Drum Corps in New Orleans.

[Jumpin2drums]

This is my first time visiting Drum Corps Planet, so pardon me if I am not placing in the proper section.

I am from New Orleans, LA. I have been in Valley Forge, PA at my company's disaster recovery site. The last time I was this far north was when I was instructing the drum line for the Bleu Raeders Drum Corps in 1979/80. I joined drum corps with the Southern Rebels at 15 in 1974 in New Orleans. We have had a rich junior drum and bugle corps history over the decades in New Orleans. Many of our local junior drum corps members over the years have peformed in the top DCI drum corps. For myself, I have never seen a DCA show, but have heard of the many famous senior corps from up in the notheast around these parts. I am sorry to have arrived a month or so too late to enjoy some great drum corps rehearsals and competitions in this area.

For the last couple of years, a number of my fellow New Orleanian Drum Corps alumni have made steps, beginning with nothing but an idea, to bring back the drum corps experience to New Orleans, starting with no funding using what old bugles could be found from the last junior corps that existed in New Orleans, purchasing old bugles and drums off eBay with our personal individual funds, and covering individual's various drums for uniformity sake, trying to gather old bugle scores and write new ones, making silks for flags, using many indivudal pickup trucks to move equipment as needed, and we were making some headway, achieving a unit of around 65 or so to march in Mardi Gras parades the last two years under the organizational unit GNODCA, Greater New Orleans Drum Corps Association (www.gnodca.org), until the recent disaster struck.

I will be returning to New Orleans next week to travel and work in Baton Rouge, LA, luckily having one of the few houses on the west side of the New Orleans metropolitan area that did not get water inside the house, and not too much damage to my roof, though there was barely a house left without some degree of damage requiring repair if not demolishing. At the moment we are all scattered around the country, but are slowly making our way back to New Orleans.

I am only a performing member of our organization, and not anyone who is in a position to officially speak on the behalf of the organization, but it is my hope in making this post that I can find GNODCA help in it's efforts to rebuild drum corps in New Orleans once again, while we are rebuilding New Orleans itself. If there is anyone in the drum corps community who can provide us assistance in any way at all, or just provide suggestions that we will find helpful to gather needed equipment that we need to bring back the sounds of drum and bugle corps to New Orleans and beyond, it would truly be greatly appreciated. Please visit our site at www.gnodca.org.

I hope someday to visit back up this way, and experience the DCA experience that I've only heard about since age 15, and hopefully even participate as a performing member in that experience with my fellow DCA corps members from New Orleans.

Thank you.

Edited March 19, 2006 by Jumpin2drums

[AlbionNY Drum Line]

awesome...mods...move this into dca related and not OT?

[Jumpin2drums]

This is the only second time I've ever posted on DCP, and the first time from coming back from Valley Forge PA since the hurricane. Echoes Drum & Bugle is alive! Let me give you an update on the status of the New Orleans metro area.

In the last six months the New Orleans has struggled on many fronts to continue existance at every level, and half of the metro area is still devastated.

The western half the metro area ( pop. @ 500,000) is a BOOM TOWN ( life as normal, almost), and the eastern half (pop @500,000) is a GHOST TOWN, with only very small pockets of normal signs of life. Luckily, those small spared pockets in the eastern half of the city, which includes the downtown New Orleans business district and the adjoining historic French Quarter, seems enough to have survived to allow a foothold for a rebuilding effort to start an extremely slow rebuild of the eastern half of the metro area that will probably take 5 to 10 years, barring another devastating set back during that time. Had one levee broke on the western half of our metro area, I doubt that New Orleans would be on any future map. Even so, as I drove along the Mississippi coastline, only one hour away, seeing not one wall of any building standing for blocks inland, stretching for tens of miles along their coast, I realized how much worse it could have been for New Orleans, had the hurricane landed 50 more miles west.

There is a thick dark brown dirt line left across every standing object in the eastern half of the metro area where the top of the water line was during the flodding, and as you drive around, you see the line rise from as low as in some front yards, where every living plant and grass blade below it was killed, raising slowly on the outside of houses as your move along for blocks, to areas where the line goes above the roof line of empty houses with all doors and windows now taken out allowing a view of all their inner wall studs, where people have been able to gut their houses. Though the terrain is flat in our metro area, there is obviously unseen slopes in our terrain across the city varying from a foot or so above sea level to about ten feet or so below sea level.

The western half of the metro area that is mostly operational once again, now has most all of the housing, gas stations, grocery stores, schools, hospitals, and any other necessity for civilization, and is "flooded" with much needed out of town/state repair workers, making it hard to get around in a car and extremely long lines everywhere. The places opening are finding it hard to find local workers though, and fast food places are offering heafty bonuses and increased wages. Things are slowly beginning to improve as more places re-open in the western half of the metro area, and some places begin to re-open one by one in the eastern part of the Greater New Orleans metro area.

