The roots of Blast are entwined in the symbolism and sounds of ancient ceremony, pageantry, and communication. A fanfare of horns heralded the arrival of royalty and other important dignitaries, a beating drum marked their procession. Flags and banners symbolizing nations and heraldic ranks were ritually guarded in public ceremonies. Guarding “the colors” took on strategic significant as flags were carried into battle to mark territory and signal troop movements. The flag as national symbol and the flag as a signaling device were both crucial to victory. Musicians joined flagbearers as drum, pipes, and later, horns marked time for marching armies and signaled troop movements on the battlefield. The Swiss were the first Europeans to use music-drums-as a military signaling device. At the Battle of Sempach in 1362, Swiss drummers stood with their regimental flags and beat out calls to the troops in the field and marked time for marching. By the sixteenth century, armies all over Europe had adopted the Swiss style using both flags and field music units in camp and in battle to signal instructions for movement and communicate messages. Soldiers awoke to the drummer’s reveille and, at day’s end, returned to quarters to the beat of the tattoo. Cavalries charged into battle upon hearing the bugler’s call. By the seventeenth century in Europe, in addition to flag-and banner-bearing color guards and field musical units of fife and drum, “Bands of Musick” comprised of six to eight musicians performing on oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons were organized and attached to royal courts and to various military units to perform for special occasions.
In Europe, each country had its national drum march which was held to be as significant an insignia as the heraldic symbols emblazoned on standards and banners. By the late fifteen and early sixteenth centuries, the Holy Roman Empire, the numerous German principalities, France, and England, following the Swiss model, each had a national march and military musical units organized to accompany troops. English military music was particularly admired for its tunefulness and briskness. To ensure their preservation, Charles I issued a warrant in 1632 commanding drummers to execute English marches ‘exactly and precisely . . . without any addition or alteration whatsoever. To the end that so ancient, famous, and commendable a custome may be preserved as a pattern and precedent to all posteritie.” In France, Lully and Philidor wrote marches-still performed today-for the troops of Louis XIV. German military marches, considered an indication of superior military efficiency, dominated the Continent by the eighteenth century. During the Napoleonic wars, composers such as Haydn, Hook, and Cherubini were writing both slow and quick marches for opposing armies. The march also entered the concert halls and opera houses through works by Handel, Mozart, Wagner, and Verdi, among other classical composers.
What is a March?
Schirmer’s Pocket Manual of Musical Terms defines this spirit stirring music as “a musical composition with strongly marked rhythm, suitable for timing the steps of a body of persons proceeding at a walking pace.” The march form is in/4 (duple, or two beats per measure), 6/8 (compound duple, a meter with triple pulse within each of its beats), or 4/4 (quadruple, or four beats to the measure) time with reprises of four, eight, or sixteen measures followed by a trio or alternative section and ending with a repetition of the “march.”
British military music-“Bands of Musick” and, for signaling, fields music units-were incorporated into the organization of militias and the methods of drilling troops in colonial and revolutionary America. As early as 1633, records from the colony of Virginia show that drummers were recruited to accompany marching practice during militia drills; and , in 1637 the colony appropriated funds to purchase drums and pay a fee to drummers for their services. In addition to militia duties, drummers also served their communities eating the drum to call worshippers to church services and to signal the departure of sailing vessels. The first recorded appearance of an American military band was in 1756 when, under the direction of the regimental commander Colonel Benjamin Franklin, the Pennsylvania militia’s Regiment of Artillery company marched over one thousand men accompanied by “hautbois (oboe) and fifes in ranks.” Boston, New York, and Philadelphia all had concert halls where both British army bands and American colonial militia bands performed. As support for independence grew, American militia units held rallies and drilled while their bands played patriotic tunes.
During the American Revolution, music was never far from the battlefield. On 19 April 1775, the drummer William Diamond beat the “To Arms” for Captain John Parker’s Lexington militia and later beat the march of the Lexington militia to Bunker Hill. On 14 June 1775, the Continental Congress issued a resolution establishing a Continental Army: “Resolved that six companies of expert riflemen be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each Company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates.” Experienced officers used music to intimidate the enemy and inspire their own troops toward victory. In 1777, an important turning point in the war came with the American victory over General Burgoyne at the Battle of Bennington. Troops under the command of Colonel John Stark defeated the British, their spirits stirred by the playing of their regiment’s fifes and drums on the front line of battle.
