SYMPOSIUM ADDRESS
The Summer Music Games: Drum and Bugle Corps as Ritual
Jonathan Ritter
Contemporary drum and bugle corps perform, in the largest sense of that word, a
secular musical ritual of enormous proportions. The binding glue of an otherwise
diverse cross-section of the American public, the drum corps activity identifies a
distinct musical subculture that flourishes every summer on the fields of hundreds
of stadiums across the United States. My goal in this paper is both ethnographic
and theoretical: to question the ways that specific aspects of formalized behavior
in drum corps reflect the general parameters of anthropological inquiry on ritual
and performance, and to examine what framing the drum and bugle corps activity
as a ritual may tell us about its future.
Drum Corps: History and Development
Drum and bugle corps first emerged as a youth activity in the United States in the
years following the first World War.(1) Performing on single valve bugles with a
small battery of marching drums, these first corps were primarily parade units
that had grown out of local Boy Scout troops and church organizations with ties
to the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) or the American Legion. The activity
flourished after the second World War, reflecting an expansion in membership
within the veteran's organizations and, in many neighborhoods, the perceived
need for an activity to keep "kids off the street" (Warren 1995: 5). Corps during
this period gradually shifted away from parade activity towards field shows,
complete with marching drills and military pageantry. Numerous field show
competitions developed, particularly on the east coast and in the midwest, hosted
by the VFW and American Legion. Corps were judged on a negative point
system, beginning with a perfect score and losing points (called ticks") with each
error in execution. Scoring categories reflected the activity's military
associations, including captions for a pre-show inspection of uniforms and the
"presentation of colors," a required salute in which the American flag was
hoisted.
In the late 1960s, numerous drum corps directors and fans grew increasingly
dissatisfied with this system. Affiliation with veteran's organizations and the
concomitant martial character of shows were viewed as inhibitors to drum corps'
potential growth, both for youth participation and audience entertainment. The
desire for artistic development in show design and music selection chafed under
the "tick" scoring system, which discouraged innovation by penalizing errors in
execution without factoring in difficulty. New corps emerged at this time,
particularly in California, without the sponsorship of veteran's organizations;
these corps tested the possibilities for an independent drum and bugle corps
activity. After several years of experimentation with different organizational
models, Drum Corps International (DCI) was formed in 1972 by a coalition of
drum corps as the first independent drum corps association. DCI remains the
activity's governing body today.
The 1970s marked the beginning of the modern corps era. No longer sponsored
by local VFW or American Legion posts, corps began accepting and even
recruiting members from beyond their immediate neighborhoods; the result was a
"professionalization" of corps membership, reflected in increasingly difficult and
virtuosic field shows. Continuing a trend begun in the 1950s by the Troopers
Drum and Bugle Corps from Casper, Wyoming, corps began traveling on
extended tours to compete in shows across the country. PBS stations in nearly
every state began broadcasting the DCI Championship Finals in 1975, further
expanding the activity's visibility and recruiting new members to the top corps. A
new scoring system was adopted which gradually dropped the military elements
and emphasized "general effect" categories over execution, encouraging corps to
take greater risks in show programming. Latin jazz, particularly tunes by
then-popular Chuck Mangione and Maynard Ferguson, pushed aside the "march"
to dominate drum corps' musical programming.
The 1980s and 90s witnessed further innovations in show design. The "concept"
show took over, as corps attempted to link the separate musical selections in their
show under a single conceptual umbrella. Drill designers, particularly George
Zingali and Steve Brubaker, introduced radical changes in the ways drum corps
"moved" on the field, incorporating different "step styles" and curvilinear,
asymmetrical drill formations into the shows to achieve a greater unity between
music and motion. The "color guard," once used literally to "guard" the flag in a
corner of the field, moved beyond silks, rifles, and sabers to props and equipment
related to their show's theme; since the mid-1990s, modern dance choreography
has dominated color guard movement. Musical tastes splintered; many corps
simply updated their arrangements of big band jazz, while others turned to
orchestral works, opera, wind ensemble literature, popular music, Broadway
musicals, and even occasional "world music" forays. Changes in drumline
instrumentation and aesthetic have spawned whole new industries within the
percussion world.
