Why You Hate the Music

The following is personal opinion. I recognize there may be valid arguments from the other side of the aisle. Then again...

To begin with, don't blame the judges. They don't program the show. The staff does. How'd you like to be subjected to a dozen performances, back to back, all variations of "My Latest Nightmare in D-minor", and then be required to rank them according to which were the least irritating? And at some shows there might be 40 of them, and if they performed in street clothes you'd never tell them apart from a repertoire standpoint.

This is not to say that there is no excellent original music out there. But for every Dick Saucedo there are 20 half-baked clueless wanna-be hacks whose idea of melody came from a drum machine loop at 200 beats per minute.

So, what exactly is wrong with this stuff, and why do so many programmers insist on selecting it? Here are some verbatim comments from people inside the marching activity:

"I like grandiose and spectacular events...I realize I'm listening to something great when I either start to cry or I tingle and get goose bumps...If it does not evoke emotion it is (descriptive slang expression for waste product)." "They look the same...They play 'original music' that no one remembers leaving the stadium...etc." This comes not from casual disgruntled fans, but from those with valid performing credentials in the corps and band activity, who feel systematically excluded from their own neighborhood, as it were.

The "in vogue" playlist for bands and corps is replete with contemporary wind band literature. This is the kind of music that is written to teach students how to master their instruments. Consequently, it is ubiquitous in college programs that train both performers and teachers. Its purpose is utilitarian and analytical and it fulfills expectations in that regard. But often it is a very poor match for an activity whose goals include entertaining and communicating with an audience. (If one attends college recitals of this music there are often vast oceans of empty seats.) That's because this material, by and large, is written and performed as an academic exercise, not an entertainment. It can be the musical eqivalent of watching someone solve quadratic equations: interesting, impressive even, but only for a select few.

For the most part, college educated instructors have been a boon to the marching music activity. They have elevated technical proficiencies to extraordinary heights. But many seem comfortable only within the confines of this "training music", designed to develop the mastery of technique, not the communication of emotion. Much of it is self-absorbed musical navel-gazing. Little wonder no one responds to it on a gut level.

Tritones, dissonance clusters, syncopated staccato fff stabs...all are difficult to play and worthy of credit when performed well. And they can be quite effective. (Ask Messrs. Berlioz, Stravinsky...etc.) They can also be annoying and painfully boring when they are the only tricks your pony knows.

When someone asks, "How does the song go?", you sing the melody. But what if there isn't one? ("Beep-beep, Boop-boop music", as George Bonfiglio so succinctly put it.) Melody is the one ingredient most likely to connect an audience to the music, through the medium of the performer.

The good news is that there are signs of life. Case in point: Two summers ago, in the Dome at Indy, a graceful young woman lifted her baritone to the audience and played the first strain of "Til There Was You", beautifully and straight from the heart...and time stood still. (And, by the way, where are all the soloists? I don't mean screamer cats who play back-field double C's, impressive though that may be. But where is someone who can throw down an entire chorus and hold the attention of the audience the way Jeff Kievit and Bonnie Ott used to do? I know they exist. They must, what with all that excellent training available these days.)

Another example from a couple of seasons ago: A corps enters the field at the Concord show, the stands filled with BD and SCV alums and supporters, all with memories of competing against this powerhouse from the mid-west. Aggressive, dissonant, powerful angst-laden music had been the order of the day to this point. Guards and drum lines had grimaced all evening and many a fist was shaken in a power and agression display. Darkness ruled.

The corps in question came on the field, sparkling under the lights in bright white and silver...and played the Pachelbel Canon. Good God! A major scale!

I watched as a potentially ambivalent, even hostile, audience was transformed in a matter of minutes by this unabashed display of heart-on-the-sleeve melody. Thousands of miles from home, in the house of their arch rivals, they became the audience favorite. Interestingly, they have continued to pursue that musical direction since. And where are they now? - A breath away from another national title, it would seem.

So what's a person to do who doesn't care for what a band or corps plays? For one thing, buy the CDs and T-shirts of the groups whose music you like. Be vocal about your expectations. Email the band or corps director and copy the district Fine Arts Administrator. Remind them that music is not simply an intellectual and physical exercise, that it's about communicating, that the audience counts, and the performers deserve to feel that interaction. Demand they be given a vehicle appropriate to that end.

It may not do any good. Then again...

Publishers Note:
In the Arc is a series of essays on the history and state of marching music - from the personal perspective of one of the legends of the activity .... a performer, instructor, arranger, adjudicator, and observer over the past 5 decades. Frank Dorritie has been playing the bugle and trumpet since the 1960s, and has performed with artists like Billy Cobham and Maynard Ferguson. He has instructed and/or arranged for the Blue Devils, Cadets, Santa Clara Vanguard, Cavaliers, Chesterton and Tenri High Schools, the Bushwackers, Bridgemen and a host of others. His audio production credits include CDs with Wynton Marsalis, Johnny Otis and the National Cast of Phantom of the Opera. Frank's honors include 9 Grammy Nominations, 2 Grammy Awards and membership in both the World Drum Corps and Buglers Halls of Fame. He is active internationally as a clinician and adjudicator, holds the DCA Soprano/Trumpet/Tenor Individual titles for 2003, 2005 and 2006, and has served as music consultant for Fox Network programs. Frank also chairs the Department of Recording Arts at Los Medanos College. His popular brass method book, "Power and Endurance", is available from Xtremebrass.com. The opinions expressed in this column are strictly those of the author.