicians
for guidance. When Paula had difficulty marching and playing, the musicians
around her provided instruction. A sense of mutual responsibility shows new
musicians the importance of commitment to the band. Loyalty to the band comes
not only through the social bonding that musicians experience as they learn from
one another, but also from the musical banding that goes on as they learn skills
necessary to participate (see Figure 7.2).
Pathways to the Band
Ruth Finnegan’s concept of ‘pathways’ to community music making provides a

useful model for understanding how the band is intertwined with social networks
of family, friends and neighbours. Finnegan chose the metaphor of ‘pathways’ to
show the routes that individuals took to get to their current role in various music
making endeavours. A path can be flexible and overlapping without implying the
self-contained nature of ‘worlds’ or ‘spheres’ of music making or interpretations
of ‘community’ as a bounded space. Finnegan found that common routes or shared
pathways emerged as people described the ways in which they became involved
in local music scenes, and individuals often ascribed great symbolic importance to
these routes.31 In the case of the Covões band, individual musicians’ histories share
common tropes of how one becomes a musician. These tropes are grounded in the
musical and social education that I have described. Furthermore, personal histories
confirm that a commitment to one’s local band symbolizes one’s integration
into the community, but these ‘pathways’ challenge the idea that ‘local’ is only
linked to the village in which one lives. Even a rural community like Covões can
be mapped with overlapping pathways that connect local places to Portuguese
diaspora communities around the world.
Band director Fausto Moreira’s story of how he joined the band illustrates
a typical pathway to joining the band for men who joined the band while
younger boys.32 Fausto is not from Covões, but from Samel, a small village in
the neighbouring parish of Vilarinho, located about 5 km north-east of Covões.
Samel has no band of its own, and Fausto is not from a musical family. His father,
now deceased, was a mechanic and his mother farms her property and that of
neighbouring landowners. However, a neighbour played tuba in the Covões band,
31
Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians, pp. 305–7.
32
Fausto’s story is based on two formal interviews and many informal conversations
that we have had over several years. Interview with author (Marvão, Portugal, 13 July 2003;
Samel, Portugal, 4 September 2004).
Figure 7.2 One of the youngest (foreground) and the oldest (background)
musicians in the band in front of the church before the procession
for the Feast of Saint Anthony of Covões, June 2011
and when he passed by on his way to rehearsals and performances, he would tease
Fausto about when he was going to join the band. Fausto said that when he was
about 12, he replied, ‘Ok, when are you going to teach me?’ Every day, Fausto
would go over to the tuba player’s house for a solfège lesson that relied on the
methods that the band still uses at its music school. Fausto’s experience also shows
that the relationship between older, more experienced musicians and students has
been a central mechanism for passing along musical knowledge within the band.
After Fausto progressed through the lesson book, he started to walk or ride his bike
to rehearsals in Covões. At that time, most of the musicians were older farmers,
and only a few boys joined the band each year. The director, Manuel Teodósio,
assigned Fausto to play E-flat clarinet, not an especially forgiving instrument for
a beginner. When I asked Fausto what his first service was like, he laughed and
said that he ‘couldn’t play a thing!’ Despite an inauspicious beginning, Fausto
must have excelled. He initially dropped out of school after fourth grade – not
uncommon for his generation – to work for his father, and at 18, he began his
military service as a clarinettist in a regional army band. Following his military
service, he auditioned successfully for the national conservatory in Coimbra and
resumed taking classes to complete his high school education. Around this time,
Manuel Teodósio was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and Teodósio handpicked
Fausto to succeed him as musical director of the band. Fausto has since earned an
undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in clarinet pedagogy and is currently
working on a master’s degree in wind conducting at the University of Aveiro.
Joining the band had a profound effect on Fausto’s life: it was a pathway
to education and to becoming a professional clarinettist and teacher, and it has
earned him a respected place in his community. Every time I have walked into
a café with Fausto in any of the surrounding villages, at least one person, if not
several, approaches him to shake the hand of the maestro. Fausto sees the band
as an extension of his family. Although he does not live in Covões, I have heard
him call the band his terra, or ‘hometown’, and the young musicians in the band
address him with the informal pronoun ‘tu’, usually reserved only for close friends
and family, rather than ‘você’, or the more formal ‘senhor’ or ‘senhor doutor’,
common forms of address for someone with Fausto’s education. Fausto’s pathway
to the band also created similar pathways for his relatives. His younger brother
Pedro is principal clarinettist in the band, and Fausto’s daughter Inês also plays
clarinet in the band. By the age of 2, Pedro’s daughter was marching around the
room while mimicking her father playing the clarinet, suggesting that the Moreira
family may have a presence in the band for generations to come.
Connections to the band also extend beyond the local area. Susana’s experience
demonstrates the way that families have come to value the band as a source of
community and education. Susana was born in Portugal, but soon after, her family
immigrated to Sydney, Australia. She and her two older siblings participated
in various activities sponsored by Sydney’s Portuguese community, such as a
folklore ensemble and a band. Susana’s family returned to Covões when she was
about 10 years old, and soon after, their mother signed the three children up for the
music school in Covões and encouraged them to audition for the state-sponsored
conservatory in Aveiro. Susana said that the band was especially important to her
family because an uncle had also played in the Covões band. Participating in the
band was an opportunity for a free music education and gave the three kids an
immediate connection to their new community. Susana fondly remembers how
much fun she had as a kid travelling to feasts in other villages and playing with her
friends. Now, an adult, she has little time to play trumpet in the band as she and her
older brother share a busy physical therapy practice.
Family commitments influence adult musicians’ decisions to join, too. Paula,
introduced earlier, represents a special case. She joined the band when she was
31 years old. She had two children and worked as a laboratory technician for
a manufacturing company in Cantanhede. Paula stood out among the other new
musicians because she joined the band as an adult married woman with children.
While women have played with Covões since the late 1970s, they often leave
the band when they marry. Many band directors I interviewed identified this
as a major challenge faced by bands.33 Only one other married woman with a
child played in the Covões band at this time, and she had joined the band before
marrying. Fausto hoped that the two women would set a positive example for their
colleagues by demonstrating that women could continue to participate in the band
after marriage.34
Paula joined the band because her husband Fernando played with the band
and her children were studying music at the band’s music school. She first learned
solfège to help her children study for their weekly lessons, and joining the band
enabled her to spend more time with her family. Her husband was happy with
her decision. For some time Fernando had encouraged his wife and children to
join the band because he wanted a ‘band family’.35 He had played bass drum with
the band as a teenager, but he gave up music when he and Paula married and
emigrated to Montreal, Canada. Eight years later, they returned to Portugal to
raise their children, and he rejoined the band as a tuba player. Paula said that she
never considered asking her husband to leave the band because it ‘had been part
of his life long before meeting her’.36 Among the women in the band, Paula’s case
seems exceptional; her husband actively encouraged her to join the band, and she
disliked spending weekends alone. Her decision to join the band reaffirmed her
commitment to her children and husband. After a few years, she and her husband
dropped out of the band due to various pressures from work and family, but their
daughter continues to play with the ensemble. They drive her to events and listen
to the band whenever it plays.
The band continues on in cycles. Old members drop out, sometimes over
conflicts with the band’s leadership, but more often in response to life-changing
events – going away to university, a new job, emigration, marriage or the birth
33
Luis Cardoso, interview with author (Samel, Portugal, 5 July 2003); João Neves,
interview with author (Fermentelos, Portugal, 1 September 2004).
34
Fausto Moreira, interview with author (Samel, Portugal, 4 September 2004).
35
Fernando Santos, personal communication with author (Covões, Portugal, 2001).
36
Paula Santos, interview with author (Covões, Portugal, 28 June 2003).
of a child. The decision to leave the band is often agonizing. One musician,
who eventually left the band because he had a consuming full-time job, talked
about how the band had been part of his life since he was a child and how a
decision to leave would deeply disappoint his parents who valued his participation
in the ensemble. Rehearsals and weekend performances become habit, and the
band comprises a large part of musicians’ social circles, which often overlap
with familial relationships. New students continue to arrive at the music school.
Musicians sometimes rejoin the band when they return to the area or retire, as
Sr. Mário, the former principal trumpeter, did when he retired and returned to
Covões after living and working in New Jersey for 19 years. In 2005, I returned
to Covões for a few weeks and played with the band. One morning as we lined up
for an arruada, Susana gestured at several new kids in the band – one boy was so
small that his alto saxophone looked like a baritone saxophone when he marched
– and said, ‘Look at all the new kids!’ I replied, ‘It’s great!’ She laughed as she
said, ‘They can barely play, but eventually they’ll learn.’ Six years later, most of
the kids, now teenagers or young adults, still played in the band, and I observed
them show another group of new musicians the ropes.
Conclusions
The pathways to the Covões band suggest dense social networks that link musicians
to the band and musicians to each other. Becoming part of the band is a process
through which one gradually acquires the skills that are necessary to perform, and
with this, musicians learn to participate in the value system that governs the band
as a social institution. The process that I have traced in this chapter shows that the
acquisition of musical skills cannot be separated from how a musician acquires
social knowledge through the relationships between him or herself and the people
he or she encounters on those pathways. In lessons, rehearsals and performances,
one learns one’s duties and responsibilities to the ensemble and in turn, where one
fits in this community.
It is through the band that Covões may be imagined as a ‘place of music’
where one may be ‘born a man (or woman)’ and be ‘born a musician’. However,
the village is not any more inherently musical than any of the other surrounding
communities. Instead, this place-based identity is actively created by the band and
promoted through its music school, performances and investment in the statue
Homage to the Musician. For the Covões band, place is a key symbol that stands for
musical excellence, respect for elders, allegiance to the group and the celebration
of tradition. In the band, Covões becomes a place connected and united, not only
by geography, but also through shared values and tradition.
Chapter 8
Playing Away: Liminality, Flow and
Communitas in an Ulster Flute Band’s
Visit to a Scottish Orange Parade
Gordon Ramsey
During the first weekend of July, the Sir George White Memorial Flute Band (SGWM),
from the County Antrim village of Broughshane, in Northern Ireland, makes an
annual journey to the Ayrshire village of New Cumnock in the western lowlands
of Scotland, to take part in the Ayrshire Orange Institution’s annual celebrations
of the Battle of the Boyne.1 On the band’s website, this journey is described as a
‘pilgrimage’, an interesting choice of words since religious conduct during the visit
is minimal or non-existent. As a member of the band, I have participated in this
intensive period of musicking, in which the band’s usual commitment to musical
quality, in a technical sense, takes second place to the quality of relationships – of
‘the crack’2 – and in which singing on the bus and dancing at the Orange Social Club
are as significant as the band’s performance on parade.
Although the band engages in an intensive programme of parades3 and
competitions within Northern Ireland, the ‘Scotland weekend’ is seen as the
highlight of the year. In emotional intensity, it surpasses even Northern Ireland’s
own celebrations on the Twelfth of July, and participation has a powerful
bonding effect, both within the band and between band members and their
Scottish hosts. Although qualitatively very different from the band’s week-
to-week performances, the visit has become central to the band’s conception
of its identity: the connection to the New Cumnock Orange Lodge is featured
prominently on the band’s website4 and the master of the Lodge has recently
1
This account is compiled from experiences over three successive years to create a
single coherent narrative.
2
Kaul describes the importance of ‘the crack’ (craic) in the context of Irish traditional
music in County Clare. The ‘Gaelic’ spelling used by Kaul is a controversial neologism
dating to the 1970s. See Adam Kaul, Turning the Tune: Traditional Music, Tourism, and
Social Change in an Irish Village (Oxford, 2009), pp. 146–9.
3
The most frequent performance context is the ‘band parade’, which may be
competitive. SGWM attends up to 30 band parades annually.
4
See Sir George White Memorial Flute Band, available at http://www.sgwmfb.co.uk/
[Accessed 8 October 2011].
been appointed honorary president of the band.5 The annual visit to Scotland can
be seen as central not only to the band’s identity, but to its continued viability as
an organization, providing a focus for anticipation and an emotional reward for
long nights spent practising in cold halls.6 Drawing on scholarship concerning
pilgrimage, tourism, ritual and play, this chapter will suggest that Victor Turner’s
development of van Gennep’s concept of liminality is useful in understanding
the Scottish visit as a ritual of renewal which has material and political effects,7
but it will shift the emphasis from Victor Turner’s focus on symbolism to Edith
Turner’s emphasis on emotional experience.8
The Ulster Marching Band Tradition
Although flute bands are not exclusive to the Protestant community in Northern
Ireland, their popularity within the Protestant working class has made them an
iconic representation of Protestant culture, as exemplified by the nineteenth-
century folk song ‘The Auld Orange Flute’.
Parading to fife and drum became popular in Ireland at the end of the eighteenth
century, when part-time military forces known as the ‘Volunteers’ were raised to
defend Ireland against potential French invasion.9 The Volunteers were strongest
in Ulster, and in the early nineteenth century, the practice of parading was taken
up by the newly formed ‘Orange Order’ and ‘Ribbonmen’ (later to become the
5
This appointment followed the death of the previous honorary president, Eric
Russell, long-term musical mentor of the band.
6
When, in 2005, the band considered disbandment, following a steep decline in
membership and consequently in enthusiasm, it was a successful visit to Scotland that
provided the emotional impetus to begin the rebuilding process.
7
See Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and
Gabrielle L. Caffee (Paris, 1909; London, 1960); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process
(Chicago, 1969); Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play
(New York, 1982); Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture:
Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford, 1978); Victor and Edith Turner, ‘Religious
Celebrations’, in Victor Turner (ed.), Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual
(Washington DC, 1983), pp. 201–19.
8
See Jill Dubisch, ‘Challenging the Boundaries of Experience, Performance, and
Consciousness: Edith Turner’s Contributions to the Turnerian Project’, in Graham St. John
(ed.), Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Oxford, 2008), pp. 324–37;
Matthew Engelke, ‘An Interview with Edith Turner’, in Graham St. John (ed.), Victor
Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Oxford, 2008), pp. 275–96; Edith Turner
with William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona and Fideli Benwa, Experiencing Ritual: A New
Interpretation of African Healing (Philadelphia, 1992).
9
See Marianne Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: A History (London, 2000), p. 222;
Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford,
1997), p. 43.
Playing Away 179
Ancient Order of Hibernians), lower-class fraternal organizations set up ostensibly

to defend the Protestant and Catholic faiths respectively, whose early clashes had
more to do with control of the weaving trade than with religion.10
The majority of the music played was closely related to the popular dance
music of the time, and although each side had a few ‘party tunes’, such as the
Orange ‘Protestant Boys’ or the Hibernian ‘White Cockade’, most tunes were
shared by both sides.11
Violent incidents at a number of parades led the British government to effectively
ban parading from 1845 to 1872, when a series of massive demonstrations fronted
by radical Orangeman William Johnston led to his jailing, subsequent election to
Parliament and the eventual repeal of the repressive legislation.12
The latter part of the nineteenth century saw industrialization in Ulster, and
repeated political crises around the issue of Home Rule. The former led to the
replacement of the home-made fife with the mass-produced marching band flute;
the latter saw large increases in the membership of the Orange and Hibernian
orders and the establishment of large numbers of bands associated with them.
Changing tastes led bands to replace many of their traditional melodies with
military marches, popular songs and even classical music played in part-harmony.
Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, nationalist parades were heavily
restricted within the northern state, and the nationalist band tradition declined.
This, however, was part of a general decline in traditional music making, as the
working class, North and South, took up new forms of popular music. By the
1960s, the Protestant band tradition was also in decline.
This decline was radically reversed in the 1970s and 1980s, spurred by the
linked phenomena of deindustrialization, mass unemployment and the outbreak
of communal conflict. The presence of large numbers of angry young men with
much time and no money led to a massive growth in band numbers. There are
now about 700 loyalist bands in the six counties of Northern Ireland.13 Most of
the newly formed bands rejected the harmonic aspirations of their predecessors.
10
Kevin Haddick-Flynn, Orangeism: The Making of a Tradition (Dublin, 1999), p. 128.
11
Gary Hastings, With Fife and Drum: Music, Memories and Customs of an Irish
Tradition (Belfast, 2003), pp. 55–6.
12
Haddick-Flynn, Orangeism; Aiken McClelland, William Johnston of Ballykilbeg
(Lurgan, Co. Armagh, 1990), pp. 20–73.
13
Exact numbers are difficult to determine as the band scene is decentralized, with
no overarching organizational body, and is fluid, with new bands forming as older ones
fold. Jacqueline Witherow identified 633 bands defined as ‘unionist’. See Jacqueline
Witherow, ‘Band Development in Northern Ireland: Ethnographic Researcher to Policy
Consultant’, Anthropology in Action, 13/1–2 (2006): 44–54. This is widely regarded as an
underestimate by band members, and Witherow concedes that this may be the case (personal
communication). BBC Radio Ulster reported over 800 bands on parade in Northern Ireland
on 12 July 2008 and 12 July 2009, but these totals included visiting bands from Scotland,
the Republic of Ireland, England and Canada.
Formed from the generation that grew up with punk rock, they were interested
in easy participation and making their presence heard. They termed themselves
‘blood-and-thunder’ bands, and played simple melodies, often party tunes, learned
by heart, accompanied by rudimentary drumming patterns at maximum volume,
their trademark becoming the bass-drummer who danced exuberantly as he beat
the drum. The blood-and-thunder bands soon outnumbered the more respectable,
military-styled ‘melody bands’ that had preceded them.
Parading bands played a significant role in the political conflict that convulsed
Northern Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s. The young working-class men of
the blood-and-thunder bands often took a leading role in political demonstrations,
and were sometimes at the forefront of confrontations with nationalists, the police
and the army.
The new bands were independent of the Orange Order, now seen as old
and weak, and since most Orange Lodges only paraded about six times a year,
and most of these were church parades at which ‘blood-and-thunder’ was not
welcome, the bands started to hold their own fundraising parades. The result
was a massive increase in the number of parades. From parading six times a
year, many bands were now attending up to 60 parades. Band membership
became a way of life. Parades were followed by dances, which included both
indoor performances by bands and a disco, providing an exciting and affordable
social life for large numbers of young working-class people, and this new
social context, established largely by blood-and-thunder bands, also led to a
revitalization of many melody bands.
Sir George White Memorial Flute Band
In 1978, a blood-and-thunder flute band was formed in Broughshane, a prosperous