New lines of instruments since the 1970s include multiple pitched bass drums,
fiberglass vests to hold the drums more comfortably, different stick designs,
"unbreakable" Kevlar drum heads, and "free-floating" snare drums capable of
withstanding the extreme tension made possible by the new Kevlar heads. Jim
Campbell, former creative head of the Cavaliers, argues that this explosion in
percussion instrumentation and technique has "revolutionized the drum corps
activity" (Campbell 1992).
All of these changes came with a price. Designers and professional
arrangers/instructors took home larger salaries as their names became
commodities. Larger corps sizes--128 members for each corps in the top
division, as opposed to an average of 60-70 in the 1960s--demanded an
expanded infrastructure of instruments, busses, equipment and kitchen
semi-trailers, and even souvenir booths (Warren 1995: 5). Extended tour
schedules meant that corps were out on the road longer, incurring expenses from
food, gas, repairs, and facility rentals in which to rehearse and sleep (usually high
school gyms and football fields, vacant for the summer). The high costs of
maintaining a competitive drum corps led to higher ticket prices at shows, higher
membership "dues" within corps, and the increasing need for corporate
sponsorship. Drum corps that did not find the money joined a growing list of
former corps that live on only in alumni organizations.
The Subcultural Ideology of Drum Corps
Despite massive changes in the activity since the advent of DCI in 1972, the
driving ideology and philosophy of drum corps has not changed substantially
since the days of its VFW sponsorship. Santa Clara Vanguard, a five-time DCI
world championship winner and perennial crowd favorite, began its 1998
recruitment video with clips of their most recent season playing behind the words:
"competition, pride, leadership, performance, integrity, friendship, excellence:
Santa Clara Vanguard." Ed Barguiarena, a former tenor drummer with the
Vanguard in the 1980s, reflected on his experience with that corps:
"I think they try to pass on a high value for work ethic, and working as a team. . . .
The things that I learned were really about dedication and discipline, and I think
in a way, really about dreaming, you know, like trying to put up a goal that seems
really hard to attain, and even if you don't attain it, at least working really hard to
get to it" (Barguiarena 1998).
In a similar vein, the Cavaliers, two-time DCI world champions and one of only
two all-male corps remaining, include the following statement on a "history"
subpage of their current website:
"[Cavalier] members are trained to be punctual and systematic in the performance
of all of their drum corps duties. The traits of moral courage, pride, loyalty, and
character are established in every member. Working with whatever talent is
available, the Cavaliers make impossible dreams come true in an atmosphere of
courage and optimism. Recognizing its role within the community, the Cavaliers
teach the virtues of fair play, develop a spirit of cooperation and train young men
to become polite and courteous young gentlemen. They keep their standards
high, foundation strong and ideals treasured"
(http://www.cavaliers.org/years/history.html).
Though these examples are specific to particular corps, each reflects a general
consensus among corps members and fans that the activity instills "values" in its
members, particularly in symbolic categories that lack specific referents such as
"respect," "honor," and "integrity." Though likely related to drum corps' military
history, the maintenance of this ideology long after other vestiges of martial
symbolism have dissipated suggests drum corps' continuing association with a
socially conservative middle class.
Despite this populist ideology, drum corps has always been a marginal
phenomenon on the American cultural scene. For those within the subculture
however, the drum corps season and attendant lifestyle is all-consuming;
adherents structure their very lives and finances around the ability to attend or
perform in the summer shows. I do not use the term subculture here accidentally;
drum corps members' commitment to the activity, both during and after their
marching years, demonstrates a long-term engagement with a very particular
community outside of the contemporary mainstream. Although largely (but not
exclusively) free of explicit ethnic or racial markers, drum corps exhibits other
traits common to subcultures as a category of social or cultural analysis. Sarah
Thornton, writing in the introduction to The Subcultures Reader, argues that
"subcultures" are usually identified as entities "apart from their families and in
states of relative transience" and "innately oppositional," thus frequently
associated with youth (Thornton 1997: 2). Musically, the drum corps
phenomenon represents something quite different from the dance clubs that are
the site for Thornton's work, but the characteristics she lists as definitive of
subculture, particularly themes of separation, transience, and opposition, link
these divergent activities.
