Some thoughts from a year ago this week, as marching band season was about to, um, kick off.

High school football has begun. Those words send an electric charge through lots of people who eagerly anticipate the first Friday night of the school year when teams return to the gridiron.  The coaches and players, however, are just part of the excitement.  Friday nights also mean marching bands, which are one of the most visible art programs of the public schools.

Last Friday night I had the privilege of watching the halftime show of the Harker Heights “Red Brigade” band from high in the press box at WISD stadium, and even though it was the first game of the season, band director David Norris already had his group in fine form.  This season the band’s show consists entirely of original music written exclusively for the band by Peter Emerson, one of the music teachers at the high school.  Entitled “Pompeii,” it’s one of the most creative things I’ve ever seen a marching band undertake.  How good they sounded and how well they executed their movements on the field showed how much work they’ve already done.

Like all high school marching bands, Harker Heights began working on its show almost a month before school started.  When I was in high school at Irving High we started practicing around the first of August, and began every day at the crack of dawn so we could get in as much work as possible before it got too hot.  Even then, we could count on one or two kids passing out at practice each year while standing at attention. I asked a friend of mine who was in band with me what he remembered most about those days.  “The hardest thing about summer band was being there at 7:00 in morning,” he immediately said.  “I found myself wishing for school to start, because then band started at 7:30.”

In marching bands, the music and the marching are two distinct and separate challenges that must be learned to perfection and then molded together.  You have to know where you are on the field at all times and whether the line you just marched over was the 30, or the 35, or the 40-yard line.  Because my high school marched military style (big blocks of players always moving back and forth) one wrong move could trigger an entire avalanche of subsequent wrong moves that would bring the whole show crashing down in a confused scrum.  In fact, my high school band director Glen Oliver was the first person I ever heard use the phrase “train wreck” to describe something other than a literal train wreck.

Whether it’s the music of George M. Cohan, a show of which we played my freshman year, or something original, musicianship is only part of what goes on in this most complex of art programs.  Because the upperclassmen are very involved with teaching the freshman, many students get their first experience with authority through the marching band.  “It was the first real leadership position for those of us who were drum majors and section leaders,” remembers another friend who played for four years in the Ennis High School band.

The point of this is to encourage you to change things up a bit when you’re at a game.  This year, wait to go to the concession stand until the third quarter.  If you hang around and watch the halftime shows, you’ll see two bands full of students who are working as hard on their art as any sports team works on its game.  And band programs need public support every bit as much as football programs.  Actually, they need more.