and overwhelmingly Protestant village near Ballymena, County Antrim. Initially
named, Broughshane Young Loyalists, the band largely drew its membership from
the village’s young working-class men. They established their own annual band
parade in the village, but the heavy drinking and rowdy behaviour of visiting
bands caused friction with the village’s affluent middle class, and the band soon
gave up its own parade, though it continued to attend many others.
In 1982, following a violent altercation with another band at a parade in
Londonderry, the Broughshane band expelled a number of members and reformed
as a ‘melody band’, taking the name of a local military hero of the Boer War, Sir
George White. The transition to the melody genre involved the adoption of a new
musical style, incorporating military drumming techniques and part-harmonies;
a new repertoire comprising military marches; a new uniform, styled on that of
the Irish Guards regiment of the British Army, although in orange rather than red;
and a new means of learning and transmission, by notation, rather than purely
aural methods. The change in style entailed a development in instrumentation,
with the simple-system treble flutes, now played in parts, rather than in unison,
Playing Away 181
being supplemented by alto flutes and a piccolo, and the high-tension snare drums
favoured by blood-and-thunder bands being exchanged for the mellower sound of
low-tension drums.14
The change may be seen as an assertion of respectability, driven by both the
external pressures of middle-class neighbours and the aspirations of the maturing
band members themselves to upward mobility – to ‘improving themselves’,
financially, socially and musically. For most of the year, in its performances
at parades, band contests and concerts, SGWM focuses on the ‘respectable’
repertoire of marches played in part-harmony. Yet the band retains a repertoire of
blood-and-thunder tunes, mostly traditional jigs and song-tunes, which are played
on a few occasions every year, especially during the annual visit to Scotland. The
bandmaster, Stephen, explained that ‘The Scots love the blood-and-thunder; it’s
what they’re brought up on’.
Loyalism in Scotland
While ties of kinship and culture between the Protestants of Ulster and those of
western Scotland extend back to the seventeenth-century Plantation of Ulster,
MacFarland and Walker have claimed that the establishment of the Orange
Order in western Scotland in the nineteenth century was a result of a reversed
flow of emigration from Ulster to Scotland during processes of industrialization.15
Kaufmann has provided convincing statistical evidence to support these claims.16
Kaufmann also notes that changes in the social make-up of the Scottish order
have paralleled those in Ireland.17 A withdrawal of the middle class means that
both organizations are now overwhelmingly working class in composition, and a
failure to attract younger members, who are more likely to join independent bands,
has led to ageing and numerical decline within the organization. Despite this
decline, Orange parades remain part of a complex of loyalist culture in Scotland,
14
The treble flutes are nominally keyed in B-flat, the alto-flutes in F and the
piccolo in E-flat. These designations date to the nineteenth century, however, before the
standardization of concert pitch at A = 440 MHz. Judged by the modern concert standard,
these instruments all play half a tone above their designated pitch. High-tension drums
were developed by pipe-bands to facilitate intricate percussive patterns but are used by
blood-and-thunder bands primarily for their volume. Low-tension drums are typically used
by brass bands, and in Northern Ireland by accordion bands as well as melody flute bands.
15
Elaine MacFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth-Century Scotland
(Edinburgh, 1990); Graham Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the Wars’,
International Review of Social History, 37/2 (1992): 177–206.
16
Eric Kaufmann, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland Since 1860: A Social Analysis’,
in Martin J. Mitchell (ed.), New Perspectives on the Irish in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2008),
pp. 155–90.
17
Ibid., pp. 173–6.
which includes independent band parades and the support of Glasgow Rangers
Football Club (which also has a massive following among Protestants in Northern
Ireland). The Scottish Orange Order’s Boyne celebration, or ‘The Big Walk’ as it
is colloquially known, is still the highlight of the Scottish loyalist calendar.
O’er the Sheugh18
On the Friday morning of the Scotland weekend, SGWM members, accompanied

by wives, girlfriends and supporters, boarded a bus for the short journey to Larne,
where they would catch the ferry to Cairnryan on the Scottish mainland, just two
hours away by sea. This was the 28th consecutive year that the band had made
the trip and, over the years, close relationships between Broughshane and New
Cumnock had been built. Three band members had married women from New
Cumnock during this period, and two of those couples were on the bus. The bus
was loaded with uniforms, instruments and beer. Stephen had emphasized that
we were performing on arrival and should not drink too much, but his advice was
interpreted loosely. Drinking started on the bus and continued on the ferry. When
I refused founder-member Don’s offer of a pint, saying that I could not drink and
play the flute, the response was, ‘If you want to play with this band, you’d better
learn’, and a pint duly appeared.
Stories were told of adventures on previous visits to Scotland, including the
tale of a bandsman whose wife had forbidden him to go. The bandsman placed his
uniform and flute in a suit-carrier and concealed it in the coal-bunker the previous
night. On the Friday morning, he told his wife he was going out to bring in a bucket
of coal, grabbed his uniform and ran down the street to the bus, which was on its
way to Larne by the time his wife realized he had gone. A senior band member
told those of us who were new to the band what to expect in New Cumnock. ‘It’s
a shithole’, he observed. ‘There’s nothing there. But the people – you’re going to
have the time of your life’.
On arrival at Cairnryan, the bus headed north. Well lubricated with beer, the
band was now in singing mood, starting with soul and country classics including
Elvis Presley’s ‘The Wonder of You’, performed with extravagant actions, and
Kenny Rogers’s ‘The Gambler’, before moving on to an ironic performance of
the music-hall song ‘If You’re Irish Come Into the Parlour’ and to songs specific
to the band, largely composed by band-secretary, Davy, who played a leading role
in the singing.
Sir George White Memorial Band are we (shooby-doo, shooby-dooby-dooby-doo),

We’re the best flute band in the country it’s plain to see (shooby-doo, shooby-dooby-
dooby-doo),
18
‘Sheugh’ is an Ulster-Scots word meaning an open drain or ditch, often applied to
the narrow ‘North Channel’ that separates Ulster from Scotland.
Playing Away 183
We’ll play a tune, sing a song as well,

If you don’t like it you can go to hell,
Sir George White Memorial Band are we.
Loyalist songs did not feature significantly in the singing, something that
Davy commented on when he observed loudly, ‘See, we are not sectarian: all
that way and we haven’t kicked the pope once!’ Davy’s comment served as a
prompt for a chorus of ‘The Sash’,19 after which the bus quietened as Taggart, a
Broughshane Orangeman and DUP20 member known for his repertoire of Orange
songs, launched into ‘The Green Grassy Slopes of the Boyne’. Applause for his
performance turned to jeers as he struck up the Republican song ‘The Men Behind
the Wire’.21 Then there was a burst of laughter as Davy observed: ‘Aye: You DUP
boys’ll need them Fenian22 songs whenever you go down to Dublin for the Ard
Fheis!’,23 in ironic reference to the DUP’s recent entry into coalition government
with Sinn Féin. ‘You have to know your enemy’, Taggart responded with a grin, as
the bus pulled into Girvan for a visit to the pub and chip shop.
On the resumption of the journey north, flutes were brought out and music
making of a different kind commenced. Stefan, who also played with the Ballykeel
flute band in Ballymena, performed traditional tunes from their repertoire; Sam,
a young bandsman who shared my enthusiasm for traditional music, and I played
traditional tunes that we had learned in sessions; and Sam and senior fluter Brian
played military marches they had learned from other bands in which they had
played. All these performances stimulated applause and humorously derisory
comments in equal measure.
As we passed the sign delimiting the boundary of the village, the band again
burst into song. A chorus of
We’re the boys who like the crack,

Lock up your daughters cos we’re back
gave way to
19
An iconic loyalist ballad that refers to the orange sash worn by members of the
Orange Order.
20
The Democratic Unionist Party, a leading Unionist political party in Northern
Ireland that appeals to an overwhelmingly Protestant constituency.
21
Both the lyrics and tune of this song are different from the loyalist song of the same
name.
22
A name adopted by nineteenth-century Irish rebels, recalling the ‘Fianna’, mythical
warriors of ancient Ireland; it is used by contemporary loyalists as a derogatory term for
Republicans.
23
Sinn Féin party conference. Sinn Féin [Ourselves Alone] is an Irish Republican
political party in Northern Ireland that appeals to an overwhelmingly Catholic constituency.
We all live in New Cumnock Housing Scheme,

New Cumnock Housing Scheme,
New Cumnock Housing Scheme24
sung to the tune of the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’.
The Lily
The bus stopped outside a small hall with a Union Jack flying from a flagpole. A
plaque identified the building as the Afton Lily Orange Social Club: ‘the Lily’. The
plaque acknowledged the receipt of European Union money for its refurbishment,
but paint was already peeling in small patches from the front wall of the hall.
Entering, we were greeted by a group of craggy-faced men and smiling women.
These were members of the New Cumnock Orange Lodge and the Daughters of
Ruth Ladies Lodge, with whom we would parade the following day. The hall was
laid out with tables surrounding a dance floor and decorated with memorabilia
of Orangeism and Glasgow Rangers Football Club. A photograph of members of
SGWM in their original uniform hung on the wall above my seat.
The bar was open and pints, followed by plates of stew, swiftly appeared. After
eating, we were escorted to our accommodation. We were being put up by lodge
members in the Housing Scheme, the large council estate on the northern side of
the village, some bandsmen sharing beds, others on sofas. Living so intimately, in
somewhat crowded conditions, necessitated the development of close relationships
both between bandsmen and between the band and their hosts.25
I went for a walk through the village in order to allow the effects of the beer to
wear off. It was, indeed, a sobering experience. According to my fellow bandsmen,
New Cumnock had been a prosperous mining village until the 1984 miner’s strike.
The loyalist miners of the village had been strongly committed to the strike, and
in Northern Ireland, the band had engaged in fundraising to support their brethren
across the water in a moment in which loyalist and class solidarity had become
indistinguishable. Following the strike, most of the local pits had been closed,
leaving only the open-cast mine where Jim worked, and this employed few people.
There was little alternative work available. The centre of the village provided
vivid evidence of the economic decline. There was one pub, a convenience shop
and one apparently functioning church. Another church had broken windows and
24
Publicly owned housing estates in Scotland are widely known as ‘schemes’.
25
Another flute band with which I have played has also participated in the Scottish
Boyne parade. This band, however, has stayed in hostel accommodation, rather than in the
host-lodge’s houses, and does not have access to a shared space like the Lily, rather going
out to local pubs. As a result, the members have not formed the close bonds evident in
SGWM’s relationship to the New Cumnock Lodge. The Scottish event is less emotionally
rewarding for this band, and there is often ambivalence about the decision regarding
whether or not to participate.
Playing Away 185
the churchyard was heavily overgrown. Most of the shop-fronts were boarded up.
Neatly mown grass surrounded a derelict pithead. Next to an old hostelry, a small
garden had been created with plants growing in a railcar salvaged from a mine
railway. On the wall of the hotel was a beautifully painted mural featuring local
landscapes, the Scottish flag and the figure of the Scottish national poet, Robert
Burns. On the front of the hotel, a plaque announced that Burns had stayed in the
hotel in 1795. This celebration of heritage, however, had fallen victim to a modern
reality. The hotel was closed and its structure was decaying rapidly. The main
street was deserted.
I returned to the Lily, which seemed an oasis of life in the otherwise silent
village. There was a babble of conversation and laughter as old friendships were
renewed and new ones made. As the evening went on, the club filled up with
younger faces. A singer and guitarist, introduced as ‘Midnight Express’, set up
their instruments and regaled the crowd with a mixture of popular dance tunes and
loyalist ballads, seamlessly woven together.
Then SGWM was called up to play. They worked their way through their
blood-and-thunder repertoire, with the crowd enthusiastically clapping, stamping
and singing along to the loyalist ballad ‘The Sash’, the Glasgow Rangers song
‘Every Other Saturday’, and traditional jigs such as ‘The Weaver’ and ‘The Boys
of Derry’. Following this performance, Midnight Express returned and kept the
crowd singing, dancing and drinking until the club closed at 1 am. At that point,
I headed for bed, but other bandsmen went on to a house-party to drink through
the night.
The Big Walk
Painfully early the following morning, the band and lodges formed up on the road
outside the Lily to parade around the village before catching the bus to ‘The Big
Walk’ in Johnston, a suburb of Glasgow. The band members were in their orange
and blue uniforms, lodge members in dark suits, which contrasted with their
orange sashes, the ladies with hats and sashes. Despite Stephen’s warnings, many
band members were clearly feeling the effects of the previous evening’s drinking.
The ladies’ lodge behind us suddenly dissolved into paroxysms of laughter, as
the drum-sergeant26 made a late appearance. Having awoken still drunk, he had
discovered that he had left his uniform trousers at home and had been forced to
borrow a pair of black schoolboy’s trousers a foot too short for him. A local hurried
off to find him some better fitting trousers for the main parade, but the lodge-
master, under pressure from local police, was insistent that the schedule be upheld,
and the drum-sergeant was forced to parade the village with the skin-tight trousers
wrinkled above his bare calves.
26
The drum-sergeant is responsible for training the drummers, leads them in
performance and plays all the solo snare drum parts. He is therefore an important figure
within the band.
After parading through the virtually deserted main street, the band turned up
the hill towards ‘the Scheme’. Stephen called ‘The Adjutant’, usually a routine
march to the band. Many of the hung-over bandsmen, however, were struggling for
breath as they climbed the hill, and at one point, Stephen, to his sharply expressed
annoyance, seemed to be the only fluter playing, while the bass-drummer’s head
appeared to be resting on the top of the drum, as if he were trying to catch up on
some of the sleep he had missed the previous night. My own throat was dry, and my
attempts to draw notes from the flute seemed to result only in abrasive screeches.
The ragged sound revived somewhat as the band crested the hill and entered ‘the
Scheme’. People came to the doors of their houses, many decorated with Union
flags and Glasgow Rangers regalia, to watch us pass. Some applauded, some called
out to friends in the band or lodges, while others fell into fits of hilarity at the sight
of the unfortunate drum-sergeant’s extraordinary apparel. Having completed the
circuit of the village, the band fell out and made a dash for the local convenience
store, to stock up on cold drinks and snacks for the bus journey.
By the time the bus arrived in Johnston, most band members appeared to
be recovered from their wild night. Stephen had reminded them that the lodge
was paying for their travel and offering them hospitality, and that it was their
obligation to put on a good performance. By the time ‘The Big Walk’ started, the
band was enjoying the atmosphere and the drum-sergeant had acquired a pair of
better-fitting black trousers. As the band stepped off to ‘Galanthia’, the full sound
and crisp drumming made it seem like a different ensemble to the one that had
paraded New Cumnock.
The main street was jammed with spectators, and the band responded by
playing popular film and TV themes, using the full range of harmonies available
to them. ‘The Great Escape’ and ‘Dad’s Army’ both drew enthusiastic responses
from spectators, and the crowd’s reaction induced feelings of pleasure and pride
for me, and it seemed, for other bandsmen. Hangovers were forgotten and the
marching seemed to take on an extra swing. By the time the band fell out in
the urban park that was the parade’s destination, everyone seemed in fine form,
and humorous banter about the previous night’s activities was punctuated by
outbreaks of laughter, until bandsmen dispersed to find food, and for some, ‘the
hair of the dog’.27
About two hours later, the band reformed for the return parade. This time,
harmonies and complex arrangements were abandoned as the band focused on its
‘blood-and-thunder’ repertoire, played in unison. The crowd roared its approval
and sang along to ‘Derry’s Walls’ and ‘The Green Grassy Slopes of the Boyne’.
Building on the wave of emotion this singing created, Stephen called ‘The Sash’,
as the band reached the most densely packed part of the street. The crowd joined
in with a full-throated roar:
27
‘Hair of the dog that bit you’: a colloquial expression meaning to take another drink
to cure a hangover.
Playing Away 187
Figure 8.1 Intense focus on the music as the SGWM band enters the field,
2008
It is old, but it is beautiful,