Thornton might also have related these features to liminality, a term famously
used by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner to describe the transformative
stage of ritual (Gennep 1960; Turner 1995, 1982). The liminal stage of late
adolescence, during which membership in a corps is possible, is inherently
transient and likely accounts for the strong and lasting impression that corps
makes on the lives of many of its members. Furthermore, at a time when their
peer group is at home for the summer, corps' members leave family and friends to
participate in what is construed as, at best, a marginal activity. Separation, loss of
identity, discipline by elders, social ambiguity, and even trance-states, articulated
by Turner as parts of the liminal experience, are all well-represented within the
drum corps activity (Turner 1995: 95-6). Rather than mapping these traits as
"proof" of drum corps' validity as a ritual along existing discursive lines, I will
spend the remainder of the paper exploring how drum corps expresses itself, at
times self-consciously, through ritualized activity. My intent here is less to
follow standard ritual study practice by making the case for drum corps rituals as
"windows" into their particular culture, but rather to look at drum corps rituals as
a self-justifying compositions that create, rather than reflect, the culture of which
they are a part.
The Drum Corps Season as Ritual
Drum corps' ritual aspects unfold within specific events and performances that
form the basis of a larger calendrical drum corps "season." Richard Schechner
has identified a seven-part sequence for the performance of theater, a similar
performance ritual, including training, workshops, rehearsal, warm-ups,
performance, cool down, and aftermath (Schechner 1985: 16). This model is
useful for breaking down a similar process the lengthy rite of a drum corps
season into distinct regions of activity. The drum corps year actually begins prior
to Schechner's categories with the audition, a stage curiously absent from much of
the literature on performance. Nearly all drum corps in the United States and
Canada hold the first round of their auditions during the Thanksgiving holiday
weekend; most continue the selection process at another weekend or "camp" in
December, slowly "cutting" prospects in an atmosphere of intense competition.
Once the membership is set, the period of training and workshops begins at
regular camps held one weekend a month. I have not titled these camps
"rehearsals," as most corps treat them as a time to lay the musical and social
groundwork necessary for a successful summer season, not to work on a specific
show or piece of music. There are a few corps, however, which utilize camps
as "rehearsals" to get a jump-start on the summer season by learning the show
early. For members from outside a particular corps' local area, monthly plane
tickets to these required camps may constitute the major cost of participating in
the activity. Two corps from the Bay area in California, Santa Clara Vanguard
and the Concord Blue Devils, require their members to move in as soon as they
are selected in late autumn. In these corps, the group plays together every week
throughout the off season, with the drumline often playing every other night
(Barguiarena 1998). Though this strategy works for winning championships these
two corps together have won more than half of the DCI world championships it
restricts participation to only those individuals willing and able to sacrifice all
else (school, stable job, family, etc.) for a minimum of nine months.
By Memorial Day weekend, all corps require their members to move into the
local area if they haven't done so already, and several weeks of daily rehearsals
commence. The majority of Schechner's schematic for ritual performance,
including rehearsal, warm-up, performance, and cool down (but excluding
aftermath), occurs in a daily cycle from this point on. In mid-June, the
competition season starts and corps go on the road, rehearsing during the day,
performing in the evening, driving at night to the next show, and sleeping for a
few hours on gymnasium floors. The repetition of this daily cycle, the constant
similarity of surroundings (gym floors, stadiums) despite daily change in location,
and the intense focus on a single activity all contribute to a feeling of
timelessness for many corps members; days of the week are forgotten and news
of the outside world is rare. The language of ritual is particularly appropriate for
describing the experience of tour for a drum corps member. This liminal space,
or "idyllic time" as Ed Barguiarena described it to me, is the conscious creation of
numerous "elders." These elders include the director, paid members of the
instructional staff, the design team, and scores of volunteers, all of whom
systematically remove possible distractions by taking care of basic life
necessities and structuring member's lives in a manner that does not allow for
other activities.(2) The isolation of corps members during tour, and the limitation
of their social group to peers for such an extended period, realizes Gennep's
second stage of "separation" in a way that few other activities do in the social and
cultural life of the contemporary United States (Gennep 1960).