George Washington, himself an accomplished musician, understood the importance of music to the army. In the field, fife and drum were used to signal infantry and, in 1777, unkeyed trumpets were added to control mounted maneuvers of cavalry regiments. Since marching drill depended heavily on music, poor music from untrained musicians made drill nearly impossible. He ordered all musicians to attend regular training sessions with the regimental drum and fife majored. At Valley Forge, Washington appointed Baron Frederick von Steuben Inspector General for the Continental Army. Von Steuben wrote a manual of instruction setting forth a system of drill: Regulations for the Order and Disciple of the Troops of the United States. One fife and one drum were assigned to each company and stood at the right flank of the first platoon. Chapter 21 of von Steubans manual, “Of the Different Beats of the Drum,” standardized drum calls and separated their functions into two categories: beats and signals. Calls directed to entire encampment or sounded at specific times were beats. Calls directed to only a portion of the encampment were signals. Drum calls regulated the soldier’s day. Each soldier had to learn the calls, since verbal commands were not allowed by von Steuben’s regulations.
With the war won, the army was all but disbanded. Militia units and their musicians returned to their towns and villages. Local militia bands supported by their communities gave concerts and continued to drill with their militia units. Of the small remaining regular army, one artillery battery assigned to guard government property was stationed at West Point, New York, under commend of Alexander Hamilton. By 1802, Congress, recognizing the need for formal officer training, established the United States Military Academy at West Point. Between 1802 and 1815, the academy had drummers, occasional fifers, and after 1812 buglers (replacing the fife for sounding signals on the battlefield). Efforts to improve and standardize military musical training continued in 1812, when John Stewart Ashworth, published A New Useful and Complete System of Drum-Beating, the first manual that used term “rudiments” to classify drum patterns. Between 1813 and 1815 efforts were made to establish a permanent army band in addition to field musical units. Musicians were trained to play flutes, oboes, bassoons, clarinets, French horns, bass drum, and tambourines. In 1817, the Military Academy hired Richard Willis as teacher of music for the academy’s band. Willis, a civilian, was a composer, arranger, and virtuoso performer on the keyed bugle who introduced the newly invented instrument to the army.
Before the invention of the keyed bugle, bands played natural (unkeyed) horns, woodwinds, and percussion. With the keyed bugle, brasses could play chromatic melodies as well as harmonic parts. Sometimes called the Kent horn, the keyed bugle was invented in Dublin by Joseph Halliday who dedicated its creation to his military commander, the Duke of Kent. Introduced to the public in 1815 at British celebrations following the Battle of Waterloo, the keyed bugle was quickly adopted for use in military bands. The widespread acceptance of the keyed bugle lead to radical alterations of traditional band instrumentation as American bands replaced their woodwinds with a family of keyed bugles: High Eb bugles played melodies, Bb, Eb, or F bugles played harmony, and ophecleides (bass bugle) played the bass line.
Even with keys, the bugle was a difficult instrument to master. In Prussia and France newly invented valves were added to brasses and a large ensemble of chromatic brass instruments were built. Easier to play than the keyed bugles, valved brass instruments were being used by almost all American bands by the 1830s, including: trumpets, cornets, trombone, French horn, and tuba. Leading civilian bandsmen of the time had bands that served military units such as: Harvey Dodworth of the Thirteenth Regiment Band, C. S. Grafulla of the Seventh New York Infantry Regiment, and Patrick Gilmore of the Twenty-forth Massachusetts Infantry. The Dodworth family of musicians- Harvey, Thomas, Allen, Charles-were particularly strong advocates for using brass rather than woodwinds to play the lead lines and are credited as the primary influence for most bands using brass instruments.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, many regiments also recruited bands. Band recruitment was so successful that by the end of 1861, the Union Army had 618 bands and more than 28,000 musicians. Congress mandated that each regular army infantry regiment have two principle musicians per company and twenty-four musicians for a band. Cavalry and artillery regiments were also authorized two musicians per company. Artillery regiments were permitted twenty-four member bands; cavalry regiments were permitted sixteen member bands. Although there were no specific rules governing instrumentation, most bands used brass since it could withstand the rigors of the outdoors. In addition to the Federal and militia bands, drummers and buglers were recruited as field musicians to sound camp calls and battlefield signals. Field musicians were not a part of the band and few could read music; they learned the calls sounded at specific times and on the battlefield by rote.