And its colours they are fine,
It was worn in Derry, Aughrim,
Enniskillen and the Boyne,
My father wore it in his youth,
In those bygone days of yore,
And it’s on the Twelfth I love to wear,
The Sash my father wore!
Hundreds of fists punched the air as the crowd sang the final line of the song.
The wave of sound seemed to carry a wave of emotion binding us to the crowd
in a powerful – but transitory – communion. For a moment we seemed linked in
an intimate moment of comradeship with hundreds of people whom we did not
know and would never see again. It was one of those moments of which I had
heard bandsmen talk – when ‘the hairs stand up on the back of your neck’ and
you ‘feel ten feet tall’. The band followed this tune with other simple song-tunes
familiar to their audience, ‘Londonderry by the Foyle’, ‘Every Other Saturday’,
‘Faughanside’. As we left the main street, the crowd thinned and the band reverted
to its core repertoire of marches in part-harmony, as Stephen called ‘Orangefield’.
Finally, the band fell out and boarded the bus, returning to New Cumnock to rest
and prepare for a Saturday night of partying in the Lily.
Party in the Lily
Midnight Express kicked off their set in the Lily with the soul anthem ‘Celebrate
Good Times’. The dance floor filled, and those not dancing sang along with the
chorus. The rhythm changed to that of Scottish jigs and I found myself led to the
dance floor by a New Cumnock woman, to dance ‘The Gay Gordons’, following
which Midnight Express broke into ‘Johnny B. Good’, and the dancers bopped
and jived to the rock ’n’ roll backbeat.
I found myself at the bar chatting to band chairman Rab. He talked of the joy
of fatherhood. ‘See whenever you hear someone call you “Daddy” – you can’t
describe the feeling: there’s nothing like it’. He also talked of his commitment to
the band, which he had joined as a child. ‘You can’t call it a hobby’, he observed,
‘It’s a way of life’. ‘I wouldn’t join an Orange Lodge’, he went on, ‘because I
wouldn’t want that conflict of loyalties: loyalty is very important to me. See, boys
who join the band and then just leave, or don’t bother themselves showing up, I
wouldn’t have a lot of time for them’.
The association in Rab’s mind between his feelings for his family and his
commitment to the band is significant. For Rab, loyalty is not just a constitutional
position, a political opinion or an ascribed label. It is his way of life, by which
all his relationships, most fundamentally those with his family, are guided. The
potential conflict of loyalties that he sees between membership in the band and
in an Orange lodge is not an ideological conflict but a purely practical one: one
cannot parade simultaneously with a band and a lodge. Loyalty for Rab is not a
matter of abstract principle but of embodied action.
Beside us at the bar, Davy and others from both sides of the sheugh started to
sing and perform stylized actions as Midnight Express launched into the popular
loyalist ballad, ‘Build My Gallows High’:
So build my gallows, build it hi-igh,

That I might see before I die,
The Antrim Glens, the hills of County Do-own,
And see again, the lights of home.
While in Ulster I heard Orangemen sing nostalgically of the Gallowa’ Hills,

Orangemen in Ayrshire sang with equal nostalgia of the hills of County Down,
evidence of a post-colonial condition that left groups on either side of the North
Channel to conceive of themselves as part of a diaspora from the other side. In
the Lily, Ulstermen and Scots united in song to bring forth ‘the Union’, not as an
abstract constitutional ideal or a political power structure, but as a shared practice
through which Scotland and Ulster were experienced as one country.
Paisley, the lodge’s deputy-master, was taking the opportunity to sell home-
produced CDs entitled King Billy’s Greatest Hits as Midnight Express segued into
‘Show Me the Way to Amarillo’, then riding high in the British pop charts, and
the dancers on the floor moved easily from one set of choreographed actions to
Playing Away 189
another. Then arms were raised and bodies swayed in time in a scene reminiscent
of the football terraces as Midnight Express performed the Rangers song ‘The
Blue Sea of Ibrox’, following which, Davy took the mike, and launched into
an extravagant rendition of ‘The Wonder of You’. ‘He’s got a good voice’, I
commented with surprise. Rab looked at me sceptically: ‘You must be drunker
than he is’, he replied.
As the evening neared its end, Midnight Express struck up a song that was
clearly a favourite with many in the club, ‘The Ballad of the UDR Four’. Rab
explained to me that the song was about a miscarriage of justice in which four
members of the Ulster Defence Regiment had been imprisoned for a murder that
they did not commit. He remarked, however, that most of those singing along
to the song’s chorus probably did not know that. Whether or not his supposition
was correct, it was apparent that those singing were not really singing about any
historical event; they were singing about themselves. As they climbed upon their
chairs, arms raised and hands linked, they swayed in time with the music and sang:
Free, Free, I just want to be,

Free as the wind and the rain on the sea,
Free, Free, I just want to be,
Out where the rivers run free.
And as their bodies moved together and happiness suffused their faces; it seemed
that, for a little while, at least, they really were ‘free’.
Sunday: Homeward Bound
After a lie-in on Sunday morning, we all returned to the Lily for the band’s final
performance of the weekend. A lunchtime drinking session was soon underway
and the club was packed with people of all ages. As SGWM played a set of blood-
and-thunder tunes, parents and grandparents sang along to ‘Derry’s Walls’ while
children clapped their hands and young mothers danced with their babies in their
arms to ‘Killaloe’ and ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’. I saw that Stephen’s assertion
that people in New Cumnock grew up with blood-and-thunder was literally true.
These children incorporated the rhythms of the flute band into their embodied
habitus, as their parents had undoubtedly done before them, long before they could
have any understanding of the discourses of loyalism or Protestantism which
are often deployed, both by participants and others, to account for such musical
enactions.
Late in the afternoon, the crowd followed us to the bus that would take us
home. There were handshakes and hugs, phone numbers exchanged, and then the
Scots were waving as the bus pulled away. There was no singing on this journey.
The accumulated exhaustion of the weekend meant that most on the bus were
soon asleep.
Liminality and Communitas
Victor and Edith Turner,28 in their work on pilgrimage, drew on van Gennep’s
formulation of liminality as the crucial transitional stage of ritual. In this state,
the participant is temporarily separated from everyday life, and enters a world
in which normal social hierarchies are replaced by an egalitarian communitas, in
which individuals bond closely as they participate in transformative experiences.
The Turners saw a parallel between pilgrimage and tourism, suggesting that
‘a tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist. Even when people bury
themselves in anonymous crowds on beaches, they are seeking an almost sacred
… mode of communitas, generally unavailable to them in the structured life of
the office, the shop floor, or the mine’.29 John Urry also drew this parallel in The
Tourist Gaze.30
SGWM’s visit to Scotland does not seem to fit easily into the categories
of either pilgrimage or tourism. On the one hand, it has little or no religious
component; on the other, it includes no ‘commodification’ or ‘sight-seeing’ of
the kinds described by Urry in The Tourist Gaze. Unlike the visit of a Portuguese-
American wind band to Portugal, documented by Brucher,31 SGWM’s visit
received no official recognition in civic or religious ritual, nor was there any
attempt to steer band members into ‘tourist’ activities. Nor do Ulster-Scots band
members take the somewhat romanticized view of their ‘heritage’ evident in some
of the Portuguese-Americans’ responses to their visit to Penalva do Castelo,32
as the description of New Cumnock as ‘a shithole’, makes clear. Nevertheless,
the band does use the term ‘pilgrimage’ to describe the annual visit, and the
specialness of the break from the everyday world identified by Urry, in relation
to tourism, is clearly important – emphasized when band members tell the story
of the bandsman who hid his uniform in the coal-bunker in order to make the
trip. Moreover, the Turners note that secular celebration was often part of the
pilgrimage experience,33 and the theme of sexual adventure, which runs through
much of the tourism literature, and is identified by Martin Stokes in specific
relation to touring by amateur musicians,34 is a recurring source of stories from
28
Victor Turner, ‘The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal’, History of Religions, 12/3
(1973): 191–230; Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture.
29
Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, p. 20.
30
John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (2nd edn, London, 2002), p. 11.
31
Katherine Brucher, ‘Viva Rhode Island! Viva Portugal! Performance and Tourism
in Portuguese-American Bands’, in Kimberly DaCosta Holton and Andrea Klimt (eds),
Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity (Dartmouth, MA, 2009), pp. 203–26.
32
Ibid., p. 202.
33
Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, p. 36.
34
Martin Stokes, ‘Place, Exchange and Meaning: Black Sea Musicians in the West of
Ireland’, in Martin Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of
Place (Oxford, 1997), pp. 97–115, at p. 102.
Playing Away 191
SGWM’s visits to Scotland. The trip seems to fall somewhere on a continuum

between pilgrimage and tourism, such that the concept of liminality may help to
illuminate the experience.
During the visit to Scotland, the band breaks not only with their everyday lives
at work, but also with the usual routine of band activity. The musical focus shifts
from the complex harmonies of military marches to the simple and unadorned
‘blood-and-thunder’ tunes. Playing the iconic loyalist tune ‘The Sash’ in Johnston
town centre was a highlight of the weekend in Scotland, but the tune is never
played at the ‘band parades’, which constitute most of SGWM’s performance
opportunities. Often the first tune taught to learners, it is widely regarded as boring
to play, and unlikely to impress the other melody bands who will be scrutinizing
SGWM’s performance at such events. In the Scottish context, however, band
members clearly enjoy playing such tunes, so much so that the trip becomes the
emotional highlight of the band’s year.
It is not just musical behaviour that changes in Scotland. Other types of
behaviour are tolerated, and to some extent even encouraged, though they would
be unacceptable in normal circumstances. The drum-sergeant who forgot his
trousers would never have been allowed to parade in that state in Northern Ireland.
Indeed, heavy drinking before a performance would never be tolerated at home,
being seen as antithetical to the band’s ethos of respectability and musical quality.
In Scotland, however, even senior members who might usually be expected to
enforce such norms collude in subverting them. The delight taken in telling stories
of the mishaps that take place on these trips only adds to the perceived specialness
of the occasion in future years.
The Turners’ theorization of liminality highlights how it involves a degree
of personal transformation. Individuals return to normal life in a different
state, and often a higher status, than that which they previously enjoyed.
They suggest that in the case of pilgrimage, however, this change in status is
experienced internally, as ‘salvation or release’, rather than overtly in social
ranking. SGWM’s Scottish ‘pilgrimage’ can be seen as a cathartic experience
of refreshment and renewal, both on a personal level, through the powerful
positive emotions generated, and on a group level, through the bonds that are
built by sharing these experiences. For the band and its members, it is a period
of ‘re-creation’, a term closely related to another of Victor Turner’s theoretical
themes: ‘play’.35 By playing, in many senses of the term, in Scotland, the band
re-creates the emotional commitment that will see it through another year of
more routine engagements in Northern Ireland.
Victor Turner identifies ‘play’ as voluntary, creative and yet rule-bound.36 In
exploring the paradoxical relationship between these different aspects of play, he
introduces Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’, ‘the holistic sensation present
35
Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, pp. 31–5.
36
Ibid., pp. 31–4.
when we act with total involvement’.37 This psychological state could be seen as
the conscious or unconscious aim of ‘playing’ – the emotional reward for engaging
in ‘play’.
Flow is:
a state in which action follows action according to an internal logic which seems
to need no conscious intervention on our part … we experience it as a unified
flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions,
and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between
stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future.38
Turner elaborated six distinctive features of flow identified by Csikszentmihalyi,

which elucidate the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, action
following action without conscious intervention and, on the other, feeling in control
of our actions. These are (1) ‘The experience of merging action and awareness’
which is made possible by (2) ‘a centring of attention on a limited stimulus field’.
This intense focus brings (3) ‘loss of ego’, although ‘self-forgetfulness here does not
mean loss of self-awareness’, but rather awareness of the self as being at one with
the environment, through ‘intuitions of unity, solidarity, repletion and acceptance’.
This experience of oneness causes a person in flow to feel (4) ‘in control of his [sic]
actions and the environment. He may not know this at the time … but reflecting on it
he may realise that his skills were matched to the demands made on him by ritual, art
or sport’. Such control is facilitated by the fact that (5) ‘Flow … contains coherent,
non-contradictory demands for action, and provides clear, unambiguous feedback
to a person’s actions’ by ‘limiting … awareness to a restricted field of possibilities’.
Finally, ‘flow is (6) “autotelic”, i.e. it seems to need no goals or rewards outside
itself. To flow is to be as happy as a human can be – the particular rules or stimuli
that triggered the flow, whether chess or a prayer meeting, do not matter’.39
This formulation of ‘flow’ resolves the tension between creative freedom, on
the one hand, and rule-boundedness, on the other. It is precisely the framework
of rules that facilitates creative freedom by enabling the centring of attention
on a limited stimulus field that provides coherent, non-contradictory demands
for action, and clear, unambiguous feedback. Playing in the band can certainly
provide this rule-governed environment, and the weekly practices (including
marching practice) which take place throughout the year can be seen as a process
by which players master the rules of timing, tuning, articulation and synchronized
movement which enable them to achieve such states in performance. Glasgow
37
Ibid., p. 56. Turner’s formulation of flow, cited here, is based on earlier work by Mihály
Csikszentmihalyi. See FLOW: Studies of Enjoyment, PHS Grant Report (Chicago, 1974) and
‘Play and Intrinsic Rewards’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 15/3 (1975): 41–63.
38
Mihály Csikszentmihalyi, ‘Play and Intrinsic Rewards’, quoted in Turner, From
Ritual to Theatre, p. 56.
39
Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, p. 56.
Playing Away 193
novelist Alan Spence’s evocative account of playing in a flute band in ‘The Big
Walk’ resonates with this conception of flow as ‘to be as happy as a human can be’:
There was nothing to beat playing in the band … The first time he had marched
in the Walk he couldn’t believe how it had made him feel. It was brilliant, it was
magic, it was real. It was triumph and glory. Hello there! Ya beauty! The music
caught him up.40
Flow can be achieved in solitary as well as communal contexts.41 When flow is

achieved in communal contexts, however, it may have powerful social effects.
These are explored by Turner and Turner in their development of Florian
Znaniecki’s concept of communitas, defined as ‘a bond … uniting people over
and above any formal social bonds’.42 The Turners see the emotional state of
communitas as a product of the social state of liminality.
In communitas there is a direct, total confrontation of human identities, which
is rather more than the casual camaraderie of ordinary social life.43 The Turners
emphasize that communitas is not a long-term state, but an intense temporary
experience, whether it takes place in the serious ritual of initiation or the festal
ecstasy of communal celebration.44 The Turners illustrate the concept of communitas
with the marching songs of the American Shaker sect,45 used to ‘unite the assembly
and raise it into life and power’ in bodily manifestations of joy.46 In his study of
Brazilian carnival, Victor Turner explicitly defines communitas as ‘shared flow’.47
While shared flow may be achieved within any cultural discipline, it must always be
achieved within some discipline. It is not randomly available to all, but only to those
who have acquired the necessary shared competences, whether of playing, dancing,
marching, singing or simply listening, for successful mutual engagement.
The understanding of communitas as shared flow resonates with the experience
I shared on parade in Johnston, which included feelings of exhilaration, absolute
confidence and competence, total acceptance and communion in a participatory
act of musicking with a large number of people, many of whose faces I did
not even see. Shared flow can also be invoked to account for the communal
40
Alan Spence, The Magic Flute (London, 1997), p. 91.
41
See Richard Logan, ‘Flow in Solitary Ordeals’, in Mihály and Isabella
Selega Csikszentmihalyi (eds), Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in
Consciousness (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 172–80.
42
Turner and Turner, ‘Religious Celebrations’, p. 206; Florian Znaniecki, The Method
of Sociology (New York, 1934).
43
Turner and Turner, ‘Religious Celebrations’, p. 206.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., p. 227.
46
The Shaker hymn ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple’ is played by Ulster flute-bands in its
contemporary incarnation as ‘The Lord of the Dance’.
47
Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York, 1987), p. 134.
exuberance experienced in the semi-ritualized environment of the Lily, as people

sang, clapped, danced and played together.
Communitas and Liminality
For Victor Turner, communitas was intimately associated with liminality, and with
the stripping away of status that he saw as central to the experience of liminality.48
In Northern Ireland, and particularly within the village of Broughshane, with
its large middle-class population, SGWM’s performances constantly assert
its ‘respectable’ status. This status is enacted through its repertoire of military
marches played in part-harmony – the music of the state arranged to appeal to the
aesthetic sense of the middle class, and through the disciplined demeanour which
the band adopts on parade and in concert.
In the solidly working-class environment into which the band arrives in Scotland,
the concern with maintaining a respectable status fades into the background.
In its Scottish performances, the band is less concerned with satisfying what
Bourdieu calls ‘the aesthetic disposition’ modelled on middle-class values49 and
instead opens itself to the working-class ‘taste for revelry’.50 This is apparent in
the concentration on the blood-and-thunder repertoire, and also in the communal
singing and dancing that constitutes a significant part of the weekend’s activities.
The stripping away of status is also apparent in the almost compulsory heavy
drinking, which encourages the loss of inhibitions, often leading to celebratory but
undignified behaviours. These behaviours provide the raw material for humorous
stories, such as the tale of the drum-sergeant’s trousers, which can be recalled
throughout the year, in an egalitarian ‘levelling’ process that provides a constant
brake on the development of status differences between band members, despite
the different musical and organizational roles that members may fulfil, and the
different social statuses that may pertain to them outside the band.
While the communitas of Scotland is transitory, its effects are not. The uplifting
experiences of ‘shared flow’ in moments such as the playing of ‘The Sash’ are also
recalled in story. One brief but particularly intense moment when, as the band
played to a crowd gathered under a Glasgow motorway bridge, the sound of the
band’s playing and the crowd’s singing was amplified by the echo from the bridge,
is still recalled some 15 years later as a moment of peak emotional arousal. This
arousal is described in physical terms: band members ‘got goose-pimples’, ‘the
hairs stood up on the back of their necks’. Such stories provide the motivation for
band members to attend practices on cold winter nights so that such feelings may
be rekindled in the future or, for new members, experienced for the first time.
48
Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, p. 26.
49
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London,
1984), pp. 28–30.
50
Ibid., p. 34.
Playing Away 195
The brief period of liminality experienced annually in Scotland therefore plays