The first tour, three to four weeks long, is usually contained within the corps'
home region (Drum Corps East, Drum Corps Midwest, and Drum Corps West)
and culminates in a regional championship. After a short break, the second tour
begins and continues for four to five weeks straight through the world
championships. Every weekend in late July and early August has a "regional"
show, akin to a playoff in various sports activities, though these do not eliminate
corps or accrue points in the same way that a playoff does. The final week of the
season follows a well-established order, centered on that year's world
championship site. On Monday and Tuesday, lower division corps compete for
their own championship, while the "open class" corps arrive in town and set up
rehearsal sites at every available stadium or field in the surrounding area. On
Wednesday, an "Individual and Ensemble Events" competition takes place, with
members from all corps competing individually and in small groups on their
respective instruments. On Thursday , quarterfinals, or "prelims," all open class
corps and the top five corps from Division Two and Division Three compete in
the first of three nights of "elimination" competitions. The top twenty-five corps
become "member corps" of Drum Corps International for the following year, and
seventeen advance to the Friday night semifinals. Twelve corps advance to the
season finale on Saturday night, in which a new world champion is crowned and
the tension of the entire season is resolved in one climactic event. Before a
crowd of 40,000 people and a TV audience of millions, corps members find
validation for their months of dedication and deprivation in the affirming
spectacle of finals.
The drum corps activity does not have a formalized period of "re-integration" into
society, Gennep's third stage and what Schechner calls "aftermath" (1985: 16),
though every corps member passes through this phase individually. Unlike rituals
which take place in bounded communities, such as an initiation rite among the
Ndembu as studied by Turner (1995), drum corps members return from their
liminal period to a community often completely ignorant of the experience they
have undergone. In recent years, corps members have extended the "special
status" and community they felt as part of drum corps into the off-season by
participating in drum corps chatrooms on the Internet. The "culture shock" of
going home is a major topic of conversation in these chatrooms in the weeks
following finals, and even at the celebratory banquets held by each corps over the
Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. By that point, however, auditions are
underway for the following year and a season is once again underway.
The Drum Corps Show as Ritual
Theorists of performance and ritual from a variety of disciplines have established
a core body of thought on ritual, identifying its key characteristics, normative
sequences, and symbols as reflections of social practice and ideology. Madeline
Duntley has recently criticized this Geertzian model, that of ritual as a "window"
to culture, arguing that it elides the "variety of meanings" produced by a ritual's
complex specificity by "discount[ing] the precise details and dynamics of a
ritual's order, technique, mood, aesthetic, and style" (Duntley 1993: 3). Drawing
on Richard Schechner's work in theater, Duntley advocates for a conceptual
model that regards rituals as "compositions" whose meanings (in the plural) are
the co-production of participants and observers alike. Duntley's observations are
helpful when looking at the rituals of a voluntary subculture like drum corps.
Given the fragmentary, multi-vocal, and transient nature of the drum corps
community, viewing a show or other drum corps ritual as a "window" on the
activity's "culture" is problematic. However, conceptualizing the drum corps
show as a "composition" acknowledges the ritual's self-conscious creation, and
opens multiple possibilities for locating its meaning among performers, directors,
fans, and judges. I will explore several aspects of the drum corps show musical
sound, performance style, sequence, and even trance as elements that configure
meaning in this "compositional" sense.
The breadth of musical repertoire performed by contemporary drum corps,
stretching from popular rock songs to Bartok, underscores the difficulty of
forming any strict association between music and meaning for the activity as a
whole. Nevertheless, the critical success and entertainment value of every show,
regardless of repertoire, depends to a large degree on a number of musical factors
that reference the tradition and identity of drum and bugle corps. The iconic
"sound" of corps is first and foremost the product of instrumentation. Gordon
Henderson, a long-time brass arranger and creative consultant for the Santa Clara
Vanguard and numerous other corps, notes that the usual sixty-five piece choir of
bugles, pitched in the key of G and spread out over several different bore sizes
and octaves from soprano (akin to a trumpet) to contra (akin to a tuba), is capable
of producing a wall of uniform sound unlike anything achieved by a marching
band or other ensemble (Henderson 1998). Though there is a perennial debate
on admitting woodwinds and utilizing amplification for some of the "quiet"
instruments, these suggestions fall on ears usually quite deaf to any mention of
innovations that may threaten the brassy sonic identity of corps.