During the Civil War, the duties of the bands included performing concerts, parades, reviews, and guard mount ceremonies for encamped troops, as well as, playing for troops marching into battle and even performing concerts in forward positions during the fighting.
To frighten the enemy and rally the troops to victory, martial and patriotic music was performed. Between battles however, Union and Confederate bands, showing little animosity toward one another, would often join together giving concerts for the troops on both sides. To also boost morale and ease suffering, bands were stationed at military hospitals to play for the wounded soldiers. The bands were well thought of by the troops. A soldier of the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment wrote in 1862: “I don’t know what we should have done without our band. It is acknowledged by everyone to be the best in the division. Every night about sundown [Patrick] Gilmore gives us a splendid concert, playing selections from the opera and some very pretty marches, quicksteps, waltzes and the like.”
General Sheridan: Music Has Done Its Share
No commander in the Civil War surpassed the Union’s General Philip H. Sheridan’s love of music or personal interest in his band. Sheridan’s band was well-equipped with instruments, special gray uniforms and mounts. In exchange for this attention, Sheridan’s musicians often found themselves on the firing line during a battle with orders from their general to “play the gayest tunes in their books. . . Play them loud and keep on playing them, and never mind if a bullet goes through the trombone or even a trombonist, now and then.” Sheridan understood the affect of music on troops: “Music has done its share, and more than its share in winning this war.”
With the end of the Civil War and the expansion toward the West, once again music moved the military. Post life on the frontier was often lonely and the regiment’s band provided one of the chances to experience culture. The band performed for dances, led parades, gave concerts, and escorted funerals. In garrison, daily life was regulated by trumpet or bugle calls throughout the day. As one lieutenant’s wife wrote: “We lived, ate, slept by the bugle calls.” In the field, the trumpeter of bugler had entirely replaced the fife for signaling march and battle calls.
Many of the same commanders who had served during the Civil War were now stationed in the West. General Sheridan, for instance, commanded the Division of the Missouri between 1869 and 1883. Among the officers under his command was Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer who, like Sheridan, loved music and knew the affect it could have on soldiers. Under Custer, just as under Sheridan in the Civil War, bands found themselves once again on the front lines. Custer insisted that his Seventh Cavalry be accompanied by a mounted band. A mounted band was with Custer through many campaigns playing tunes such as Garry Owen at his charge at the Washita River in 1868 and again in 1873 on the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Bighorn. Custer’s musicians all rode gray mounts, gray being the traditional color for army musicians. Each band member had to be not only a superb musician but also a superb horseman. The musicians, keeping their hands free to play, controlled their horses using only their knees, a task difficult enough while standing still or at a walking pace. Custer’s mounted bandsmen had to perform in this extraordinary manner while leading charges into battle.
Not all military musicians traveled West to serve with the army. Although many of the leading pre- and Civil War era bandsmen such as Patrick Gilmore, the Dodworth family, and Thomas Coates continued to direct various regimental bands, they also formed bands to perform for civilian audiences. Bands, even those with regimental affiliations, were now more likely to play seated in concert than march alongside troops. The repertoire expanded with transcriptions of symphonic and operatic music dominating band programs where one only quicksteps and marches were played.
By the end of the century, no figure exercised more influence over American music or exceeded the fame of John Philip Sousa. Born in 1854 in Washington D. C., the son of a Portuguese immigrant who played trombone in the United States Marine Band, Sousa received little formal education spending most of his childhood studying music. In 1880, at age twenty-six, he was appointed conductor of the Marine Band. Sousa quickly transformed the band into America’s premier military band-The President’s Own-and himself into “The March King” composing the first of his 136 marches, including: Semper Fidelis (1888) and The Washington Post (1889). Sousa’s most famous march, The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896), is often referred to as America’s national march. After leaving the Marine Band in 1862, Sousa formed his own civilian band, the Sousa Band.
A master showman and an unabashed patriot, Sousa reorganized and celebrated the entertainment value of military pomp and circumstance. A tireless self-promoter with a keen understanding of popular tastes, he was able to reinterpret American military musical tradition and elevated the march to popular entertainment. Sousa dominated American popular music through the first decades of the twentieth century and must be credited with infusing a quality of glamour into military and patriotic music whether performed in concert or on the parade field. As the author of several books on instrument performance and technique such as A Book of Instruction for the Field-Trumpet and Drum, Sousa must also be credited with reinforcing and promoting high standards of musicianship for both military and civilian bands.