It's surreal! Many houses in both halves of the metro area now have white FEMA trailers in the front yard or driveway for temporary residential housing until those residences are repaired, though many thousands of trailers are still needed. The city is covered with blue tarps on houses. To see an arial view of the metro area is quite colorful, though many of those FEMA installed tarps on roofs are not lasting as long as anticipated. I have three FEMA trailers on my five house block, with one house having two trailers in their front yard. Three of my neighbors around me just had there roofs reparied in the past two weeks. My blue roof tarp is gone, as I was able to have my roof quickly repaired months ago. I figured I'd get the work done immediately and pay the roofers later when I got the insurance money, instead of waiting in line with hundreds of thousands of others. I just had my last 20% of insurance re-imbursement funds released to me this week, six months after the hurricane. I am one of a very small percentage of people in the metro area who are EXTREMELY FORTUNATE to have had a house to live in during these past six months as I had no flooding, and more than 90% of all house in both the eastern and western half had some flooding, though the eastern half had levee breaks which caused more extreme levels of flooding for a longer period of a couple of weeks. One inch of water for one day, or ten feet of water for ten days inside your house still causes extreme hardships. Some neighborhoods near levee breaks have had their houses swept away.

My description above can not fully explain the experience, but it gives some insight in order for others to understand the determination of the people of this area, and our veteran drum corps members have to bring back the good things we had by making this first post-Katrina Mardi Gras a successful event.

For those who do not know, Mardi Gras exists only because of the participation of individuals particpating in community organizations called krewes, who pay money out of their own pockets to put on their own krewe's ball and parade for everyone else to enjoy. The many krewes parades within a two week span concluding on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday("Fat Tuesday", which is the translation for "Mardi Gras") are put on by the members of the local community, for the local community. Mardi Gras this year, was a show of determination by the many thousands of indivudals in our community to show to ourselves and the others that we will overcome the obstacles Hurricane Katrina caused, and a new New Orleans will rise.

The dedication of our members to be able to field a parade unit this Mardi Gras was truly a testimate to the determination and the dedication of our drum corps alumni. I'd like to also thank the members from Gulf Coast Sound who participated in our annual Mardi Gras parade, and everyone for there expression of support. We look forward to bigger and better things to come in the future.

Edited March 19, 2006 by Jumpin2drums

[mgailp]

Well said. As I said shortly after the storm, we will survive and choose to thrive!

The dedication of our members to be able to field a parade unit this Mardi Gras was truly a testimate to the determination and the dedication of our drum corps alumni. I'd like to also thank the members from Gulf Coast Sound who participated in our annual Mardi Gras parade, and everyone for there expression of support.

It needs to be included that our participants came back to us from as far as Florida and California. I don't remember where Nicky's (melloclone's) friend came from, but that was another state.

Edit: fix typo

Edited March 5, 2006 by mgailp

[Jumpin2drums]

As well, some of our members and large number of New Orleans metro citizens are still located elsewhere around the country, some by their own choice, but most out of necessity for survival.

[Jumpin2drums]

Take a look into the hurricane devestated eastern half of the New Orleans metro area, and also a pic of what the dedication and determination of our drum corps members and friends were able to pull off this Mardi Gras last month in a parade in the mostly recovered western half of our metro area.

The storm has diminished our numbers a bit, but not our drum corps attitude of determination.

Look for great things to come from us in the future.

Affects of the hurricane from one of our GNODCA member's web site.

A GNODCA members personal pic of their bugle and house after the hurricane flooding of over 10 feet for a couple of weeks.

GNODCA (Echoes Drum & Bugle Corps) Mardi Gras 2006

Edited March 20, 2006 by Jumpin2drums

[camel lips]

Its post like these that remind me how great it is to have a corps on the field this year.

Best of luck to you guys getting it off the ground again.

[Gary Matczak]

GNODCA (Echoes Drum & Bugle Corps) Mardi Gras 2006

Are those TDR snares?,................who did all the work on the drums?,.................Bass drums look cool!,............."oh my achin" back" no more!

[Jd83]

I have no doubt the corps will get back on its feet. This is a resilient group of people who won't let something like Katrina get them down and out. I no longer live in the New Orleans area and am not able to participate except from a distance, but I know these people well enough to be this convinced. This corps WILL survive.

I do miss everybody, though.

[brigmello94]

I don't remember where Nicky's (melloclone's) friend came from, but that was another state.

That would be me & the state is Pennsylvania. :)

Thanks so much for letting me 'crash' your parade gig. It was a lot of fun getting to meet other drum corps folks & learning more about the area--Nikki is a great tour-guide. I hope your rebuilding efforts continue to meet with success!