Sharon Scholl, in an article examining string quartet performance as ritual, argues
that "scale" of the sound, in her case relatively quiet and refined, is "important to
[the audience's] ritual re-affirmation." Following this logic, the sonic identity of
corps and source of its audience's "ritual re-affirmation" has traditionally been
one of volume and high impact. A common joke in the drum corps community is
that corps only have three dynamic levels: loud, louder, and RFL ("really
[obscenely] loud"). These volume levels are justified and often dictated by the
performance space, an outdoor stage that is a hundred yards wide, playing to an
audience that may be spread out in an area twice that size and ten stories high. In
that environment, mezzoforte and forte may just be the difference between
audible and inaudible.
These volume levels are an important part of a show "formula" that dictates
periodic "impact points" throughout the eleven minute performance. Ed
Barguiarena argues that
"There is an unspoken program for all drum corps shows that people know exists
. . . We have to have an impact point approximately every minute, and the only
way that we will know that it is there is if it is really loud" (Barguiarena 1998).
Gordon Henderson elaborates on the importance of this formula to stimulate
audience reaction, and shortens the period of time between impact points:
"People don't know the music, but it is being presented in such a way that they
will get it; there's an impact point every 35-40 seconds . . . and it all comes
together in a certain way. Peterloo [the Cavaliers 1992 closer], how many people
had ever heard of that piece in the audience? Probably not very many. But it was
presented in such a way that everybody knew exactly what you were doing. They
knew when to clap, and they were excited by certain things."
This formulaic character, along with the volume issue, is frequently cited by
critics of the drum corps activity as being inherently "anti-musical." Such
criticisms pre-suppose a definition of "musicality" based on subtlety and
refinement, similar to that advocated by Scholl's string quartet audience; those
features are definitely lacking in drum corps' performance. However, by
defining "musicality" in different terms, such as ensemble cohesion and
virtuosity, drum corps emerges as an equally valid, "musical" activity.
These different conceptualizations of "musicality" in the drum corps activity are
related to the separate issue of social and musical "style" that is part of any
performance ritual. The drumline, more than any other section of a corps,
embodies a performance style particular to drum corps, marked by technical
virtuosity, ensemble cohesion, and the necessity of intra-group trust. Drumlines
bridge the gap between musical and visual performance, as the act of playing is
visually transparent in ways that horn performance cannot be, just as it is auditory
in ways that the color guard is not. Unison performance in the snare and tenor
drum lines demands absolute precision and is further complicated by the high
skill level demanded in rudimental drumming; pitched bass drum lines similarly
demand the presence and flawless execution of all members to complete the
melodic line. Solos do not exist in the drumline; every component of
music-making is done as a group.
Due to fewer spots and higher demand, competition to get into a corps is often
stiffest for the drumline, and rehearsal for those that make it is thus that much
more intense and frequent. As a result, the ideal of group bonding and identity,
sought by the corps as a whole, is frequently obtained much earlier and in
stronger form within the drumline. This comunitas, to use Victor Turner's term,
emerges as an egalitarian bond based on trust in one another's performance and
listening skills. Developed over a long period of time, the group bond itself
eventually becomes a part of the performance. Projecting the presence of that
bond between drumline members, or the entire corps, is part of the competitive
ethos at a show. Semi-contrived actions, such as not speaking during public
rehearsals or marching in file to the show site without letting passers-by
to "break ranks," build on the mystique and perceived "inner life" of a corps.
Even long-term corps members can be intimidated by other corps' displays of
social solidarity. Ed Barguiarena related one experience he had during a show in
the 1987 season:
"The first time we saw [the Garfield Cadets] was at DCI East in Allentown. . . .