an ongoing role in regulating and reproducing the band’s structure throughout the
rest of the year. It is in this linkage that the political dimension of communitas
becomes manifest.
Communitas as Political Action
Small describes ritual as ‘the mother of all the arts’51 and, drawing on Geertz,
suggests that when people make music in a ritual context ‘the lived-in order
merges with the dreamed-of order’.52 He argues that ‘Through their gestures …
relationships are brought into existence between the participants that meld, in
metaphoric form, ideal relationships as they imagine them to be. In this way the
participants not only learn about those relationships but actually experience them
in their bodies’.53 Thus ‘to take an active part in a ritual act brings pleasure, even
joy … For in doing so we are making our dreams come true’.54
Through acts of storytelling, the egalitarian ‘dreamed-of order’ established
during the period of liminality in Scotland is carried over into the band’s
relationships throughout the year. New members soon learn that lapses from
acceptable performance or behaviour are sanctioned with merciless teasing, but
they also learn that all within the band, from the bandmaster down, are subject
to the same discipline. Part of the importance of the Scottish ‘pilgrimage’ is that
it offers even the most senior the opportunity to ‘fall from grace’. Moreover,
this teasing does not just serve as a social sanction – it also contains a more
positive message. It says to band members who are subject to it (as all are at
some time), ‘we have no illusions about you, we know your weaknesses, but
we still like you and accept you as one of us’. It is this deep level of acceptance
that creates the close and warm relationships that ensure the band’s continuing
reproduction.
Turner’s conception of communitas may be equated, in a musical context,
with Blacking’s discussion of ‘bodily resonance’, ‘fellow-feeling’ at its most
powerful.55 Blacking emphasized the deeply political effects of such fellow-
51
Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening
(Hanover, NH, 1998), p. 105.
52
Small attributes this ‘resounding formulation’ to Geertz, which appears to be a
paraphrase of Geertz’s assertion that ‘[i]n a ritual, the world as lived, and the world as
imagined … turn out to be the same world’. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
(New York, 1973), p. 112; Small, Musicking, p. 95.
53
Christopher Small, Musicking, p. 96, original emphasis.
54
Ibid., p. 105.
55
John Blacking, ‘The Concept of Identity and Folk Concepts of Self: A Venda
Case Study’, in Anita Jacobson-Widding (ed.), Identity: Personal and Sociocultural: A
Symposium (Stockholm, 1983), pp. 47–65.
feeling, asserting that the intense positive emotional experiences of bodily

resonance motivated people to act on behalf of those institutions that facilitated
the experience.56 Summarizing Blacking’s identity theory, Sager observes: ‘When
individual creativity combines with traditional patterns of music performance to
make those motivating musical moments happen, the very nature of the self is tied
to the very nature of culture and society’.57
Blacking’s observations contribute to understanding not just the internal
politics of the band but the wider politics of working-class loyalism in Northern
Ireland and Scotland. Through mutual participation in the intense ‘motivating
musical moments’ that succeed each other during the weekend in Scotland, band
members bind themselves not only to each other, but to their Scottish hosts and
to the wider social world of loyalism, organized largely around the physical and
organizational structures of the Orange Order (Orange halls and parades), and
the experience of parading to music. It is quite unnecessary for band members to
have any deep discursive understanding or commitment to the principles, religious
and constitutional, for which the Orange Order claims to stand for this political
community to be sustained.58 The affective ties of ‘fellow-feeling’ formed in
moments of musical communitas are politically effective at a level deeper than
discourse and, indeed, deeper than the visual symbolism on which much analysis
of loyalist ritual has been based.59
56
Ibid., p. 52.
57
Rebecca Sager, ‘Creating a Musical Space for Experiencing the Other-Self Within’,
in Suzel Ana Reily (ed.), The Musical Human: Rethinking John Blacking’s Ethnomusicology
in the Twenty-First Century (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 143–70, at p. 149.
58
My own research suggests little discursive agreement among bandsmen as to the
aims and principles for which loyalism stands, or should stand. I found, however, that this
lack of agreement seems unimportant, and poses few constraints on the maintenance of
loyalism as a social world. Gordon Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching
Bands (Oxford, 2011), pp. 144–8 and 259–60. The political, denominational, theological,
class and generational fragmentation of Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist society in Northern
Ireland has been addressed in much literature. The very fact that the designation Protestant/
Unionist/Loyalist, often abbreviated to PUL, has been adopted by many activists highlights
the intractable nature of this fragmentation. See Desmond Bell, Acts of Union: Youth Culture
and Sectarianism in Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, 1990); Feargal Cochrane, Unionist
Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Cork, 1997); Glenn
Jordan, Not of This World? Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 2001);
Peter Shirlow and Mark McGovern, Who Are “the People”? Unionism, Protestantism and
Loyalism in Northern Ireland (London, 1997); Graham Walker, ‘The Protestant Working-
Class and the Fragmentation of Ulster Unionism’, in Mervyn Busteed, Frank Neal and
Jonathan Tonge (eds), Irish Protestant Identities (Manchester, 2008), pp. 360–72.
59
Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control
(London, 2000); Jarman, Material Conflicts; Katy Radford, ‘Drum Rolls and Gender Roles
in Protestant Marching Bands in Belfast’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 10/2 (2001):
37–59.
Playing Away 197
In acknowledging this ‘embodied’ politics, we depart from Victor Turner’s

focus on ritual as a symbolic system and move towards Edith Turner’s emphasis on
emotional experience. Interviewed by Matthew Engelke, Edith Turner, recalling
fieldwork among the Ndembu, remarked:
I remember that at the beginning of a twin ceremony once, my friend Nylakusa

came out of her hut yelling cheerfully, ‘Let’s go!’ I can see her now. Ritual
is fun, and her shout captured something … Vic analysed the twin ceremony
… and showed the detail of the symbolism. I myself would like to have
described the ritual in a different way; to have showed something of the swing
of the whole thing as a kind of a great event. I’m interested in capturing what
that woman felt when she said ‘Let’s go!’ … that’s what I feel is missing in
anthropology.60
The ‘swing’ of a great event is no less significant in ‘The Big Walk’, than in the
Ndembu twin ceremony or the Venda domba dance, of which Blacking remarked,
‘people talked more of the refreshment that it brought to their lives rather than
the adherence to a political order that it was supposed to consolidate’.61 Indeed,
following Blacking’s assertion of the political efficacy of ‘bodily resonance’
or ‘true fellow-feeling’,62 I suggest that the ‘swing’ identified by Edith Turner
may be of greater political significance than the symbolism analysed by her
husband.
Conclusions
SGWM’s annual visit to Scotland does not fall neatly into the categories of
religious pilgrimage or commodified tourism, but the ideas of liminality that have
been used to theorize these phenomena also have relevance in this case. From the
moment they board the bus, band members enter a liminal space which differs
both from the everyday life of work and the normal routines of band life.
In this liminal space, band members indulge in behaviours, such as communal
singing and heavy drinking, that might not be usual, or acceptable, in the band’s
everyday life. These behaviours result in a loss of inhibition and a levelling of
status, which in turn contribute to powerful emotional experiences of shared flow,
or communitas.
60
Engelke, ‘Interview with Edith Turner’, p. 280.
61
John Blacking, ‘The Initiation Cycle’, in John Blacking, Venda Girls’ Initiation
Schools, ed. Suzel Ana Reily and Lev Weinstock (Belfast: Department of Social
Anthropology, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1998), available at http://www.qub.ac.uk/
VendaGirls/ [Accessed 8 June 2007].
62
Blacking, ‘The Concept of Identity’, p. 52.
The ability to achieve these states with the band is conditional on the skills
acquired in the months of disciplined practice that precede the visit, and the deep
pleasurable feelings that result re-create the motivation to continue such efforts on
the return to Northern Ireland. These communal emotional experiences, therefore,
have material political effects, for they contribute to the band’s capacity to maintain
itself as a functioning ensemble, and, on a wider scale, to the reproduction of
loyalism as a social world.
Chapter 9
From Village to World Stage:
The Malleability of Sinaloan Popular
Brass Bands
Helena Simonett
Long before scholars began to show an interest in the relationship between music
and globalizing processes, musics had crossed national, social, ethnic and racial
boundaries. As one of Europe’s most significant cultural exports of the nineteenth
century, the brass band was introduced to every colony overseas.1 The mass-
manufactured brass instruments reflected the Zeitgeist of the industrial era. In
a time of technical excitement, mechanically sophisticated instruments came
to symbolize progress and modernity. No wonder then that brass band music
spread rapidly and took root across many cultures. Brass instruments were not
only able to carry a melody, but also loud and durable, and thus ideal for outdoor
performances. Technical improvements in the manufacturing of brass instruments
in the 1840s were the principal reason for the evolution of instrumental ensemble
musicking outside the professional, middle- and upper-class environment in which
such activity had previously been centred. Valve mechanisms made it possible
for amateur players to master the instruments after practising for a short time.
Moreover, most of the brass instruments could be played interchangeably with
similar mouthpieces and identical fingerings, and thus could be shared among
bandsmen according to the needs of the ensemble.
The imported instruments, however, were more than just material objects:
people across the globe adapted them to their own aesthetics, their own place
and their own social and cultural realities. Brass band traditions were local
re-workings of a nineteenth-century European musi-cultural product. The
1
Until more recently, scholars have generally ignored the history and cultural
significance of European working-class cultural exports of the late nineteenth century.
See Charles Keil and Angeliki V. Keil, Polka Happiness (Philadelphia, 1992); and Helena
Simonett, ‘Introduction’ and ‘From Old World to New Shores’, in Helena Simonett (ed.),
The Accordion in the Americas: Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More! (Champaign,
Illinois, 2012), pp. 1–38. In Mexico, brass music was viewed similarly to mariachi as a
product of mestizaje (culture blend), but unlike the string-based folk mariachi, which was
close to the nation’s centre where culture and notions about culture were being forged, it
had never been considered a musical form worthy of scholarly attention.
appeal of this type of popular musicking rested upon its emphasis on oral
transmission, improvisation and face-to-face communication, all of which
provided the participants with a strong sense of identity, community and place.
Having grown within a pattern of local culture, popular bands had always been
identified with particular localities. While historically related to the colonial
expansionist enterprise, contemporary band traditions are entangled in a network
of interconnections and interdependences that have become ever denser. Yet,
despite the increasing global dimension of today’s cultural goods, it continues to
be ‘the local’ that gives credibility to music.2 This chapter addresses such issues
by focusing on the hugely popular acoustic banda (sinaloense) from Mexico’s
northern Pacific coast.
Roots and Development of a Regional Style
The brass band movement of nineteenth-century Europe swept Latin America

rapidly as large numbers of migrants settled in the new continent carrying with
them, as part of their ‘cultural baggage’, the latest fashion of popular music.
Banding was readily introduced by musically inclined newcomers. ‘Banda’ (band’)
is a generic term for a variety of ensembles consisting of brass, woodwind and
percussion instruments found throughout Spain’s former colonies. The so-called
bandas populares (popular bands) or bandas de viento (wind bands) were a
ubiquitous feature of Mexico’s musical life in the later nineteenth century and
thrived in both rural and urban areas.3 On the Mexican west coast, German and
other European merchants, who had settled in the port city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa,
sold brass and woodwind instruments. The leading mercantile houses soon
established a close-knit network for distributing their industrial products, reaching
even Sinaloa’s most remote dwellings.4 During the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, bands multiplied rapidly turning into a favourite pastime of the rural
male population. While in the mining towns in the foothills of the sierra and in
the coastal cities people of all classes enjoyed the open-air serenatas performed
by the garrison bands, the inhabitants of the rancherías and pueblos were largely
confined to providing musical entertainment themselves. Inspired by both their
rural environment and the military band repertoire with which the campesino
2
To counter ethnomusicologists’ increasing interest with issues of globalization,
Richard Wolf argues for the need for ‘“theorizing the local” to signal the continued value
of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital
and neoliberal politics, but which take forms of interconnectedness … very seriously’.
‘Introduction’, in Richard K. Wolf (ed.), Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and
Experience in South Asia and Beyond (New York, 2009), pp. 5–26, at p. 6.
3
See Helena Simonett, Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders (Middletown,
CT, 2001).
4
Ibid., pp. 102, 127.
From Village to World Stage 201
musicians had become acquainted during the revolutionary turmoil of the first
two decades of the twentieth century, Sinaloan banderos (bandsmen) developed
a distinct popular repertoire and playing style akin to indigenous music making
in the region.
The instrumentation of the early popular bands was quite varied. After the
Mexican Revolution (1910–20), the line-up in regional bands became more and
more standardized. Band membership in Sinaloa averaged from nine to twelve
musicians playing clarinets (requinto), cornets or trumpets, valved trombones
(barítono or saxor grande), saxhorns (alto or saxor), commonly called armonía
or charcheta, tuba (contrabajo, bajo de pecho or tuba), snare drum (redoblante or
tarola) and tambora, a double-headed bass drum with attached cymbals. While the
brass instruments and the clarinets were imported from Europe, the drums were
manufactured locally. The body of the tambora was made of wood; goat skin was
used for the membranes which were tied and adjusted with mecate strings. Placed
on a wooden rack, the tambora was played with a soft-ended wooden stick. In
the other hand, the drummer held a cymbal which he struck on its counterpart
that was attached on the top of his drum. The tarola was made with the same
material as the tambora and played with two wooden sticks. Sinaloa’s specific
combination of brass, woodwind and percussion was named after its signature
instrument which provided both the booming beat and the brilliant clashing
accent to its music: the ‘tambora’ – a term still used today synonymously with
banda (sinaloense).
Although brass band music had long served as one of the Mexican educated
classes’ favourite pastimes, around the turn of the nineteenth century bands
became associated with lower-class music making, rejected by the elite as a crude
imitation of their venerable military bands by ignorant peasants who could not
do any better. While the rural population and the lower-class urbanites continued
to enjoy brass band music, the gente decente (decent people) found pleasure in
orchestra music featuring soft-sounding, and thus ‘cultured’, string instruments.
Worrying that their loud and vulgar regional music not only affirmed but also
reinforced the already widespread prejudice of Sinaloa as ‘el estado torpe’ (‘the
crude state’), Sinaloa’s patriotic elite developed a profound disdain for banda’s
musical as well as textual crudeness. Banda musicians’ low social status was
related to the alleged low quality of their music and to the rather disreputable
locales where some of them had found work.
Urbanization, capitalism and, eventually, the culture industry altered Sinaloa’s
society, its lifestyles, its habits and its popular musical tastes. Changes mainly
occurred in the two main cities, the capital of Culiacán and the port of Mazatlán.
Rural areas and the Sierra Mountains in particular lacked attractions and newer
forms of pastime. Thus, banda music continued to play a major role in the lives
of the inhabitants of small towns, villages and ranchos. In the cities, on the other
hand, music bands faced competition from radio, phonograph records, motion
pictures, the automobile and other technological advances that led to a growing
sophistication and mobility of the urban dwellers.
Figure 9.1 Banda Los Guamuchileños in 1947 with a wealthy businessman

