Has Drum Corps Lost Its Soul

[oldschooldbc]

As far as community involvement - that is certainly one thing that is lacking.

Many drum corps receive little or not support from their local communities. None. Many communities don't even know that their corps exists - let alone do a thing, to help their local units. This is despite the fact that many of these communities would have no national name recognition whatsoever, if it weren't for their drum corps. (How many of us would have even heard of Concord, California, if it weren't for a certain corps from their town?)

In San Antonio, for example, you could walk into a shopping mall, and ask 100 people the name of their local touring DCI corps. (That's actually a trick question: there are really two of them.) You may not find a single person who has heard of the Crossmen, or Revolution.

Of course, this is symtomatic of a larger problem in American society today: the lack of community ties. Many people don't do a thing, to aid their civic organizations, schools, churches, or other local institutions. They don't know and don't show. And don't care. There was a book written a few years back called "Bowling Alone", that describes how this has changed in American society (for the worse.) The lack of support for local drum corps is just one example of this.

Better community support would certainly help young, struggling corps that need. It may be the key, to turning this struggling activity around.

What can rectify the situation. If there were better community outreach, corps may have better relationships with their communities. Unfortunately, many corps don't do this. Many don't even march in parades in their own home town, which would be an ideal way to publicize their unit to community. Maybe that is what needs to change.

Edited September 5, 2010 by oldschooldbc

[HockeyDad]

THIS is what I replied to...Jeff's post where he said:

I asked Jeff to post a link...skywhooper posted the proposal George made...which did not back up Jeff's statement. George's proposal rationale was a broad discussion of his view on the direction DCI should take, and electronics are but one component. Never did he say that electronics were a 'fix' to anything, nor were they a 'boon' to attendance.

So now, apparently, Hop is saying that this "view on the direction DCI should take".... has turned out to be in a bad direction. Because, now, a few years after electronics, Hop himself has declared the state of DCI to be dire. So... why DCI BOD would listen to him, again, is beyond me.

[MikeD]

As far as community involvement - that is certainly one thing that is lacking.

Many drum corps receive little or not support from their local communities. None. Many communities don't even know that their corps exists - let alone do a thing, to help their local units. This is despite the fact that many of these communities would have no national name recognition whatsoever, if it weren't for their drum corps. (How many of us would have even heard of Concord, California, if it weren't for a certain corps from their town?)

The town of Garfield did little if anything to support us in my day. Hastle us about practice time at the HS...we ended up in the parking lot at the Bergen County jail in Hackensack it got so bad. Very few Cadets came from Garfield, so even then the town did not embrace us. We did the Memorial Day parade and maybe an event every now and then, but we had little connection to Garfield. The GSC corps I marched with in 68 and 69 was much the same...the town of Livingston provided zero support to us. Same when I taught them later, and also the same when I taught the Wayne NJ Monarchs/King's Regiment. The towns had nothing at all to do with us.

[MikeD]

So now, apparently, Hop is saying that this "view on the direction DCI should take".... has turned out to be in a bad direction. Because, now, a few years after electronics, Hop himself has declared the state of DCI to be dire. So... why DCI BOD would listen to him, again, is beyond me.

Not really. Seems as if he just wants to take it further along that same line....that it needs even more radical change. Doesn't mean he was wrong then. In fact, what George said then is similar to what Greg Orwell is saying now.

[Kansan]

see this won't work either. Local organizations can't put up the cash to fund a drum corps when they are trying desperately to keep their shelter and food bank running. The churches don't have it. The Boy Scouts don't have it. It's called money and there's not enough of it to start a drum corps.

I don't know where you live but our area is not totally devastated by the faltering economy. We can be successful. All the equipment does not have to be brand new to start with and the staff does not have to be paid for the 1st few years. The kid that will join a local Corps are the ones who don't necessarily want to tour the entire country and may not have been involved in local public school music programs.

In our District, not all the band students get to be in the marching band as all 9th graders must tryout. We have a good number of Private School Students in the area and Schools in the inner city that have eliminated their marching band programs.

[Kansan]

This falls into the category that we can turn a cucumber into a pickle, but we cannot turn a pickle back into a cucumber. The Kansas public, as well as potential youth marching members in the State, have already been exposed to the best, most competitive, highly qualitative marching ensembles in the entire world. To look into reverting the drum corps activity back to the local Church Sopnsored, local Boys and Girls Clubs sponsored, local Police Sponsored parade units that do some local field shows with the community sitting around in their lawn chairs sipping lemonade is like attempting to convince these pepole to go back to watching black and white TV with only three broadcast channels. Maybe this will happen on a smal scale like the SDCA is attempting to accomplish, but it is not going to happen with the overwhelming multitude of youth who want to march at the DCI level! So, unless a group like Prarie Sound can offer that same high quality performance and instructional experience, many of the youth in Kansas are going to continue going over a few States to Regiment, Scouts, Colts, and Blue Knights. Especially since the advent of easy state to state transportation.

One local DCI show does not reach all the Students in a metro of around 2 million people. Many of the people in the theater are adults. I don't know how you get the idea that no students would want to participate in a local Corps since most of them could not make a DCI Corps due to many different reasons such as money, family obligations, job obligations, School, talent level..................Yes the best most interested young people who are willing to travel will go out of State to the Big Boy Corps. Nothing wrong with that at all. I'm saying there are still plenty of youth to draw from that just like to play and may want to stay near home to do so.

[Stu]

... We can be successful ...

What I think that we have here is a difference in defining the word success. Success for person "A" might be a drum corps which is highly qualitative and nationally competitive in DCI; Success for person "B" might be a drum corps that merely gets kids off the streets without any concern for quality performances; Success for person "C" might be putting a together rag tag local community unit to perform for fun in SDCA; Success for person "D" might be putting together a local weekend warrior DCA group. So Kansan, please tells us (your) definition of success. and we will see if it matches with others posting in this thread.

[pearlsnaredrummer77]

I'd love a list.

I would too, so I asked for info.

http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/forums/inde...howtopic=141000

[Tom Brace]

And if he can't....that means it didn't happen?

I remember electronics being hailed as the fix too. Needed to take it to the "next level." Needed by the creative teams so they could "continue to evolve." And all that

Actually, if it's here on DCP, it should be relatively to quote the post. It's called "trust, yet verify."

[Tom Brace]

If you read Hopkins's 2007 electronics proposal [PDF], it's pretty much that. He says that audience growth will come from "young people" who are "plugged in" and that drum corps has to recruit from marching bands and that they are getting more "mainstream". Blah blah rock blah blah rap blah blah saxophones.

In this proposal he doesn't say "electronics means bigger crowds" directly, but it's pretty strongly implied. I'm sure there are articles with more candid quotes.

Personally I look at that and wonder why anyone would vote for it. He trashes the quality current drum corps music, complains about having to "tell stories without words", about having to "balance sounds that weren't meant to be balanced". Maybe no one actually reads page after page of his ramblings.

wrong. Major fail here sir. His proposal and ANYTHING Mr. Hopkins has ever said does not equate the use of electronics with bigger audiences. It has been about more opportunities for the performing ensembles and for other young people who do not play a brass instrument or a drum, or mallet instrument.

The argument made at the time...even echoed by me...was that it was a good thing for a young person to take on a new instrument...a new challenge. The counter argument was that these experts on their instruments should be given an opportunity now that amplification was provided.