We beat them, at that point in time, and there is that tradition where you play to
the winning corps. They were second, so they played to us, and I was just . . .
totally awestruck by the vibe that they had, and the look that they had. . . . Right
at that very moment I said, "These guys are going to kick our butt! They are not
doing it now but they are going to." There was just something about them; not
only about their program, but something about them. Something personal about
what they created as a group of people. I have a friend who marched in that corps
and he totally says that is exactly what it was. He says, "We didn't know
anything, we couldn't play, we couldn't do this, but there was somehow, there was
something about our connection to each other and our dedication to this thing that
we just made it happen" (Barguiarena 1998).
Musical repertoire and even technical proficiency are secondary categories in this
example, sublimated in Ed's critical evaluation to the "vibe" that this corps had,
"what they created as a group of people" and their "connection to one another."
I have intentionally avoided analyzing ritual activities within particular corps,
such as initiations or idiosyncratic pre-show activities, in an effort to limit the
scope of this paper. However, as the projection of communitas I have just
covered indicates, these intra-corps rituals are important to the production of
meaning in the public ritual of a show. These references to private ritual form
a distinct element within the public event that confer "tradition" and "authenticity
of experience," components that corps members and fans alike regard as essential
to the atmosphere of a good show. Many fans will leave the stadium and miss
several performances in order to see their favorite corps warm up, and the hype of
a particular corps shouting something outside the stadium before their
performance always elicits a roar of approval from the crowd.
The fetishization of the "group bond" by members and audiences is in tandem
with that of "focus" or "concentration," common elements for participation in
many rituals. The ritual sequence leading up to a show or performance, including
final rehearsal, preparation of materials, arrival at the stadium, warm-up, and
elements of the show itself, are all carefully coordinated to intentionally heighten
members' focus and concentration. Following the final "run-through" in
rehearsal, corps members are given two hours to eat, shower, tune and shine
instruments, tape drumsticks, shine shoes, and board the busses. Even the bus
ride to the show may contain ritual elements: singing of particular songs, listening
to particular music, and in the Santa Clara Vanguard, pulling the curtains in the
bus to project the corps "mystique" as the caravan pulls into the stadium parking
lot (Barguiarena 1998). Long repetitive warm-ups, including drumline exercises
like "eight on a hand" (literally, eight strokes per hand at a steady tempo), may go
on for an hour or more before the show in order to set the mindframe of corps
members. Final preparations, such a putting on the uniform jacket, lining up in
silence outside of the stadium, and singing a "corps' song" are all highly symbolic
activities that, as Ed describes it, "just take steps towards that energy level. This
is focused, this is energy, this is concentration" (Barguiarena 1998).
This focus and concentration, developed over months of learning the show and
several hours of preparation and warm-up before each performance, is injected
with a shot of adrenaline when the corps enters the field. The result is often an
altered mental state among corps members during the performance. Video
close-ups on corps' members during a performance often reveal the dilated,
glazed eyes common in trance, and that is actually the terminology corps
members use to discuss it:
"I think you are almost like in a trance state. That is how I would describe it.
You are so focused . . . because of the marching element, you know, you have to
be aware of so many different planes, and all of these things are happening at one
time, and you are trying to really think and listen and be accurate, and all of that
stuff. When I think about it, even as a memory, it feels like you are floating a
little bit. You are not really totally grounded, you are floating with that energy a
little bit (Barguiarena 1998)."
This commentary, seconded by several other former marching members of
various drum corps I have communicated with, illustrates the tension between
complete awareness and total abandon that accompanies performers' mental state
during a drum corps show. Perhaps unlike true "trance" or "possession," corps
members must remain aware of what they are doing and what is going on around
them in order to perform. Though conditioned by literally hundreds of hours of
rehearsal on the same eleven minute show, performers do not attempt to play "on
automatic pilot," but rather in an energized mode of complete concentration, akin
to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called flow:
". . . the merging of action and awareness. A person in flow has no dualistic
perspective: he is aware of his actions but not the awareness itself. . . . The steps
for experiencing flow . . . involve the . . . process of delimiting reality,
controlling some aspect of it, and responding to the feedback with a concentration
that excludes anything else as irrelevant" (quoted in Schechner 1993: 264).