from Culiacán, sitting
The Recording Industry’s Discovery of Regional Music
The developing radio, recording and film industries of the 1930s revolutionized
Mexico’s musical world. Corresponding with the kind of national ideology
propagated by the new government, ‘folk music’ emerged as a major trend. Mexico
City had already lured some musicians from the rural central plateau during the
revolution,5 but the emerging mass culture industry centred in the burgeoning
capital attracted legions of musicians from all regions in search of work and,
maybe, of fame. The capital’s inclination for genteel music found the stringed
instruments of the mariachi ensemble suited to express national pride.6 Mariachi
became the preferred musical accompaniment of Mexico’s famous singing actors
and was featured in countless comedias rancheras (ranch comedies), a Mexican
version of cowboy musicals that incorporated elements of comedy, tragedy, popular
music and folkloric or nationalistic themes. Due to expanding radio broadcasting
5
Documented in the Arhoolie compilations of Mexico’s pioneer Mariachis: Mariachi
Coculense de Cirilo Marmolejo, 1926–1936, Arhoolie Folklyric 7011 (1993) and Mariachi
Tapatío de José Marmolejo, Arhoolie Folklyric 7012 (1994).
6
Note that until the 1940s the standard ‘folk mariachi’ ensemble consisted of string
instruments only. The trumpet was added to the string ensemble for a better sound for
broadcasting.
activities in the 1930s, many musicians and singers found employment at the
powerful radio station XEW, ‘La Voz de América Latina desde México’ (‘The
Voice of Latin America from Mexico’) or some smaller radio stations, but there
was no place for the loud and brassy Sinaloan popular music in what the nation-
state and the mass media had propagated as ‘Mexico’s national culture’. Figure
9.1 shows Banda Los Guamuchileños in 1947. This progressive band had already
integrated Cuban styles into its repertoire, as indicated by the maracas.
Recordings of regional bands were made by Mexico City-based companies
starting in the early 1950s. The records popularized banda music beyond its
regional confines; the sound conquered new territories and crossed borders before
any banda musician had even set foot on the new ground. Except for the first
recordings made by RCA-Victor of Banda Los Guamuchileños in Mexico City
(1952), very little is known about the circumstances under which these early
recordings were made. In most cases, companies such as Columbia, RCA-Victor
and Peerless would send their portable studio to record local musicians. The sound
material was sent to the capital and pressed on discs, of which a few made it back
to the musicians. Banda musicians were paid a small amount per recording session
with no royalties. They had no control over the handling of their sound material.
At the discretion of the recording companies, the music from the province –
largely unknown to an audience outside the north-western states – was promoted
under fictive, generic names that sounded appealing to a general Mexican and
international audience: Banda Típica de Mazatlán (Columbia) and Banda Regional
Sinaloa (Peerless). In fact, both bandas featured mainly musicians from the village
of El Recodo, the former headed by trombonist Carlos Lizárraga Osuna and the
latter by clarinettist Cruz Lizárraga (see Figure 9.2).7 Village bands had always
been identified with their particular locality, and bandas in the cities retained a
strong sense of community identity and loyalty to the village of origin. Thus,
half a century later, musicians still feel betrayed by not having been given proper
credit and refer to such practice as piratería (piracy) – a practice that unfortunately
continues to the present day.
Although Mexico’s main record companies showed some interest in issuing
regional musics, it took another two years before a second Sinaloan band made it
to the RCA studio in Mexico City, thanks to RCA’s artistic director Mariano Rivera
Conde, a Sinaloan. Banda El Recodo was recommended by Gabriel R. Osuna, later
municipal president of Mazatlán and a very influential man. Peerless had recorded
the musicians that same year in Mazatlán (under the name of Banda Regional
Sinaloa). Among these recordings we find the canción regional, ‘Mi gusto es’
(It is My Taste), interpreted by Eduardo del Campo, the artistic name of Darío
Osuna, son of Gabriel R. Osuna. He was the first singer to record with Banda El
Recodo. Although banda music was usually strictly instrumental, a few other local
7
Information regarding early recording practices and band membership was provided
by Isidoro ‘Chilolo’ Ramírez Sánchez and Germán Lizárraga (Mazatlán, 2000) and Teodoro
Ramírez Pereda (Guasave, 1996).
Figure 9.2 Banda El Recodo in front of the church of the village of El Recodo,
1943
singers, including Las Hermanas Sarabia, recorded with Banda El Recodo. Issued
on a long-play disc entitled Les invito a Mazatlán (I Invite You to Mazatlán) by
RCA-Victor, Sarabia’s canción ranchera, ‘Mexicano hasta las caches’ (Mexican
up to the Brim), was actually recorded in an improvised ‘studio’ in Mazatlán with
the equipment of Discos Tambora, an independent local label recording exclusively
commercial banda music. Owned and operated by José Vicente Laveaga (who
often used the pseudonym of Vicente Lefart to register sound material in his name
and cash royalties), Discos Tambora was affiliated with RCA which pressed the
records in Mexico City. After Rivera Conde’s death, RCA’s interest in Sinaloa’s
regional music vanished, and Banda El Recodo began to record locally with Discos
Tambora. They resumed recording with RCA in the mid-1960s and soon after
launched a long-play disc accompanying the internationally acclaimed ranchera
singer and movie star José Alfredo Jiménez. Although this LP boosted Banda El
Recodo’s fame nationally and Banda La Costeña collaborated successfully with
Luis Pérez Meza over the course of 15 years, bandas overall continued to be
purely instrumental ensembles and only rarely would accompany vocalists.8
8
Luis Pérez Meza made 18 recordings with Banda La Costeña. This band also
accompanied Antonio Aguilar, Gilberto Valenzuela, Lino Luján, Victor Iturbe ‘El Pirulí’,
Federico Villa, Pepe Aguilar, Joan Sebastian, Juan Valentín and many more.
Figure 9.3 Banda El Recodo de Cruz Lizárraga, c. 1963
The ‘discovery’ of banda music by Mexico’s recording industry in the

1950s, and the shellac disc as tangible proof of its social respectability, sparked
a new interest and pride in ‘one’s own regional music’ among upper-middle-class
Sinaloan urbanites. Soon, the better-organized bandas moved from the cantinas and
billiard saloons into the elite dance halls. The musicians’ ability to adapt to a new
environment and to acquire a new, more cosmopolitan, repertoire constituted the
key to upward mobility. Musicians aspired to a more polished and precise playing
style, and note-reading skills became more important for professional musicians.
The American big-band influence on Banda El Recodo in the 1960s can be seen in
Figure 9.3, and compare this photo with the ones taken in the ‘pre-recorded era’
two decades earlier. Note also the Caribbean percussion instruments – bongos and
güiro (scraper) – as well as the sitting position, imitating American swing bands.
In short, after the release and success of the first banda recordings, emerging
economic aspirations changed traditional modes of music making in urban Sinaloa
as musicians began to adapt their performance to sight as well as to sound.
The lack of earlier recordings, unfortunately, makes it impossible for us to
know how banda music sounded in the early 1900s – though, according to older
banderos, new dance rhythms such as the tango, the foxtrot and the Charleston
had been incorporated without breaking from earlier traditions. On the other hand,
the lack of recordings and commercialization also preserved a variety of local
styles until more recently. Differences in performing style may include variations
and semi-improvisational styles of playing, phrasing, vibrato, the sustaining
of an even tone, pitch inflection, arrangements, preferences for particular tone

colours, dynamics, rhythmic variations and so forth. These stylistic differences
are still notable in the first recordings from the 1950s, documented in the Arhoolie
compilation of Sinaloan ‘tambora music’.9
Due to the presence of the official Banda del Estado in the capital of the
state with its bandmasters who had trained generations of bandsmen in solfeo
(musical notation) and in arranged semi-classical and military repertoires in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Culiacán’s banda musicians were
considered ‘more educated and refined’ than the village musicians who worked in
the port city of Mazatlán and were exposed to all kinds of foreign music. Musical
notation, however, never came to dominate musical practice. Most banderos
learned, and continue to learn, the repertoire only by ear. A good musical memory
and the ability to recreate melodies or, depending on the instrument, play ad libitum
to support the melodic lines have always been crucial within this dominantly oral-
aural musical tradition. Note-reading can be taught, but the tradition has to be
learned by experiencing and by internalizing musical style and conventions.
‘Sinaloan Flavour’ and Repertoire
Banda has a distinct sonic character usually referred to as sabor sinaloense (Sinaloan
flavour). This character results from the contrast of clarinet and brass timbres, from
the juxtaposition of playing by the whole band versus the instrument groups of
the front line (trumpets, trombones and clarinets) and from the improvisation of
counter-melodies by one of the front-line instruments. There is a strong emphasis
on volume and pulse. Dynamics are mainly generated by the alternation of tutti and
soli sections. Traditional folk genres were not aimed at showing off the virtuosity
of skilful individual musicians. Thus, soloist improvisation was not germane to
‘plebeian’ musical practice which had a rather equalitarian quality. While soloists
had been popularized by proficient bandmasters who composed new pieces for their
bands in either concert-band or salon-music style, jazz band musicians probably
introduced the improvisatory element after the revolution. Mazatlán’s banderos
played in jazz bands as early as 1920. Most professional musicians of the time
9
Bandas Sinaloenses: ‘Música Tambora’ (The First Recordings of Tambora Music
from the Mexican State of Sinaloa: 1952–1965), Arhoolie CD-7048 (2001). Stylistic
differences between central and southern Sinaloa, for example, are apparent when listening
to Culiacán’s Banda Los Guamuchileños and Banda Los Tamazulas (track 4 ‘Ingrato dolor’
and track 18 ‘Sonora querida’) and to Mazatlán’s Banda El Recodo (track 10 ‘Caballo
bayo’): while bandas in the capital city of Culiacán played in a syncopated manner delaying
the last beat of a 3/4 meter, Mazatlán’s bandas played strictly in time. When bandleader
Cruz Lizárraga (1918–95) introduced his jazzy clarinet playing style (best heard on the
conjunto track 9 ‘El callejero’) and upbeat tempo (track 24 ‘Mexicano hasta las cachas’),
he was much criticized by his ‘sophisticated’ northern peers for his plebeian ‘rancho’ style
– hence Cruz’s nickname ‘El bronco’ (‘The unpolished’ or ‘untamed’).
were very flexible: they would play in bandas, jazz bands and orquestas (string-
based orchestras). While nurtured by their local traditions, musicians adopted new
and foreign music styles as they were brought to the province – first by travelling
musicians on the ocean highway and later via the shellac disc.
Danceability had always been banda music’s strongest appeal. In the early
days, local variations of the most popular European dance rhythms emerged: most
prominently the waltz and the polka. Like other regional ensembles, bandas also
incorporated the Viennese-style waltzes created by Mexico’s romantic composers,
such as ‘Sobre las olas’ (Over the Waves) by the native Otomí Juventino Rosas
(1868–94), undoubtedly the most popular of all Mexican waltzes. Many tunes in
3/4 meter composed for banda were modelled after the European salon dances
of the romantic nineteenth century. ‘La India bonita’ (The Beautiful Indian Girl)
and ‘El Quelite’ (name of a village in southern Sinaloa), two valses composed by
Francisco Terríquez from the village of La Noria, have become banda standards.
Terríquez resumed leadership of Banda El Quelite, the most prolific village band
working in and around Mazatlán in the late 1800s and the first to be acknowledged
by name in Mazatlán’s daily newspaper. Originally composed and performed as
strictly instrumental tunes, most of them have since been given words. The Sinaloan
ranchera singer Luis Pérez Meza, ‘El trovador del campo’ (‘The troubadour of the
countryside’) (1918–81),10 one of the best-known poets, not only put lyrics to but
also registered many songs in his name – a common practice which makes it often
difficult to determine the original authorship of a composition.
A large body of the traditional banda repertoire consists of marches. Like
their European counterparts, these rather simple compositions consist of regularly
phrased melodic lines of 16 measures underscored by the strong, steady beat of the
tambora. The introductory fanfare of the popular ‘Marcha Zacatecas’ (Zacatecan
March) alludes to the military genre, but soon turns into a highly danceable tune.
As often with marches, a lyric trio alternates with the march proper. Marches
were a genre much in vogue among rural audiences, and local banderos continued
to compose them well into the twentieth century. Local tunes often sound as if
composed or arranged by musicians trained in a military band, and tarola rolls
embellish valses, danzas and marchas alike. For dance music of Caribbean origin,
such as the Cuban danzón and the mambo, however, the rhythm section was
reinforced by ‘tropical’ percussion instruments, such as bongos, güiros and claves
(a pair of wooden sticks), and the brass was muted, thus transforming the village
tambora into a modern, urban banda-orquesta.
10
A museum dedicated to ‘The troubadour of the countryside’ in Mazatlán (open
from 2009 to 2012) held a permanent exhibit on the musical life of the Pérez Meza family
and temporary exhibits on Sinaloan musicians and bands – the first one was dedicated
to clarinettist and bandleader Ramón López Alvarado (1928–97). See ‘Ramón López
Alvarado: Escultor del viento’, Casa de los Pérez Meza, available at http://cdlpm.blogspot.
com/2009/04/ramon-lopez-alvarado-escultor-del.html [Accessed 9 October 2011].
While Sinaloan nationalists repeatedly denounced foreign, in particular

‘Yankee’, music invasions, local banderos responded to fashions from abroad not
only by incorporating the new dance rhythms into their own repertoire but also
by adapting older regional tunes: the son (regional tune) ‘El costeño’ (The One
from the Coast), played as a foxtrot in swing style, is an exemplary imitación
gringa (Gringo imitation). Early interest in foreign rhythms is apparent in some of
Sinaloa’s oldest tunes, such as ‘Los papaquis’, known in Mazatlán since around the
mid-1800s. Formerly a pastorela, ‘Los papaquis’ was played in an alternating son
huapango-habanera rhythm during carnival to stir up rival gangs. The huapango
is a Mexican folk dance rhythm with a rapidly alternating rhythmic pattern; the
habanera is a Cuban syncopated dance rhythm.
The End of an Era and the Beginning of a New One
When the Beatles enraptured Mexico’s youth in the 1960s and records became
affordable for a majority, banda lost its immediate attraction as a dance band.
Only a few of the mass-market oriented bandas managed to survive this new trend
towards amplified music. In the countryside and in the less affluent neighbourhoods
of the cities where electricity was not available or musicians could not afford
to buy an amplification system, banda continued to be the preferred musical
entertainment of the people. It did not need amplification to fill the town square,
the arena, the palenque (cockfight ring) or the cantina. While the few remaining
commercially oriented bandas played international popular dance music and
toured the country and the United States, village bandas were largely unaffected
by the popular music industry. Their music continued to adhere to a regionally
based aesthetics and ‘plebeian’ musical practice.
During the early 1990s, a modernized version of the Sinaloan banda that
had been fashioned in Guadalajara, Jalisco, some five years earlier, popped up
in metropolitan Los Angeles, California, and became a major movement within
the Mexican-American communities in southern California. As a musical style
for dancing, the so-called technobanda allowed youths of Mexican heritage to
reclaim a part of their history and to recover values shared with their parents and
grandparents and rooted in their ‘homeland’. Technobanda replaced the tambora
and tarola (snare drum) – the rhythm section of the acoustic banda – with a drum
set, and the tuba and horns with electric guitar and keyboard. The clarinet, the most
distinguishable of the front-line instruments, was either substituted by saxophone
or just eliminated. Most importantly, technobanda featured a lead vocalist. The
vibrant and youthful new style was relevant to both the lifestyle and cultural needs
of Mexican-American youths in a difficult political time.11
11
Helena Simonett, ‘Banda, a New Sound from the Barrios of Los Angeles:
Transmigration and Transcultural Production’, in Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights (eds),
Banda musicians largely dismissed technobanda as a commercial music

devoid of musical substance, although the audience in the United States did not
seem to hear a difference.12 Cruz Lizárraga was outraged about the crowning of the
novelty technobanda Banda Machos from Jalisco as ‘La reina de las bandas’ (‘The
queen of all bands’) at the prestigious annual ‘Viva México’ Festival in Chicago;13
nevertheless he, with his oldest son Germán at his side, began to embrace many
of technobanda’s innovations in order to compete in the international music
market: most importantly, they added a steady vocalist to the traditionally purely
instrumental ensemble. Banda La Costeña’s ailing leader Ramón López Alvarado
(1928–97) and his two sons, Ulises and Edgardo, also saw the necessity to innovate
their venerated banda: a ‘renewed’ La Costeña emerged in 1993 with an integrated
vocalist and a recording that contained a combination of traditional rancheras,
fast-paced cumbias and quebraditas, the last mentioned being the signature
dance rhythm of technobanda.14 The same year, Banda El Recodo recorded the
hits ‘Bailando quebradita’ (Dancing quebradita) and ‘Pegando con tubo’ (Hitting
with Force), followed by ‘La quebradora’ (The Female quebradita Dancer) and ‘El
chilango quebrador’ (The Mexico City quebradita Dancer).15
Technobanda’s popularity in the United States had a legitimizing effect on
brass band music as a whole, opening the door for acoustic banda to enter Mexican
mainstream culture which was still largely controlled by Mexico City-based media
moguls. With its detour to and phenomenal success in the United States, technobanda
indeed broke the hegemony of Mexican common-denominator popular music by
catapulting a regional music onto centre stage.16 Following suit with spectacular
Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Local and the Global
(Aldershot, 2007), pp. 81–92.
12
Among the favourite bands of the readers of the fanzine Furia Musical, Banda El
Recodo was only number 7. In the July 1994 ranking list below, the four bands in italics
are Sinaloan-style acoustic bandas (but only El Recodo and Los Recoditos are actually
from Sinaloa), all others are technobandas: 1. Banda Machos, 2. Banda Vallarta Show, 3.
El Mexicano, 4. Banda R-15, 5. Banda Cachorros, 6. Banda Móvil, 7. Banda El Recodo, 8.
Banda Toro, 9. Banda Pelillos, 10. Banda San Miguel, 11. Vaquero’s Musical, 12. Banda
Los Recoditos, 13. Banda Brava, 14. Banda Súper Bandido, 15. Banda Maguey, 16. Banda
Pequeños Musical.
13
José M. Vega, ‘La reina de las bandas’, Tele Guía de Chicago, 6 August 1993.
14
Banda La Costeña, Musart CDP-1007 (1993).
15
Banda El Recodo: Esta… ¡Sí es banda! Pegando con tubo (Banda Gold Series),
Master Stereo KBGE-514 (1993); De México y para el mundo: Banda El Recodo (Banda Gold
Series), Master Stereo KBGE-519 (1995); Banda El Recodo de Cruz Lizárraga: Desde el
cielo y para siempre, Musivisa TUT-1666 (1996). While the earlier songs were in quebradita
style, the latter may be better described as Mexican cumbia with a distinct Sinaloan tinge.
16
Helena Simonett, ‘Quest for the Local: Building Musical Ties between Mexico and
the United States’, in Ignacio Corona and Alejandro L. Madrid (eds), Postnational Musical
Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario
(Lanham, MD, 2008), pp. 119–35.
hi-tech onstage performances, Sinaloa’s high-profile bandas at last shed a social

