Drum Corps in the Post-Covid World - What Role Does DCI Have?

[Jeff Ream]

7 hours ago, garfield said:

From. The. Corps. Themselves.

The corps have to commit to funding the operations.  DCI gets it funding from exactly the same place as the corps themselves: from ticket sales.

 

if they fund it, then how do they get those big checks after the season? kind of a contradiction no?

[Jeff Ream]

5 hours ago, Fred Windish said:

Fifty years after its formation, Drum Corps International (the brand) signifies the world’s best of its type. There are many other drum corps  conglomerates around the globe. Name one superior to DCI. I can’t.

Over time, DCI became recognized, enjoyed, even emulated, around the world. It has developed a network of sponsors, teaching staff, adjudicators, and production teams to handle audio/visual/print media and event management. It has entertained generations of young and old participants who ‘did’ DCI in some form. It has a storied history of accomplishment on record.

So, here we are at a time of crisis, not even self-inflicted, and folks are trying to determine if DCI should be reborn as something else? I don’t think so. Now is for DCI survival and continuation as best it can.

How long would it take a replacement, call it Acme Pageantry, Inc., to achieve the same position held by DCI?  Establish its own brand, abilities, and unique appeal. Difficult road for Acme to travel, it seems.
 

 

 

 

 

 

where would the funding come from? the corps? but then wait, who gets the show appearance fees?

[N.E. Brigand]

This cultural commentator has been heavily pushing his forthcoming book One Billion Americans lately, and I've been thinking maybe I'd read it once it's out in September, but until seeing that tweet from him tonight, it didn't occur to me that the book might have relevance to drum corps, although I suppose it's obvious if I'd just thought about it:

- - - - - - - - - -

"'"We need more immigrants to repopulate our empty cities." Get ready for it.'

Oh, I've got a book about this! Meaning, like, the dozens and dozens of cities (mostly midwestern but also some of the smaller northeastern ones) that have been depopulated for decades, not the (likely-fake) trend of New York City depoplating because of Covid.

Springfield, Massachusetts, for example, is far from the hardest-hit city in America. But [...] it's lost 12% of its population since 1960 which creates a lot of secondary problems. If you’d like to know more about why this kind of widespread urban depopulation is a problem, trapping vast swathes of America in a cycle of decline while valuable capital wastes away [...]".

- - - - - - - - - -

Many of those cities that lost population since the 1960s are also those where a lot of drum corps were based. Has the activity ever seriously reckoned with that population shift? Or did it carry on as if that hadn't happened? (Not that I'm sure what the right response would have been.) Not just the junior corps. As recently as 20 years ago, Rochester had two DCA finalists and Syracuse had one; those three corps, from cities whose populations peaked in the 1950s, no longer exist. Were they running on fumes the whole time?

[camel lips]

I don’t see the activity coming back anytime soon. 

[keystone3ply]

5 hours ago, camel lips said:

I don’t see the activity coming back anytime soon. 

Wrong!  (Hopefully) 😢

 

 

[garfield]

6 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

where would the funding come from? the corps? but then wait, who gets the show appearance fees?

This is still exactly the point. How much should corps “pitch in” to assure that DCI has the funding to organize, pitch, and get funding support for whatever “stage” the members want?

I’ve wondered aloud if a reverse of the DCI payout scheme would do it well.  They more payout a corps gets, the more they put into the DCI operations funding.  And yes, I’m fully aware that the biggest cats are the hardest to herd.

[garfield]

6 hours ago, camel lips said:

I don’t see the activity coming back anytime soon. 

You might be wearing sunglasses but, in any case, isn’t “anytime soon” too vague to be meaningful?

And relevant to the topic, should we just wait until “soon” arrives to figure out DCIs role, if any, when it does?

[garfield]

8 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

if they fund it, then how do they get those big checks after the season? kind of a contradiction no?

Well, this is the root of the matter so, yea, it's not a new predicament, is it?

But it's the crux of the issue.  The individual corps need the gate and wants DCI to make the best gate possible, but then starves DCI by refusing to create a line item for "rainy day fund" or even an operations fund, then demands that whatever is left be paid out to the corps under the aegis that the corps are better marketers of the activity than DCI is (regardless that the responsibility is drafted in the mission documents of DCI).

[E3D]

9 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

This cultural commentator has been heavily pushing his forthcoming book One Billion Americans lately, and I've been thinking maybe I'd read it once it's out in September, but until seeing that tweet from him tonight, it didn't occur to me that the book might have relevance to drum corps, although I suppose it's obvious if I'd just thought about it:

- - - - - - - - - -

"'"We need more immigrants to repopulate our empty cities." Get ready for it.'

Oh, I've got a book about this! Meaning, like, the dozens and dozens of cities (mostly midwestern but also some of the smaller northeastern ones) that have been depopulated for decades, not the (likely-fake) trend of New York City depoplating because of Covid.

Springfield, Massachusetts, for example, is far from the hardest-hit city in America. But [...] it's lost 12% of its population since 1960 which creates a lot of secondary problems. If you’d like to know more about why this kind of widespread urban depopulation is a problem, trapping vast swathes of America in a cycle of decline while valuable capital wastes away [...]".

- - - - - - - - - -

Many of those cities that lost population since the 1960s are also those where a lot of drum corps were based. Has the activity ever seriously reckoned with that population shift? Or did it carry on as if that hadn't happened? (Not that I'm sure what the right response would have been.) Not just the junior corps. As recently as 20 years ago, Rochester had two DCA finalists and Syracuse had one; those three corps, from cities whose populations peaked in the 1950s, no longer exist. Were they running on fumes the whole time?

Full blown stretch. You could do better. 

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by E3D

[garfield]

10 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

This cultural commentator has been heavily pushing his forthcoming book One Billion Americans lately, and I've been thinking maybe I'd read it once it's out in September, but until seeing that tweet from him tonight, it didn't occur to me that the book might have relevance to drum corps, although I suppose it's obvious if I'd just thought about it:

- - - - - - - - - -

"'"We need more immigrants to repopulate our empty cities." Get ready for it.'

Oh, I've got a book about this! Meaning, like, the dozens and dozens of cities (mostly midwestern but also some of the smaller northeastern ones) that have been depopulated for decades, not the (likely-fake) trend of New York City depoplating because of Covid.

Springfield, Massachusetts, for example, is far from the hardest-hit city in America. But [...] it's lost 12% of its population since 1960 which creates a lot of secondary problems. If you’d like to know more about why this kind of widespread urban depopulation is a problem, trapping vast swathes of America in a cycle of decline while valuable capital wastes away [...]".

- - - - - - - - - -

Many of those cities that lost population since the 1960s are also those where a lot of drum corps were based. Has the activity ever seriously reckoned with that population shift? Or did it carry on as if that hadn't happened? (Not that I'm sure what the right response would have been.) Not just the junior corps. As recently as 20 years ago, Rochester had two DCA finalists and Syracuse had one; those three corps, from cities whose populations peaked in the 1950s, no longer exist. Were they running on fumes the whole time?

Even with all of the immigration into the US in the last 75 years, the number of performing groups has declined.  Is that because of "depopulation"?  If so, why were there not more suburban and smaller city corps started to pick up all of those stranded performers?  Edited: If this subject relates to the thread, then should DCI's function include lobbying to increase the number of O-1 visas because not enough American kids don't want to march drum corps?

I think this might be an interesting discussion about contributing factors of the declining number of corps, but not sure how it relates to the thread. 

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by garfield