In the late nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth century, inspired by Sousa’s band, every little town has a band that gave concerts and led the annual Fourth of July parade. But, the new century brought rapid change. The optimism of a Sousa march no longer appealed to an audience that had come through the horrors of World War I and was facing the complex, often bewildering, onslaught of twentieth century modernity. By 1932, the year Sousa died, much of the band movement died with him. What remained was taken over by academic bands-high school and college concert and marching bands. These academically-affiliated bands whose roots could be traced to Sousa-inspired community brass bands and the military regimental bands, came to dominate the twentieth-century American marching band movement, training young musicians and demonstrating their marching skills on football fields.
The Sousaphone
In addition to his fame as a composer and bandleader, Sousa is also credited with the invention of the musical instrument named in his honor, the Sousaphone. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor (30 May 1922), Sousa explained the instruments origins: “The Sousaphone received its name through a suggestion by me to J. W. Pepper, the instrument manufacturer of Philadelphia, full 30 odd years ago. At that time, the United States Marine Band of Washington, D. C., of which I was conductor, used a BBb bass tuba of circular form known as a “Helicon”. It was all right enough for street-parade work, but its tone was apt to shoot ahead too prominently and explosively to suite me for concert performances, so I spoke to Mr. Pepper relative to constructing a bass instrument in which the bell would turn upwards and be adjustable for concert purposes. He built one and, grateful to me for the suggestion, called it a Sousaphone.”
Field musicians, particularly the drummers, had a long history of staging drumming competitions to demonstrate their prowess. Between 1875 and 1913, Army and Navy bases began organizing drum and bugle corps parade units to perform drills and traditional march and field calls. Separate from the military bands, these demonstration parade units were comprised of the traditional field music units and color guards bearing rifles and swords. During the same years that saw he rise of academically-affiliated marching bands, a parallel march movement, affiliated with the military drum and bugle corps, arose. The civilian drum and bugle corps, movement had its beginnings with the returning veterans of World War I. Interested in honoring military traditions and in teaching military traditions and in teaching military discipline, sponsoring organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion recruited young men to form civilian versions of the military corps. The new veteran-sponsored drum corps were civilian versions of those military parade units. By 1921 and 1928 respectively, the American Legion and the VFW were sponsoring competitions between the local units. With their musical roots in the calls and signals of military fields music, the repertoire of the early drum corps was restricted to fanfares, bugle calls, and tattoos. Buglers were only permitted to play in the key of G on single valve soprano, tenor, or baritone instruments and were constrained by the use of the valve which had to be either locked up, “straights,” or locked down, “crooks.” Drummers were schooled and judged on the execution and the style of their drumming. The color guard stood to attention and presented the colors-the national and state flags and the corps own colors.
After World War II, drum corps comprised of bugles, drums, and color guards shifted from parade activity to field shows. The field, often and athletic playing fields such as a football pitch with measured field yardage, provided the space for more ambitious and complex demonstrations of marching maneuvers. On the sidelines a “pit” area between the 35 yard lines was designated enabling the addition of non-marching percussion instruments such as timpani to be added to a corps’ instrumentation.
On the fields, corps were judged on such elements as marching and maneuvering, drums, and bugles; pre-show judging included inspection of uniforms and the “presentation of colors.” The repertoire remained limited to military marches, bugle calls, and rudimental drumming. By the late 1960s and early 1970s dissatisfaction with the strict militarism and rules which limited opportunities for artistic expression under the VFW and American Legion corps system led a number of drum corps directors to form an alternative organization. Drum Corps International (DCI) was founded in 1972 and replaced the VFW and American Legion sponsorship of the activity. Today, DCI supervised the major junior drum and bugle corps in the North American circuit. Junior drum corps restrict the age of members to twenty-one or younger. Corps members passing their twenty-second birthday are “aged-out.” Aged-out corps members can join Drum Corps Associates (DCA), sometimes referred to as senior corps. However, most North American organized corps are junior corps and compete on the DCI circuit. Under DCI the repertoire expanded as well, with jazz, classical, Broadway, and pop musical forms added to programs and served to demonstrate the extraordinary musicianship of the corps members.