stigma attached to wind band music a century ago by Mexico’s bourgeois urbanites.
At the dawn of a new millennium, both technobandas and the commercially
oriented acoustic Sinaloan bandas made much effort to enter the mainstream
Latino music market. They adopted the pan-Latino repertoire of romantic baladas
and danceable cumbias; they armed themselves with equipment that could
compete with any international pop group; they signed with multinational record
labels, and they toured the world relentlessly. Yet, the music kept some of its
local identity that distinguished it from other music styles. It was this specific
Sinaloan tinge that made it so unique and, at the same time, incompatible with the
musical taste of a general mass audience. The efforts of the commercial bandas,
however, had a great effect on the local music tradition: bandas in the most remote
ranchos in the sierra knew how to play every single hit of Banda El Recodo and
Banda Machos; young banderos learned these popular songs before they had been
properly initiated into the traditional repertoire.
Transnational Interconnectedness and Local Practice
With the explosion of banda on the international stage, a set of questions arises:
How is the recent development of the internationally successful bands received
in Sinaloa? How do ‘traditional’ musicians value their own music making? What
concessions did the popular bands make in order to compete in the international
music circuit?17
It first has to be pointed out that despite the international attention banda music
enjoys nowadays, many banderos are more or less content to perform locally
regardless of the recurring economic crises; and in the opinion of many, these local
bands are musically more skilful than the illustrious transnational bandas. This
assessment is based on a number of important issues that range from traditional
ideas about the role of banda as a socio-musical institution to ethical concerns
about the ‘magic short-cut’ to fame via affiliation with drug traffickers – all of
which need to be given closer attention in order to understand the current state of
banda, both locally and globally.
There is a sense among local musicians that their downhill trend began some
20 to 25 years ago. The 1980s indeed was a dreadful decade for Mexicans, starting
with a severe economic crisis in 1982, followed by two devastating earthquakes,
17
My assessment of banda’s development in the first decade of the twenty-first
century is mainly based on ethnographic data gathered in Sinaloa from 2008 to 2011. José
Luis ‘El indio’ Ramírez Sánchez was especially helpful with his analysis from a local
vantage point. I also received valuable updates from my local academic friends during my
annual travels to Sinaloa. As some of the information shared in this essay is delicate, I opt
to keep the sources anonymous. Information on banda’s international reception is based on
fanzines, Billboard magazine articles and business websites.
falling oil prices, rising inflation and a drastic devaluation of the peso, capital flight
and high external debts; it was the worst recession since the 1930s and recovery was
extremely slow. High levels of unemployment and underemployment, especially
in rural areas, stimulated migration to Mexico City and to the United States. The
economic collapse, on the other hand, coincided with both an increased drug
demand in the US and favourable weather conditions in north-western Mexico, the
key area of drug cultivation and home of the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel. Drug
traffickers became powerful players in the local as well as the national economy.18
Within Sinaloan society, they quickly established themselves as a social group
with much influence on cultural matters. Many banda musicians commented to
me that they used to play for drug lords regularly. One of them claimed that I
would not find a single musician who did not do such jobs. Since drug trafficking
is affiliated with violence, the stories told to me reflected the milieu of violence.19
Some banderos performed at gunpoint until their lips started bleeding from
ceaseless playing. Others were threatened and not paid for their performance. And
others were left behind in the sierra after they finished their job, days away from
the next dwelling or road. Although these stories may sound fantastic to outsiders,
they contain more than a grain of truth. The influence of ‘underworld’ values soon
became apparent in a new genre: the narco-corrido. A type of a contemporary
Mexican ‘folk ballad’, narco-corridos comprise stories about drug traffickers’
lives, their worries and victories, their aspirations and deeds.20 The genre had been
associated with norteña, an accordion-driven ensemble popular among northern
Mexico’s working class and immigrant communities in the United States.21
In the early 1990s, commercially oriented bandas began to include more
narco-music in their programmes and recordings. As narco-music developed into
a flourishing, transnational multimillion-dollar business, Sinaloa’s popular bandas
felt compelled to expand their repertoire. The integration of singer Julio César
Preciado into Banda El Recodo, for example, was not just for the text-based baladas
and word-witty quebraditas: Preciado had the same piercing, high-pitched, nasal
18
Luis Astorga, Mitología del ‘narcotraficante’ en México (Mexico City, 1995) and
El siglo de las drogas: usos, percepciones y personajes (Mexico City, 1996).
19
See Jorge Verdugo Quintero, ‘Notas sobre narcotráfico y violencia social en
Sinaloa’, in Sinaloa: Historia, cultura y violencia (Culiacán, 1993), pp. 27–35.
20
Luis Astorga, ‘Los corridos de traficantes de drogas en México y Colombia’, Revista
Mexicana de Sociología, 59/4 (1997): 245–61; Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta, ‘Del corrido
del narcotrafico al narcocorrido: Orígenes y desarrollo del canto a los traficantes’, Studies
in Latin American Popular Culture, 23 (2004): 22–41; Helena Simonett, ‘Narcocorridos:
An Emerging Micromusic of Nuevo L.A.’, Ethnomusicology, 45/2 (2001): 315–37; Helena
Simonett, ‘Los gallos valientes: Examining Violence in Popular Mexican Music’, Revista
Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review, 10 (2006), available at http://www.
sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/indice10.htm [Accessed 28 July 2011].
21
Cathy Ragland, Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation between
Nations (Philadelphia, 2009), p. 180.
‘ranchera’ voice as the sierra ranchers and Sinaloan drug traffickers, and was thus
considered ideal to interpret narco-music. Preciado, as well as Germán Lizárraga,
who resumed leadership of the band after his father’s death in 1995, composed a
number of narco-corridos modelled after famous norteña hit songs.
Reinforced by the ubiquitous narco-corridos, in Sinaloan popular perception,
the relationship between regional musicians, particularly norteña and banda
musicians, and the drug trade is a close one.22 Few remember the anecdote about
Banda Los Guamuchileño’s futile attempt to cross the border to the United States
in the 1950s, according to which US custom officers asked the musicians to play
a piece on what they correctly suspected were instruments loaded with drugs –
allegations that were denied in an interview I conducted in 1996 with Teodoro
Ramírez, the then last surviving member of this legendary band.23 Banda El
Recodo allegedly crossed the border for the first time in 1961 with the help of
some coyotes, a colloquial term for people who negotiate illegal border crossings.
Throughout the 1980s, bandas were expected by their US-based agents to bring
along ‘stuff’ to keep good business relations. In the 1980s and 1990s, nightclubs
and independent recording studios in Greater Los Angeles concentrating on narco-
music were obviously involved in money laundering. However, it was not until
Los Angeles-based narco-corrido singer Chalino Sánchez’s brutal murder on a
tour to his home state of Sinaloa in 1992 that the difference between artist and
corrido protagonist began to blur. The norteño group Los Tucanes de Tijuana was
repeatedly accused of maintaining close ties to certain kingpins,24 and Alfonso
‘Poncho’ Lizárraga25 denied half-heartedly sponsorship of wealthy patrons.26
A series of highly publicized murders of popular Mexican singers that began
in 2006 with Valentín Elizalde has called renewed attention to the open secret
of musicians’ relationship with or involvement in the drug business.27 Valentín,
nicknamed ‘El gallo de oro’ (‘The golden rooster’) following his father Lalo
‘El gallo’ Elizalde, a well-known norteño singer who occasionally recorded with
banda accompaniment, had enjoyed some decent success with his own band,
Banda Guasaveña, from Guasave, Sinaloa. But, as Washington Post journalist
Manuel Roig-Franzia wrote about the singer, ‘When he was alive, he never had a
best-selling album. But less than four months after his murder and half a year after
22
Simonett, Banda, p. 201.
23
Banda Los Guamuchileños was the first Sinaloan band invited to the RCA-Victor
recording studio in Mexico City in 1951. It disbanded in 1958.
24
‘Los Tucanes de Tijuana !La hicieron con la droga!’, Furia Musical, 5/4 (1997):
17–18.
25
He is the director of Banda El Recodo, with brother Joel, after half-brother Germán
split in 2002 and founded his own Banda Estrellas de Sinaloa.
26
‘Los del Recodo…¡No son narcos!’, Furia Musical, 4/7 (1996): 20–23.
27
For articles on the various murders of Mexican musicians, see the website:
‘Mexico’, Freemuse: Freedom of Musical Expression, available at http://www.freemuse.
org/sw1446.asp [Accessed 22 January 2012].
“To My Enemies” became an internet hit, Elizalde made it big. On 3 March 2007,
when Billboard came out with its list of best-selling Latin albums in the United
States, Elizalde occupied the top two spots’.28
How then, ask decent banda musicians, can a Valentín Elizalde get to the top
legitimately – and be nominated posthumously for the 2007 Grammy Awards –
when he sings even more out-of-tune than Chalino Sánchez? How does a banda
get its photo featured on all city buses when its leader was de huipa (‘barhopping’,
going from establishment to establishment in search of customers who pay by
piece) in the port cantinas just a couple of years before? Why is a venerable banda
no longer able to produce a single recording while novelty bandas get ‘prime time’
on VideoRola, a music TV network broadcasting simultaneously in Mexico and
the United States?29
Advances in mass communications and other technologies in the 1980s
intensified transnational musical interaction between Mexico and the United
States. The technobanda and, more recently, the pasito duranguense phenomena
make clear that Mexican cultural products are fully transnational and that the
US-based Mexican population is a crucial force in the success or failure of cultural
commodities.30 The growth and development of the Hispanic TV networks and
marketing industry have affected the visual and the sound as well (by emphasizing
the song lyrics and universally appealing rhythms). Regional Mexican music that is
directed at the mass market thus depends on production and consumption systems
and strategies developed by transnational media industries, most notably the few
powerful Spanish-language satellite TV conglomerates who control the market:
the Mexican media giant Televisa and Univision, the world’s largest producer of
Hispanic television, followed by TV Azteca and Telemundo.31
Discovered as a ‘regional music’ with a high potential to succeed as a profitable
mass-market commodity, technobanda was promoted by Univision, Televisa’s
co-owned US network, in the United States. During the years of the initial boom,
28
Manuel Roig-Franzia, ‘Mexican Drug Cartels Leave a Bloody Trail on YouTube’,
Washington Post, 9 April 2007, A01. Valentín’s music videos on YouTube are frequently
accessed: ‘Soy así’ (2005), for example, has received 3.5 million hits and ‘Véte ya’ (2003)
2 million hits in the two years since they were posted.
29
VideoRola belongs to Megacable (Guadalajara, Jalisco), which is the largest cable
operator in Mexico. Megacable offers advanced digital services, broadband internet and
telephone service. Megacable’s licence agreement with Macrovision Solution Corporation
(Santa Clara, California) will give subscribers access to Video on Demand (VOD) (Business
Wire, 21 April 2009).
30
Simonett, ‘Quest for the Local’.
31
Univision Communications Inc. is the premier Spanish-language media company
in the United States. It ranks only behind the four major networks ABC (Walt Disney Corp.),
CBS (Viacom), NBC (General Electric Co., which also owns Telemundo) and Fox (New
Corp.). For a decisive account of the evolution of Spanish-language media in the United
States, see Arlene Dávila, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley,
2001). Newer data is available from business-oriented websites.
Fonovisa, an independent Los Angeles-based Spanish-language record label,

established itself as the leading ‘Regional Mexican’ label through US distribution
agreements with a number of Mexican labels. Fonovisa eventually signed many
banda artists, including Banda El Recodo, to its own label. In 2002 Univision
Music Group (UMG) acquired Fonovisa from its competitor Grupo Televisa after
payola charges against Fonovisa executives were settled in a Los Angeles district
court. The banda movement of the early 1990s fortuitously benefited from the
illegal payments made to radio station programme directors in return for increased
airtime for Fonovisa artists.32
Banda’s increased visibility in the United States translated into the addition of
the ‘Latin Grammy Award for Best Banda Performance’ category in 2000. The first
Grammy was awarded to Banda El Recodo in recognition of its musical achievements
over the course of 65 years. Two years later, the same band was accepted as the
official musical representative of the Mexican football team at the World Cup in
Japan. In 2004, Banda El Recodo was honoured with the Hall of Fame award and
invited to the White House in Washington, D.C. for the annual Cinco de Mayo
performance, an event organized by producer and entrepreneur Emilio Estefan, a
powerful player in the Latin music industry (enhanced through partnerships with
Sony Music Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Group, now renamed
Universal Media Studios). The previous year, Banda El Recodo collaborated with
Estefan on an album Por tí (For You), which mixed Sinaloan banda sound with
pop/tropical music. Some band members have also recorded with international pop
stars such as the Mexican-American singer/actress Thalía on her album Con Banda:
Grandes Éxitos (EMI Latin, 2001) and the ‘Queen of Latin Pop’, Paulina Rubio. For
a decade, Banda El Recodo had tested the limits of the Sinaloan sound by adding
a contemporary appeal (pop, tropical, rap) and studio remixes to reach a broader
market, but its recent albums signal a return to its local roots.
The band’s international visibility has irritated many Sinaloans, above all
its turn to popular pan-Latin genres and its urge to acquire celebrity status. The
driving force behind the latter has been Doña Chuyita (María Jesús de Lizárraga,
Cruz’s second wife and mother of Alfonso and Joel) whose clever promotion
strategies and fostering of good relationships with the media catapulted Banda
El Recodo to the top. Like other nouveaux riches, the Lizárragas live in one of
Mazatlán’s wealthy neighbourhoods, drive huge SUVs and Hummers and consort
with prominent people. Their office building, located in the tourist zone and
secured with video cameras, resembles a fortress to which only ‘selected’ people
get access. Doña Chuyita carefully orchestrates family events for the media:
Cruz’s funeral and subsequent annual memorial services are celebrated in El
Recodo with much pomp;33 more than a thousand guests – including artists, media
representatives, impresarios and promoters from the United States – were invited
32
Frank Saxe, ‘U.S. Payola Investigation Eyes 80 Pds’, Billboard, 13 November 1999.
33
Furia Musical’s editorial described Lizárraga’s tenth anniversary as ‘fuera de serie’
(‘outstanding’). The ‘memorial concert’ in Mazatlán drew 55,000 fans; it featured singers
to her older son’s wedding with a prominent beauty pageant and ‘Carnival Queen’
in 2004, an event as surreal as a Mexican soap opera wedding (a comment made
by my companion at the banquet). But Doña Chuyita’s flair for grandiose events
also benefits common Mazatlecos: at the 2009 carnival, Banda El Recodo was
crowned as ‘El rey de la alegría’ (‘The king of joy’) and gave a free concert that
attracted many thousands of local fans.
Currently, there are more than two dozen bandas in Mazatlán, of which about
a third are featured on (national) TV networks and tour internationally. Several
of those bands, however, are not registered members of the Musicians’ Labour
Union (Sindicato de los Trabajadores de Música) and the majority of the touring
ones simply pay their dues without participating in the union – they do not attend
assemblies, nor do they participate in the Labour Day parade. Yet they benefit
from the union when it comes to services such as getting a stamp for a visa and so
forth. Active union members, on the other hand, support each other and there is a
strong sense of camaraderie among them. Local bandsmen thus lament the loss of
solidarity among musicians that came with the increased national and international
visibility of bandas. A rising number of younger musicians who have not grown
up in the traditional musical setting of village and family care little for community
or team spirit: capitalist and individualist values underlie their aspiration ‘to
make it big’ – a reflection of society in general, and very notably of Sinaloan
society where narco-morals are having a tremendous impact on the youths. The
self-produced music videos that run on channel (satellite) TV are replete with
images of a fantasy world of luxury cars and villas, gorgeous young women
and manly musicians, leisureliness and jealousy – and sometimes violence. The
visual imagery is limited to a rather narrow mould, as are the song lyrics and the
instrumental accompaniment.
While the traditional de huipa system has its benefits – notably the informal
learning of a vast repertoire of pieces accumulated over the course of one and a
half centuries – young musicians lack this vital experience. Many musicians of the
commercially successful bands who enjoyed a formal music education would in
fact not be able to survive in the local setting. To make a living from music making
only, however, is increasingly more difficult as people spend less on entertainment
during precarious economic times. The influenza outbreak in the spring of 2009
resulted in musicians losing their income during the weeks that restaurants and
other gathering places were closed by the government. Parades were cancelled
as were a number of popular festive days for which people customarily hire live
music. After the lifting of the ban, at a popular outdoor seafood eatery near the
docks of Mazatlán, for example, half a dozen small ensembles gathered in the hope
of finding some paying clientele. The full-size Banda Los Escamillas that regularly
performed during the opening hours from 4 to 9 pm too felt a plunge in requests
from customers (the eatery has since closed its doors). Since such establishments
Pepe Aguilar, Lupillo Rivera and Julio Preciado as well as Grupo Intocable, Conjunto
Primavera, Kumbia Kings and Banda El Recodo. See Furia Musical, July 2005.
typically only pay a nominal fee to engage a band, the main income of the band
stems from the clientele who pay 150 pesos (US$11) per requested piece. That
seems like a lot of money – particularly for the patrons who may request 20 pieces
in the course of a couple of hours – but when divided among 15 musicians, it is
less than a dollar per piece. Band members in this kind of setting may earn 20 to
40 dollars per afternoon. This is hardly enough to feed a family. And it is certainly
too little to promote the band beyond mouth-to-mouth propaganda.
While local bands such as Banda Los Escamillas were able to produce
recordings in the past, contemporary bands find it almost impossible to do so.
Fonorama, the Guadalajara-based recording label whose owner Manuel Contreras
‘invented’ technobanda in the mid-1980s and with whom Sinaloan bands like
Banda La Costeña and Los Escamillas had recorded in the past, was – like most
other independent labels – acquired by Televisa. Since then, the process of
producing a recording has changed: the studio no longer invites bands and pays a
flat fee for the recording and covers expenses for travel, lodging and food; instead
the band itself has to finance the recording, including some US$5,000 for the use
of the studio. Over the years, some of these expenses may be recovered by royalty
payments – however only if the band recorded with an honest company, and few
musicians believe that such a company exists. Hence, without sufficient cash, a
band today cannot produce a recording. Similarly, while organizers of popular
dance events (bailes) used to pay a fixed sum, the bands nowadays are paid from
admission fees, that is, only the dancers who enter the enclosed dancing space pay
for the music. As a result, bands are often unable to even recover their investment
and thus give up travelling altogether.
Yet these bands fulfil an important function as socially conscious, community-
oriented institutions. Banda Los Escamillas, for example, stayed local and
continues traditional practice. Half a century ago, Banda Los Escamillas was,
next to Banda El Recodo, considered the finest band in Mazatlán. In fact, Cruz
Lizárraga used to recruit new members for his band from Los Escamillas – as
well as from others he heard throughout Sinaloa while touring. In contrast to
Lizárraga, who decided to pursue a commercial career, Los Escamillas, under the
leadership of José Luis ‘El indio‘ Ramírez (tamborista of Banda El Recodo in the
1960s; see Figure 9.3), remained in Mazatlán where it continues to play for a local
audience. Younger family members of several banderos, including Ramírez’s son
(on percussion), are being introduced into the tradition, learning piece by piece
the core repertoire of Sinaloa’s popular music. Although Banda Los Escamillas
has expanded its rhythm section by including a modern drum set, the wide range
of tone colours so typical of banda (sinaloense) is maintained: blusters of brass
contrast with the lyric tone quality of the clarinet, to whose hauntingly beautiful
melody the trombonist answers with an improvised counter-melody – a rich sonic
fabric supported by the strong, characteristic pulse of the tambora. No matter
whether bandas will continue to perform on the world stage or give way to other
popular music trends, the roots of Mexican brass band music are deep and give
inspiration to both traditional and popular music practice alike.
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Discography
Banda La Costeña, Banda La Costeña, Musart CDP-1007 (1993).

