This Band Practices Less Than a Mile from Our Tallahassee Home

Camp Leads a Drumbeat for a Marching Band’s Style

From the New York Times on July 23, 2008

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As his extended family gathered around the table for dinner last Christmas, Ben Brock received one final present. It was a scrapbook, each page adorned with photos of him as a child and handwritten notes from his relatives. Then, on the last sheet, the names of his mother, sister, uncles and aunts appeared, with a dollar figure next to each.

Those numbers reflected the money they had pledged to send Ben, 16, almost as far from his home in Seattle as it was possible to go within the continental United States. At the end of that journey lay the dream he had nurtured since watching the movie “Drum Line” in sixth grade: to become part of the Marching 100, the renowned band at Florida A&M University.

So on a gauzy gray morning seven months later Ben and his snare drum strode onto the dewy grass of the band’s practice field on the Tallahassee campus. He had been awakened at 5 a.m. and the day’s last rehearsal would not end until 10 p.m. His feet screamed. His shoulders ached. Gnats swarmed around his face, daring him to break rhythm and lose composure.

“Snap, precision, lock in with the tempo,” called out an instructor, very much in the manner of a Marine drill sergeant. “Now step it up, get some volume.”

But this, all this, is what Ben Brock had sought, he and 450 other high school students, drawn from throughout the United States and as far as Germany. They had enrolled in the summer band camp operated by the Marching 100. For the campers, these eight days offered a kind of initiation; for the band, they offered the chance to recruit future members and to spread its ecstatic performance style literally around the world.

In the nation’s historically black colleges, marching bands have long provided far more than “The Star-Spangled Banner” for football crowds, and none, arguably, has grown more famous than Florida A&M’s.

The group’s traditional and official name, the Marching 100, is a rare bit of false modesty: the group now numbers upward of 350 musicians, drum majors and flag-carriers. The unit has built a national, even global, following with appearances at the Super Bowl, both of President Bill Clinton’s inaugural parades, the Grammy Awards and the bicentennial of the French republic.

The only reason Florida A&M was not explicitly identified as the inspiration for “Drum Line” is that the script called for the Marching 100 to finish second in a battle of the bands, and, as the group’s director, Prof. Julian E. White, put it the other day, “We don’t lose.”

The Marching 100 has created a revolution in band style, radically infusing the traditional catalog of songs and formations with the sounds and dances of black popular culture. “It slides, slithers, swivels, rotates, shakes, rocks and rolls,” the band’s founding director, Prof. William P. Foster, wrote in his memoirs. “It leaps to the sky, does triple twists, and drops to earth without a flaw, without missing either a beat or a step.”

It also attracts plenty of acolytes. When Dr. White began the summer camp 18 years ago, he expected to attract mainly African-American students from the Southeast. Not only has the enrollment soared to 450 from an initial 90, the geographical and racial range has expanded. (Tuition is $475, with many students receiving scholarships.)

Three busloads of campers came this summer from Michigan alone. Dozens of Hispanic and white teenagers have flocked to the program, including the archetypal slacker this summer who wore a T-shirt explaining, “I’m Probably Late.”

“They come here, they ignore the gnats, they ignore the heat, because of the uniqueness of what we do and the pride we feel, the dedication,” Dr. White said. “And when they leave here, their parents say they sleep for a week.”

Ralph Jean-Paul remembers those sensations well. Now the band president and a tuba instructor for the summer program, he started out eight years ago as a camper.

“I felt I had come to an empire,” Mr. Jean-Paul recalled. “To see this magnitude of musicians, all working in one place, 30 tubas alone. That first day, I told myself, ‘This is where I want to be.’ ”

Technology has enhanced and challenged the summer camp. On the one hand, teenagers anywhere in the world can find clips of the Marching 100 on YouTube or visit its MySpace page.

“I saw people doing a dance routine with their drums that I thought was completely impossible,” Mr. Brock said of his online exploration. “I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do that.’ ”

On the other hand, the rise of hip-hop and the computerized music programs like GarageBand has depleted the pool of young instrumentalists. In addition, many public schools have reduced or eliminated music classes to provide double periods of math and reading, which are tested annually under the education law No Child Left Behind.

The camp makes no concession to any of it. Within the program’s single week, every student is expected to learn a pregame and half-time show, and to perform with a symphonic, chamber or jazz ensemble. Veterans know to bring along insect repellent and ice packs.

“They’re serious down here,” said L’Dante Brown, a 14-year-old drummer from the Virgin Islands. “When they tell you to stand still and be quiet, you can hear the mosquitoes flying.”

And when they tell Mr. Brown and the rest to move and make noise, and all the French horns and piccolos and saxophones and trombones sashay into action, the syncopated sound echoes across the hilly campus.

“I know I’m not the best player,” said Dana Dixon, 16, a clarinetist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “But I’ve learned notes. I’ve learned steps. I’m happy and I’m sore. I thought waking up at 5 o’clock would be terrible, but it’s nothing. It’s, like, let’s wake up and do it.”