Some corps members cannot recall an awareness of being in the performance,
and experience a feeling of "waking up" upon leaving the field. It is also not
uncommon for a few corps members to collapse after particularly intense shows,
whether from the heat or from the intensity of the performance.
As with any musical or theatrical performance, the success of the show is
determined by both the audience and the performers, based on subjective
categories that include the show's design and repertoire, but also its emotional
content. In ritual terms, the musical sound, social/musical style, performance
sequence, and altered mental states of a drum corps performance are either
symbols or categories of ritual action that play into the evaluation of a
performance. When the right combination of these symbols and actions occurs,
"A presence' is manifest, something has happened.' The performers have
touched or moved the audience, and some kind of collaboration, collective
special theatrical life is born" (Schechner 1985: 10).
Directors, members, and fans comment on the "goose bumps" that a good show
creates, whether from a beautiful musical moment, a complex drill formation, a
revival of music or motion that speaks to an individual corps' beloved tradition, or
simply a well-executed and emotional show.
Conclusion: The Future of Drum Corps
In "Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example," Clifford Geertz argued
against the tendency of functionalism to treat symbolic systems as fixed and static
entities within immutable cultures, using the example of a "ritual which failed to
function properly" to illustrate his point (Geertz 1973: 146). Drum corps'
symbols, and the ritual show in which they are enacted, are equally fluid and
changing, as I hoped to show in the first section of this paper. Nevertheless, the
reification of tradition and nostalgia within the activity frequently leads to
conflicts over drum corps' future. A relatively recent show, performed by Star of
Indiana in the 1993 season, is a useful illustration of this tension. As in Geertz's
Javanese case, Star's show was a "ritual that failed to function properly" and
consequently exposed the raw nerve endings of change occurring in the drum
corps world.
Star of Indiana was formed in 1984 by Bill Cook, a millionaire and drum corps
fan from Bloomington. Capitalizing on the demise of the popular Bayonne
Bridgemen Drum and Bugle Corps from Bayonne, New Jersey, due to
bankruptcy, Cook hired almost the entire Bridgemen staff and fielded his first
corps the following summer. Star of Indiana was the first corps ever to break into
the top twelve in its first year of existence, and it improved its rank every
successive year until winning the world championship in 1991. Resentful of the
new corps' money and instant success, especially as several old corps disappeared
from the scene after long financial struggles, many long-term corps fans decried
Star's "lack of tradition" as a fundamental flaw in the organization, no matter
what kind of show they put on the field. After their championship season in
1991, Star made an overture to the activity's core audience and returned in 1992
with a highly patriotic, simplistic show. Rebuffed again by fans who had
developed a deep-seated dislike of the corps, Star chose to push the very limits of
the activity with their show in 1993. Playing incredibly difficult and inaccessible
music, including Samuel Barber's "Medea" and Bartok's "Music for Celeste,
Winds, and Percussion," the corps hired several movement specialists to
choreograph the show, avoiding traditional drill for the most part and dropping
the "frequent impact" formula altogether with long periods of silence or barely
audible dissonance. Audiences hated the show; after winning the last major
regional before finals, they were booed off their own home field. Despite nearly
flawless execution, Star lost the world championship by a few-tenths of a point in
a decision that was widely construed as political. The corps dropped out of the
competitive circuit that fall to pursue what they called "brass theater" in
collaboration with the Canadian Brass, and has never returned to DCI.
Five years later, Star's 1993 show still divides the drum corps activity. For some
musicians, the show is seen as a brilliant and seminal moment in drum corps
history. Gordon Henderson calls it "the most artistic thing ever put on the field."
Ed Barguiarena declares that it was "the most incredible drum corps show ever."
For most fans, however, the show abandoned many of the cherished ritual
"symbols" that give the activity its meaning: accessible or known repertoire; a
loud and brassy musical aesthetic; and drill formations with a major visual
impact. By pursuing creative vision rather than ritual re-affirmation, Star
attempted to change the very basis of the activity, to move it from the
liminal--repetitive, collective representations with common symbolic
meanings--to the liminoid--idiosyncratic, experimental, even revolutionary
artistic activity (Turner 1982: 53-55).
Drum corps continues to straddle the fence that Star of Indiana put up in 1993.