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Mariachi Coculense de Cirilo Marmolejo, 1926–1936, Arhoolie Folklyric 7011
(1993).
Mariachi Tapatío de José Marmolejo, Arhoolie Folklyric 7012 (1994).
Rebirth Brass Band, Feel Like Funkin’ It Up, Rounder CD-2093 (1991).
Treme Brass Band, Gimme My Money Back, Arhoolie 417 (1995).
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Index
accordion xiv, 145, 181, 211 band parade 148, 177 (fn 41), 180, 182,
adjudicator 27, 48–9, 149–51 191
Afghanistan 11 banda (sinaloense) 200–16
agency 101, 153 banda de música 99–100, 106–22
‘Aikoku Kōshinkyoku’ see ‘Patriotic banda filarmónica 156–9, 161, 165
March’ banda-orquestra 207
alta 35–6 banderos 201, 205–8, 210–11, 216
amateur band 24, 45, 160 banding xix, 22–7, 33–5, 37, 45–6, 48, 50,
amplification xiv, 17, 99, 109, 114, 116–17, 52, 53, 164, 171, 200
121, 208 bandmaster 15, 24, 41, 44–5, 49–50, 79,
Ancient Order of Hibernians 179 93, 111, 117–18, 120, 149, 181,
apartheid 139, 146–7, 152–3 195, 206; see also conductor;
apprentice 37, 41, 161–2, 171 director
army 38, 53, 61, 150, 180 bandstand 67, 77, 113, 121, 159, 169–70
Afghan 10 banjo xiv, 143
British 39–40, 44–5, 180 Barker, Danny 127–8, 131–2, 135–6
Japanese 63 Baroque 8, 69, 102–4, 110, 115, 121–2,
US 85 152
USSR 85 bass drum xiv–xviii, 6, 105, 111, 160, 174,
army band 13, 49, 56, 60, 67–8, 54–6, 201
91–3, 173 bassoon 6, 8, 40 (fn 11), 76, 105
arrangement (musical) 8, 35, 47, 49–51, ‘Battōtai’ (A Band of Drawn Swords)
56, 61–9, 71, 77–8, 81, 86, 93–4, 60–61
119, 149, 169, 206 BBC 43, 46, 179 (fn 13)
art music 1–3, 37, 39, 48, 53, 157; see also Beatles xvii, 184, 208
classical music bebop 34, 46
history of 35 Beethoven, Ludwig von 70, 72
Asia-Pacific War 56–7, 70–72 bell tree 105
associatismo 158–9 beni ngoma 14
Austria 7, 40 big-band 205
Bizet, Georges 71
Bach, J. S. 36, Black Dyke Band 21
bagpipes xiv, 103 Black Men of Labor 123–7, 132–7
baile 114, 117, 121 ‘black ships’ 58
bajo de pecho 201 Blacking, John 195–7
Bakhtin, Mikhail 19 blackness 125–7, 130, 133, 135
baladas 210 Bliss, Arthur 46
ballad 34, 183 (fn19), 185, 188–9, 211 blood-and-thunder band 180–81, 189
band 17, 33, 37–9 see band types (e.g., BMOL see Black Men of Labor
brass band, wind band etc.) Bollywood 3, 8, 13
bombardon 111 carol, Christmas 142–4, 153

bongos 205 Catholic Church 10, 15–16, 107, 110,
Boonzajer Flaes, Rob xiv (ft 4), 11, 26, 114–15, 155, 159, 169; see also
101, 119 church
Boosey and Hawkes 44, 60 De Certeau, Michel 17 (ft 68), 18
Booth, Gregory 13, 18 ceremony 36, 40, 45, 57, 61, 70, 80, 83,
Bourdieur, Pierre 194 85–6, 104, 197
brass band movement 9, 16, 43, 49, 200 charamela 104
brass band renaissance 127 charcheta 201
brass bands 1–27; see also by types of charivari band 145–6
band and names of bands Charleston 205
acoustic properties of 22 choir xvii, 115–16, 122, 142, 150
Andean 15 Christmas band 20, 139–54
British 9, 21–2, 26, 33–52, 100, 106 Christmas Bands Movement 139–44, 148,
(fn 26) 152
church 142 chuch 4, 8, 21, 102, 142, 143, 184; see also
global dissemination of 11–17 Catholic Church
Goanese 15 Church and State 15, 110
history of 4–11, 102–6, 200–201 church band 142
Indian 13, 18–19 citizenship 43, 140–41, 154
Japanese 55–77 civic band 10, 15–16, 21
Mexican 216; see also brass bands, Civil Rights 126
Sinaloan Civil War 40, 50, 79
Minas Gerais 106–22 Claiborne Avenue 21, 123, 132
New Orleans 123–37 clarinet 8, 9, 21, 40 (fn 11), 44, 65, 70,
North American 49–52 105, 108, 110–11, 150, 160, 201,
Polish-American xiii 206, 208, 216
Portuguese 15–16 Buffet 166
professional 10, 13, 53 (fn 29), 55 E-flat 173
Sinaloan 199–216 clarinettist 128, 166, 168, 173, 203
Tongan 21 classical music 56, 60, 67–70, 72, 80, 86,
Brazil 15–16, 19, 24, 99–122 91–5, 150, 162, 179; see also art
broadcast 45, 71–2, 74, 93, 202, 213; see music
also radio claves 207
bugle 15, 42, 57, 59, 82–3, 103, 105 clavicorn 105
bugle and drum 83 clubs 16, 62, 92–3, 123, 126, 130, 134,
bugle corps xiv, 56, 57 157, 158
burden of representation 125–7 Cold War 79, 80, 85–6, 89, 91, 97
colliery brass bands 47
C. G. Conn Musical Instrument colonialism 1, 2, 4, 10–16, 27, 83
Corporation 51 coloured community 139–53
callithumpian band 146 Columbia Records 203
canción 203–4 commercialization 205
Cape Town 139, 146–7, 153 communitas xix, 154, 177, 190, 193–7
capitalism 201 communities of practice 23–5
carnival 19, 22, 117, 140–42, 146, 152, community xix, 22–7, 46, 53, 140, 147,
193, 208, 215 155–60, 171, 173, 200, 215
carnivalesque 19–20, 152 community bands 24–7, 99, 159
Index 239
community musicking 4, 17, 22–7, 29, cumbia 209

122, 171 cylindrical tubing 47
competence 26, 59, 94, 193 cymbals xv, 5, 6, 75, 105, 111, 201
musical 26, 95
shared 193 DaMatta, Roberto 19, 148
competition 14, 21–2, 27, 62, 114, 119–20, dance 14, 16, 20, 65, 71, 92, 118, 123,
122, 168–70, 177; see also contest 125, 130, 133–5, 180, 188–9
Antepodean band 16 dance band 36, 117, 208
British band 27 dance halls 93, 114, 205
Christmas band 141, 143–5, 148–54 danza 207
‘composer’s music’ 2 deindustrialization 179
concerts 8, 45, 51, 53, 66–7, 69–71, 84–6, despique 22, 157, 168–70
92, 108, 121, 156, 159–60, 167–70, diaspora 16, 20, 171, 188
181, 194, 215 dignity 127, 130–32, 141, 154
outdoor 21, 95, 161 director xvii, xxi, 22, 25–6, 55–6, 59–62,
concert band xvii, 2, 23, 49, 51, 169 69, 77, 83, 104–5, 112–16, 157–8,
conductor xvii–xviii, 41, 45–9, 51, 53, 56, 161, 174; see also conductor
62, 72, 77, 83, 150, 164–5; see also dirge 25, 115, 129, 131
bandmaster Dirty Dozen Brass Band 128, 129, 135
conflict 6, 9–10, 179–80 discipline 4, 9, 41, 45, 49, 51, 110, 121,
confraternity 103–4, 110 139, 150–51, 153, 194–5, 198
conical tubing 47 discourse 3, 12, 125, 128, 189, 196
contest 1, 16, 22, 43, 47–9, 53; see also Distins 42
competition dobrado 15, 25, 107, 109–10, 113, 115,
contrabajo 201 118–19, 121
cornet xiv, xvi, 6, 21, 46, 47, 201 domba 197
cornetti 34 ‘double duty’ 8
cornopean 105 double reed band 5–6
Corps de Musique de la Garde Nationale 9 ‘double-handed’ 8
cosmopolitan 56, 78, 127, 205 DPRK see North Korea
Crawford, Richard 1 drum 5–6, 9, 15, 20, 40 (fn 9), 57, 59, 65,
Creole 139 103–4, 180, 201
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihály 26, 191–2 drum corps 57–8
culture 37, 131, 133, 137, 147, 159, 196, drum major 144, 145, 149; see also
200 voorloper
African-American 125 drum set xv–xvi, 160, 208, 216
band 9, 23, 25, 47 drummer xiv–xviii, 13, 82, 103, 180, 185
black 125–6, 130, 133 (fn 26), 201
high art 146 drumming xiii, xv, xviii, xix, 59, 180, 186
mass 99, 126, 202 drum-sergeant 185–6, 191, 194
Mexican 203 dynamics 150, 166, 206
military 39, 44
popular 16, 92 East Africa 14
Portuguese 157–8 ‘Echigo Jishi’ 65–6
Protestant 178 Eckert, Franz 60, 62, 69, 83–4
loyalist 181 École de Musique de la Garde Nationale
Western 58 9, 41
working class 159 embodiment 19, 77, 141, 197
emotion 26, 80, 86, 147–8, 153, 177–8, gagaku 62, 70

186–7, 191, 194, 197–8 gender 26, 143
encontro de bandas 100, 117–20 Gennep, Arnold van 178, 190
ethics 139, 142, 152–3 Germany 6, 9, 40, 60, 72, 77
ethnicity xiii, 26 Gilmore, Patrick 50–51
ethnomusicology 3 globalization 4–5, 16
Eureka Brass Band 129, 132, 135 ‘glocalization’ 4, 12
Goa 15
‘Fairest of the Fair’ 85 Gomes, Carlos 113
fanfare 1, 75, 103, 207 Gossec, Francois-Joseph 9
fanfarra 99 Gounod, Charles 67
Farmer, Henry George 5–8, 35 Grenadier Guards 50
Faure, Gabriel 67 güiro 205, 207
fellow-feeling 195–7 guitar xiv, 143, 208
Fennell, Frederick xvii–xviii, 55 gunka 60–65, 70–73
Fenton, John William 58, 60–61 ‘Gunkan Kōshinkyoku’ 62–5
festival 3, 5, 19, 50, 99–110, 114–17, 121,
128–9, 141, 148, 157, 161, 169, 209 habanera 208
fife 1, 6, 13, 15, 179 ‘Hail Columbia’ 58
fife and drum xiv, 6, 15, 55–9, 178 ‘half-time show’ 1, 8
fife band 142 Hall, Stuart 126
Finnegan, Ruth 23, 156, 171 Harmoniemusik 5, 7–8, 40, 104
Fletcher, Percy 47 harmonic series 36, 42
‘flow’ 26, 177, 191–4, 197 harp 95
flute xiv, 6, 20, 65, 104, 105, 150, 160, hautbois 5–6, 9
179–83, 186 hayashi ensemble 65–6
nose 21 Haydn, Joseph 72
flute bands 20, 177–8, 180–93 Helmecke, August (Gus) xv–xvii, xx
fluter 183, 186 Herbert, Trevor 5, 9, 11, 100–102
FNAT see National Foundation for heritage 46, 69, 84, 185, 190, 208
Happiness in Work heterophony 66, 69
folk music 56, 202 hierarchy 11, 26, 156, 163, 166
folk song 178 high school band 8, 28, 51–2; see also
Chinese 70 school band
Japanese 77–8 hip-hop 124, 127–8, 137
Korean 87 historical musicology 1–2
Mexican 211 hoboys 6
Portuguese 157 hōgaku 68, 69, 71
food xiii, 6, 94, 143, 145, 186, 215–16 Holy Week 25, 104, 110, 115–16, 121–2
football 1, 8, 16, 22, 47, 169, 182, 184, Homage to the Musician 155–6
189, 214 horn 5, 8, 10, 40 (fn 11), 75, 104, 149, 160,
Foucault, Michel 153 208
foxtrot 114, 205, 208 French 105
France 6, 9, 40, 77, 165 natural 6
Funarte 99–100, 117 player 168
functional music see music, functional Hot 8 Brass Band 127, 136–7
funeral xiv, 15, 17, 20, 27, 100, 125, 129, huapango 208
214; see also jazz funeral Hurricane Brass Band 128, 135
Index 241
Hurricane Katrina 25, 124 military 35, 82

hymns 37, 59, 75, 135, 153 percussion 2, 7, 75, 103, 200, 207
reed 123
identity 34, 46, 63, 126, 130, 141, 150, Sax 42
155, 161, 164, 170, 175, 177–8, signalling 36, 40 (fn 9), 59
200, 203 string 17, 139, 143, 201
black 125 teaching of 162–4
Japanese 72, 74 traditional (Japan) 59, 65, 69
Korean 87–8 Turkish 8
local 102, 115, 121, 168, 210 Western 59, 78
markers 26, 130 wind 5, 19, 41, 99, 103–4, 143, 155
national 71 woodwinds 10
performance of 151 internationalization 66
Portuguese 16, 158 internet 152, 213 (fn29)
sonic 48 Ireland 178–9, 181, 183 (fn 22)
Il Guarany 113 Irish Guards 180
imperialism 56, 59, 67, 83 irmandade see confraternity
improvisation xx, 49, 200, 205–6 Islam 6
INATEL see National Institute for the Italy 38, 40
Enjoyment of Workers’ Leisure Time
India 1, 13–14 jalájil 5
industrialization 37, 179, 181, 199 Janissaries 5–7
instrumentation 1, 5–8, 25, 34, 36, 49, 50, Japan xv, 55–78, 83–5, 88, 214
100, 150, 180 Japan-British Exhibition 67
banda filarmónica 157 jazz 39, 46, 127–9, 143
Brazilian brass band 111 jazz band 114, 206–7
Brazilian military band 105 jazz funeral 1, 20, 127, 129–32, 137
British brass band 43, 47 John Philip Sousa Band xvi–xvii, 2, 51–2
Christmas band 143, 149
Covões band 160 kabuki 65, 71
Dirty Dozen Brass Band 128 kalela dance 14
mariachi 202 Kappey, Jacob 35
Mexican popular band 201 kettledrum 5–6, 105
Souza band 51 Kim, Kangsŏp 79, 91–3
US pop 93 Kingsbury, Henry 163, 166
instruments 5, 10–11, 13, 24, 26, 36–8, 47, Kneller Hall 41, 44–5, 49
50–51, 57, 69, 83–4, 94, 103–5, Korean War 79–97
107, 111, 139, 142–3, 146, 150, Koreanization 96
158, 160, 182, 199, 206, 212 Koreanness 87
blown xiv
brass 17, 24, 42, 47, 53, 106, 143, 199, Lange, Francisco Curt 109
201 learning 24–5, 86, 92, 95, 161–3, 166–7,
double reed 35 180, 215–16
electric xvi, 31, 208 Lee, Kyosuk 88, 92, 94–5
European 12 Leroux, Charles 60, 65, 69
Japanese 59 ‘Liberty Bell’ 85
mass produced 10, 42–5, 106 (fn 36), liminality 177
158, 165 ‘local, the’ 200
localization 4, 27 Portuguese 158