The color guard, or visual ensemble, is the third essential element of the drum corps fields performance. With links to ancient heraldry, colorful flags and banners have long been a part of ceremonies and pageantry; and, well before drums or other instruments, flags were used to signal troops on the battlefield. The presentation and guarding of the national flag still plays a significant role in military and patriotic ceremonies. In drum corps, just as the musical repertoire expanded, so too did the role of the color guard. In the beginning, bearing rifles and swords the color guard’s role was to literally “guard” the flag and drill in a strict, symmetrical military-block style. About the time that DCI was being formed, an organization dedicated to indoor, winter color guard activities, Winter Guard International (WGI), was formed. Like the summer programs of DCI, Winter Guard organized competitive demonstrations where groups are judged against technical and artistic standards.
Both DCI and WGI supported corps that both explored more diverse musical forms and more diverse marching styles, including the introduction of curvilinear or curved forms. The field performance roles of each section-brass, drums, guard-became more complex. Professional designers and choreographers designed programs where drill and music were integrated into a whole. No longer expressionless marionettes standing at strict attention with swords and rifles, the color guard became the “visual ensemble” executing elaborate, theatrically choreographed field maneuvers-more dance-like than march-like-alongside the brass and percussion sections. Today, drum corps present a dazzling array of talents in each program. Even so, with a system that ages-out its top performers and, despite recent advances, still adheres to a narrowly defined musical repertoire, the time came to consider new ways to organize and present a more adventuresome kind of program.
Art of Beating the Drum
Great attention has always been paid to the correct method for striking the drum and a whole family of strokes was developed-rudiments-that had to be precisely executed before a drummer could be considered an accomplished performer. However, drummers had to not only sound good, but look good as well. Early in the nineteenth century when every military regiment had a battery of drummers and formal training was beginning to be required, Samuel Potter, head drum major of the British army’s Coldstream Regiment, published the Art of Beating the Drum. In it he advised that the drummer, “Pay attention to his arms so that the elbows and wrists move in good form and not touch the sides, and the drum is to be struck as near to the center as possible. . . The drummer is to strike his double strokes for the long roll as evenly and uniformly as possible, while keeping the sticks as far away from the head between the strokes as the speed of the roll will allow. He is to take pride in making it look easy and to beat his duty with spirit.” These same concerns are reflected in modern drum corps judging where posture, arm and hand positions, speed and uniformity of strokes are counted in assessing a drummer’s skills.
In 1984, a new drum and bugle corps, Star of Indiana, was formed in Bloomington, Indiana by businessman Bill Cook. Jim Mason, a lifelong veteran of drum and bugle corps, was hired to head the creative team and direct the new corps.
Star of Indiana was the first corps in history to finish in the Top Ten at Drum Corps International's (DCI) World Championships in its first year of competition (1985). Top Ten finishes in the World Championships followed annually until the group ended its competitive career after the 1993 season.
In 1991, Star earned the title World Champion from Drum Corps International, adding Top Three finishes in the world championships for the next two years. Overall, the group won more titles from 1990 to 1993 than any other corps at that time.
Cook and Mason valued the traditions of drum corps, but both also recognized the creative potential of the genre and were committed to expanding the performance vocabulary of their programs. In the summer of 1994, Star of Indiana teamed with the Canadian Brass for a ten-city tour of an indoor stage program, Brass Theater. In 1995 and 1996, Star again teamed with the Canadian Brass for two more Brass Theater tours appearing at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center, and Tanglewood. As Mason noted: “The single most exciting part of Brass Theater was the constant realization that the only limit to what we could accomplish was our own imagination.”
Encouraged by the three successful seasons of touring with the Canadian Brass, Cook and Mason began work on their organization’s next creative enterprise, one which would evolve after months of planning and rehearsals as a wholly new performance and theatrical genre – Blast!. Merging drum corps’s pageantry, marching precision, and instrumental virtuosity with the repertoire, props, costuming, staging, dance moves, and special effects of musical theater, Blast! made its world premiere in December of 1999 at the London Apollo Theatre. With a sixty-member troupe of experienced young performers from three standard drum corps sections: brass, percussion, and visual ensemble. Blast! overwhelmed audiences unfamiliar with the demanding performance skills of drum corps with its stunning, innovative show. This was not traditional musical theater, but this was not traditional drum corps either. As artistic director Mason observed: “ Nothing has ever been staged like this before. We’ve truly creating a new musical genre with Blast!. Taking what Star of Indiana did on the football pitch, shrinking it to a theater, staging it with bold, theatrical lighting, set design and sound enhancement is really a change.”