After praising Star's show, Ed Barguiarena later mused that no other corps "had
enough vision to follow them," nor has DCI encouraged such innovation; a point
reinforced by the Blue Devil's conventional big band jazz shows winning the
world championship in three of the intervening five years. Gordon Henderson
argues that the top corps are making small overtures to the creative direction
Star pointed in, but the critical reaction to that show for the most part launched an
entrenched mood of conservatism for the activity (Henderson 1998). Faced with
dwindling box office receipts, a failed attempt to lure Disney into the drum corps
business, and fewer corps than ever, DCI is evidently adopting the strategy
orchestras have championed in recent years: to replay the greatest hits in the
hopes of filling seats.
Drum and bugle corps occupies a unique niche in the realm of American musical
subcultures. Filled with ritual and symbolic activity, it has impacted the lives of
hundreds of thousands of young people over its nearly eighty-year history, yet it
remains virtually unknown to the American mainstream. The ritual play between
martial tradition and artistic creation has informed much of the activity's history,
and continues to define its internal struggles today. Thirty years ago, drum corps
revolutionized itself by shaking off its military roots, creating new rituals for the
production of an entertainment spectacle. Today, a similar revolution is waiting
to be realized, one that abandons formulaic devotion to entertainment in favor of
artistic, even avant-garde development. Whether such a movement can maintain
drum corps' audience may well depend on its ability to ritualize, and thus give
meaning to, these changes.
__________________________________________________________________
1. Information on the history of drum and bugle corps in this section is drawn
from years of being a part of the activity, learning it through the oral tradition of
the individual corps that I was a part of and in conversations with members of
many others. No book, to my knowledge, has ever been published on the history
of the activity, though numerous articles and interviews with historical figures
have been published in magazines and newspapers such as Percussive Notes,
Drum Corps World, and DCI Today.
2. Volunteers are incredibly important for the existence of the drum corps
activity and for many of its ritual elements; volunteers drive the busses, cook the
food, prepare the field for rehearsal, and a million other tasks that are only
partially recognized by the award given at finals for "Volunteers of the Year."
Most volunteers are primarily relatives of marching members or former members
themselves.
References Cited
Barguiarena, Ed. 1998. Interview with the author, November 22.
Boo, Michael. 1997. "A Glorious Week: 25 Years in the Making." DCI Today,
September 25.
Campbell, James. 1992. Interview as part of the DCI Broadcast, 1992 Summer
Music Games.
Duntley, Madeline. 1993. "Observing Meaning: Ritual Criticism, Interpretation,
and Anthropological Fieldwork." In Celebrations of Identity: Multiple Voices in
American Ritual Performance, Pamela Frese, ed., p. 1-14. Westport, CT: Bergin
and Garvey.
Frese, Pamela, ed. 1993. Celebrations of Identity: Multiple Voices in American
Ritual Performance. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example." From
The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 142-169. New York: Basic Books.
Gennep, Arnold van. 1960 (1908). The Rites of Passage. Monica Vizedom and
Gabrielle Caffee, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Henderson, Gordon. 1998. Interview with the author. November 24.
King, Sean. 1996. The 1996 Summer Music Games: Drum Corps International
Year in Review. Allentown, PA: Ad Image Publishing.
Moore, Sally, and Barbara Meyerhoff. 1977. Secular Ritual. Amsterdam: Van
Gorcum.
Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Scholl, Sharon. 1992. "String Quartet as Performance Ritual." The American
Journal of Semiotics 9 (1): 115-128.
Small, Christopher. 1987. "Performance as Ritual." In Lost in Music: Culture,
Style, and the Musical Event, p. 14-27. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Turino, Thomas. 1993. Moving Away From Silence: Music of the Peruvian
Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Turner, Victor. 1995 (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.
Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play.
New York: PAJ Publications.
Warren, Don. 1995. "D.C.I. Reconsidered." Green Machine: Newsletter of the
Cavalier Alumni and Booster Organization 7(5): 5.
Winthrop, Robert. 1992. "Rite of Passage" and "Ritual." In Dictionary of
Concepts in Cultural Anthropology, p. 242-250. New York: Greenwood Press.