loyalism 181, 189, 196, 198 South Korean 79–97
Minas Gerais 15, 24, 99–121
MacAloon, John 152 ministry 139–40, 152–3
Malay Choirs 142 min’yō 77
mambo 207 Mitchell, Clyde 14
mandolin 143 modernity 2–4, 10, 12, 35, 78, 199
march (musical genre) xvii, 1–2, 20, 52, moral agency 153
58–63, 68, 72, 78, 132, 162, 167–9, morality 154
181, 187, 194, 207 Munn and Felton’s Band 43
Brazilian 114, 118; see also dobrado music 19, 163, 166; see also art music; folk
Christian 145 music; popular music
Christmas band 145, 151 black 126–7
funeral 115; see also dirge brass band 13, 21, 59–60, 66, 68, 88,
Japanese 62–72, 78 124–5, 127–8, 199, 201, 209–10
Korean 80, 86–91, 96 choral 167
military 65, 80, 85–96, 110, 139, 151, composer’s 2
179–80, 183, 191, 194 dance 93, 179, 180, 184, 207–8
protest 19 Dutch 57
regimental 15, 49 functional 3, 7, 80, 96, 108, 118
Russian 86 instrumental 33, 35, 37, 95, 157
slow 58 Japanese 56, 60, 65–6, 68–9, 71, 77
Sousa 51, 69–70, 85, 88 band 56, 62, 77
street 166–8 Korean 81, 87–8; see also music, South
US 85–91 Korean
march (procession) 19–20, 167–8, 170 koto 69
marching 52, 59, 87, 125, 129, 132, 135–6, local xiii, 4, 13, 128, 210
142, 144, 153 (fn 29), 155, 168, military 2, 5–6, 9–10, 14–15, 39–42,
171, 173, 186, 193 44–5, 60, 62, 80, 82, 95
marching band 1, 22, 51, 178 British 39–45
mariachi 199 (fn 1), 202 South Korean 80, 85, 89, 91
mass production 106 (fn 26), 199 New Orleans 127
medley 61, 70–71 ‘performer’s music’ 1
mehter 6 place of 155–6, 175
melody band 180, 191 Portuguese 157
memory 17–18, 20, 22, 29, 112, 141, power of 126
147–8, 153, 206 regional 202–9, 212–13
Mexico 199–213 religious 15, 150, 153
militarism 20, 45, 78, 153 sacred 135
militarization 1, 9, 56, 121 South Korean 88, 93, 94, 96
military 8–9, 11, 13, 16, 28, 39–41, 49, traditional 129, 131, 136
55–9, 68–70, 80, 86–96, 105, 158 vernacular 37
military band 1, 4–16, 20, 50, 83, 99 wind band 88, 210
American 91–2 music education 1, 9, 24, 41–2, 55, 96,
Brazilian 102–3, 105–9, 121 155–8, 160–61, 174, 215
British 13, 33–5, 40–41, 44–6, 49, 52 music industry 3, 10, 208, 214
Japanese 55–78 music school 88, 155, 157, 160–67,
Mexican 200–201, 207 170–75
Index 243
music theory 25, 60, 65, 94 Orange Order 178, 180, 196
musician 1–3, 123 Orangeism 182, 184
African American 24 orchestra 1, 8, 36–9, 48–9, 81, 88, 95–6,
amateur 10, 23, 56, 157, 190 107–8, 115–17, 122, 150, 165,
female 110, 160, 174 207; see also orquestra; symphony
jazz xix orchestra
jazz band 206 order 11, 20, 39, 132, 139
local 12, 203, 212 Orientalism 11–12, 75
male 26, 105 (fn 17), 143 orquestra 107, 207
military 49, 55, 65, 67, 78–9, 97 Ottoman Empire 6–7
professional 12, 95, 104, 130, 156, 158, overture 48, 68, 70, 74, 77, 86, 169
205–6
traditional 210 Pacific War see Asia-Pacific War
values of 24 parade xviii, 2, 19, 20, 61, 85–6, 92, 118,
musicianship 12, 80, 85, 94–6, 156, 157, 123
170 African American 20
musicking xix, 4, 10, 17–18, 23–7, 42, 104, carnival 148
107, 109, 115–16, 121–2, 157, 177, church 180
193, 199–200 civic 21, 25, 100, 113, 116, 121
community 25
nagauta 65–6, 71 military 1, 5, 12, 19
Napoleonic Wars 9, 39, 158 Orange Order 1, 177
narco-corrido 211–12 Protestant 20
navy 24, 40, 60 route of 20
Nepal 13 second line 20–21, 123–7
nation building 10 street 141, 144, 148, 152, 157
national anthem 61–2, 65, 70, 75, 78, 87–8 parading 110, 124–5, 135, 178–80, 196
National Foundation for Happiness in Paraguayan War 106, 121
Work (FNAT) 161 participatory discrepancies xiii
National Institute for the Enjoyment of ‘party tunes’ 179–80
Workers’ Leisure Time (INATEL) pasito duranguense 213
158, 161 pastorela 208
nationalism 28, 40, 51, 78, 80, 89–91, 93–7 pathways 25, 156–7, 171–5
nationhood 46, 50–51, 53 (fn29) ‘Patriotic March’, 62, 70–73
New Orleans 1–2, 20–21, 25, 27, 46, patriotism 5, 50–51, 69
123–37 patronage 40–41, 44
New Zealand 16, 50 Peerless 203
Newsome, Roy 22 percussion stick 6
norteña 211 performance 11, 18, 22, 23, 34, 151
North Korea 79, 89 performance domain 33–4, 45–53, 101,
Northern Ireland 20, 177–84, 194, 196, 198 111
performance niche 99, 101, 103, 105, 111,
oboe 6, 8, 9, 105, 163 121
officers 40–41, 44–5, 84–8, 92, 94 performance practice 5, 12, 24, 111, 128,
opera 8, 38, 48, 60, 67–9, 113, 159 136–7
ophicleide 42, 105 ‘performer’s music’ see music,
oral history 127 ‘performer’s music’
oral transmission 200 Philippines 15, 24
piano 51, 65, 150 Rebirth Brass Band 127, 130, 135–6
piccolo 110, 160, 181 recording industry 2, 202–5; see also
piffari 35 music industry
pilgrimage 157, 177–8, 190–91, 195, 197 recordings 2, 45, 128, 203–6, 211, 216
piston 105, 108 redoblante 201
pitch 44, 46, 162–3, 181 (fn 14), 206 reedpipe 5, 17
place 4, 17–22, 102, 125, 147, 153, 155–6, rehearsal xvii, 23, 26, 143, 150, 156,
170–71, 175, 199–200 159–60, 163–7, 170–75
play 178, 191–2 representation 87, 89–90, 125–7, 137, 151,
polka xiv, 114, 118, 207 178
popular music 1–3, 12 (fn 50), 80–81, 86, requinto 201
91–6, 114, 121, 179, 200, 202–3, respectability 121, 130, 133, 135, 139–42,
208–9 148, 152–4, 181, 191, 205
African American 128 retreta 113–14, 116, 120–21
Brazilian 99 revitalization 127, 180
Japanese 69 Ribbonmen 178
Sinaloan 203, 216 rites of power 11–12
South Korean 81, 93–6 ritual 9, 12, 37, 53, 129, 135, 139, 141,
study of 2 145, 148, 154, 178, 190, 192–7
Portugal 1, 15, 22, 102, 155–75 Catholic 148
post-colonialism 4 of initiation 193
power 1–2, 5, 9–12, 19–20, 56, 58–60, 77, loyalist 196
80, 85, 93, 101, 125, 137, 141, 146 of renewal 144, 178
critiques of 18 rivalry 112–13, 169
precision 45, 49–52 ‘road march’ 141, 144, 148, 152–3; see
procession xx, 2, 13, 15–20, 22, 25, 27, also march, street
99–104, 110, 113–18, 121, 123, ROK see South Korea
130, 156, 159, 167–70, 172 ROK Navy Band 84–5, 88
programme, concert 51, 68–70, 84, 169 Rossini, Gioachino 67
Project Leaf 137 Royal Academy of Music 41
protest march see march, protest Royal Military School of Music 41, 49
Protestant band 20 royalties 203–4
Protestantism 119, 189 Russia 7, 40, 83; see also USSR
public space 9, 18–20, 53, 106, 146
punk rock 180 sackbut 6
Salgado, Pedro 118
quebradita 209, 211 Salvation Army 10, 16
quicksteps 58 Salvation Army Band 142
Salvation Army Supply Company 44
race 125–7, 137 samba xx (fn 17), 114
radio 69, 71–2, 93, 201–3, 214; see also ‘Sash, The’ 183, 185–7, 191, 194
broadcast Sax, Adolphe 10, 42
ragtime 51 saxhorn 10, 42, 47, 106, 110, 201
ranchera 204, 209 saxophone xvi, 10, 21, 111, 143, 145, 155,
Ranger, Terence 14 157, 163, 167, 208
rational recreation 43 alto 160, 175
Ravel, Maurice 119 baritone 160, 168, 175
RCA-Victor 203–4 tenor 155, 160, 168
Index 245
saxophonist 162, 167 liminal 197

saxor 201 performance 94, 100–101
Schechner, Richard 154 transnational 94
school band 22, 55, 68, 84–6, 96, 99; spectacle 4–7, 9, 11, 16, 141, 148, 150–52,
see also high school band 154
Scotland 177–9, 181–2, 188, 190–91, 194–7 spiritual 123, 128, 135
Scott, James 18 Stadtpfeifer 35
second line parade 20–21, 123–4, 126–7, standardize 100, 110, 181 (fn 14), 201
133–6 ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ 52, 85
‘second liners’ 20, 132, 134–5 Stölzel, Gottfried Heinrich 42
serenatas 200 Strauss, Richard 74
serpent 9, 104, 105 street 17–20, 27–9, 39, 87, 99, 104, 107, 109,
Setoguchi Tōkichi 62–3, 70, 72–3 118, 125, 128–36, 139, 148, 152
shamisen 65–6, 68 swing xvi, 93, 197
shawm 5–6, 35, 103 swing band 127, 205
‘Shoshun no Zensō to Kōshinkyoku – symbolism 178, 196–7
Nihon no Kodomo no Tame’ 74, 76 symphonic band 74
Siwidae Kunaktae 82–5, 95–6, 95–6 symphonic poem 74, 77
Small, Christopher 195 symphony 68
snare drum xvi, 105, 111, 134, 160, 181, symphony orchestra 37, 81, 95, 150
185 (fn 26), 201, 208; see also
drum Taehanjeguk 82–4, 90
sociability 3, 4, 12, 22–3, 26, 117, 155 tafel 143, 145
Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs 123, 133 Tafelmusik 8
social drama 152 tambora 201
solfège 60, 160, 162–4, 168, 174 tambora music 206
son 208 tango 205
Song Folio 92 tarola 201
sound xvi, xviii, 1, 3–4, 9, 18, 21, 46, 48, taste 6, 45, 58, 114, 121, 179, 201, 210
50, 103, 128, 145, 149, 164, 187, technobanda 208–10, 213, 216
203, 213 technologies of the self 153
of blackness 127, 133 technology 10–11, 55, 57, 78, 213
blown xiv instrumental 10, 101, 105, 199
British brass band 33, 44, 47 recording 45
Covões 165, 166 tempo 19, 128, 129, 135–6, 163, 167–8
ecology of 4 march 144, 149
New Orleans brass band 124 territoriality 18
Sinaloan banda 214 test piece 47–9
sound domain 46, 51 timbre 44, 165–6, 206
soundscape 5, 17, 21–2, 34, 46, 106 timpani 75, 77, 160
soundtrack 3, 19, 24 tonguing 48
Sousa Band see John Philip Sousa Band tourism 114, 148, 178, 190–91, 197
Sousa, John Philip xv, xvi, 49–52, 69, 70 town band 6, 36–7
sousaphone xvi, 123 (fn 1), 150, 160 Toyama School Band 68
South Africa 20, 139–44, 147 traditionalist 128–36
South Korea 79–97 transcription 2, 8, 60, 65–6, 69, 86,
space 4, 17–20, 22, 125, 148 118–19, 157, 159, 169
city 146–7 Tremé 20, 123, 135
Tremé Brass Band 132, 137 valse 207

triangle 105, 160 valve 10, 42, 199
trombone xiv, 6, 36, 42, 47, 108, 110, 145, Verdi, Giuseppe 113
160, 165, 201, 206 vernacular cosmopolitans 12, 15
trombonist 36, 136, 203, 216 versatility 80, 93, 95–6, 100–101, 104,
trumpet xiv, xvi, 5–6, 35–6, 40 (fns 9 and 108, 119, 121
10), 47, 70, 79, 104, 110, 132, 143, village band 37, 48, 203, 207–8
160, 165, 174, 201–2 (fn 6), 206 violin xiv, 143
keyed 42 virtuosity xiv, 37, 48, 52, 206
mounted 6 voluntary association 23
Renaissance slide 36 voorloper 139, 144–5, 150–51
section xvii vuvuzela 149
trumpeter 36, 92, 103, 128, 145, 162, 165,
175 waits 35–6
Tsing, Anna 136–7 Wagner, Richard 72, 74–5
tuba xiv, 21, 123 (fn 1), 145, 150, 160, 165, waltz 113–14, 118, 207
171, 201, 208 War of the Triple Alliance see Paraguayan
Turino, Thomas 90 War
Turkish band see Janissaries ‘Washington Post March, The’ 85
Turner, Edith 190–91, 193, 197 wedding band, Indian 3, 8, 18
Turner, Victor 152, 154, 190–95, 197 Wenger, Etienne 23
Westernization 28, 55–6, 77–8
Ulster Defence Regiment 189 White, Michael 128, 129, 130–31, 137
uniform 7, 16, 24, 30, 45, 53, 59, 110, 121, wind band 1–5, 8, 10, 25, 35, 40, 88,
126, 128, 130, 134, 143, 148, 155, 155–7, 200
180, 182, 184–5, 190
military 14, 41, 51, 53, 58, 109 xylophone 70–71
unison 69, 186
upward mobility 24, 181, 205 Yamada Kōsaku 74, 76
urbanization 37, 201 Yoshimoto Mitsuzō 65–7
Urry, John 190
US Marine Band 51, 70 zamr 5
US Navy School of Music 95 zurna 6
USSR 86

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An Ashgate Book

Brass Bands of the World:

Suzel Ana Reily

LONDON AND NEW YORK

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

ISBN 9781409444220 (hbk)

Bach musicological font developed by © Yo Tomita.

List of Figures and Tables  vii

Introduction: The World of Brass Bands  1

1 Brass and Military Bands in Britain – Performance Domains, the

2 Western Challenge, Japanese Musical Response: Military Bands in

3 Battlefields and the Field of Music: South Korean Military Band

4 From Processions to Encontros: The Performance Niches of the

5 The Representational Power of the New Orleans Brass Band  123

6 Soldiers of God: The Spectacular Musical Ministry of the

7 Composing Identity and Transposing Values in Portuguese

8 Playing Away: Liminality, Flow and Communitas in an Ulster

9 From Village to World Stage: The Malleability of Sinaloan Popular

4.1 Banda de Música Giulietta Dionesi, 1900. Photos courtesy of

2.1 Yamada Kōsaku, ‘Shoshun no Zensō to Kōshinkyoku – Nihon

2.1 ‘A Band With Drawn Swords’. Used with permission of Zen-On

Katherine Brucher is an Assistant Professor of Music at DePaul University,

Sylvia Bruinders is a Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the South African

Trevor Herbert is Professor of Music at the Open University. He has worked

Heejin Kim is a Research Professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South

Sarah McClimon earned an MA and a PhD in music at the University of

Suzel Ana Reily is a Reader in Ethnomusicology and Social Anthropology

Matt Sakakeeny is an Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University. His

Helena Simonett is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Associate

May there be many volumes of post-militarist, post-colonial analyses asking the

developed as a human being or have had a 30-year career as staff ethnomusicologist

‘Why would great jazz drummers go to hear Gus Helmecke?’

Mr Thompson went on to describe how Helmecke had a whole arsenal of tricks

Suzel Ana Reily and Kate Brucher

musicologists have largely concerned themselves with ‘composer’s music’.1 As

The Military Band: Historical Overview

Appealing to the masses by the performance of bright sounds, by the pomp of

or entertainment venues – spreading the influence of military bands beyond that of

military bands as part of security operations in Afghanistan,42 indicating that the

Brass Bands and the Colonial Enterprise

The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry – a difference

By way of introductory exemplification, we present a few ethnographic

religiosity and social relations.60 Moreover, these vernacular cosmopolitans

Bands and the Making of Space and Place

contests, where judges decide the winners of diverse categories of performance.84

Banding and Community Music Making

[Community] is a process by which people come together for a particular cause or

Within marginalized communities, the modest investment in instruments and

social interactions – greetings before rehearsal, sociability following rehearsals and

Summary of the Chapters

development, both historically and geographically, we have opted against

to the formation of hybrid styles of Korean popular music. Korean bandsmen,

apartheid era. During competitions they display respectability, turning out in

We close with Helena Simonett’s contribution, ‘From Village to World Stage:

The History Question

List of Figures and Tables vii

Introduction: The World of Brass Bands 1

5 The Representational Power of the New Orleans Brass Band 123