Your Band is Not a Business
Bands are communities, not corporations. Unite against the commodification of music education.
After I graduated High School and became twenty years old, one of the things I deeply struggled with was an ensemble, and listening to other musicians, it made me feel ashamed of being left out during a very vulnerable period. Then I took the opportunity of being in the Flint New Horizons Band which was hard at first but then with the help of Brain, a wonderful and goofy tuba player, directors Leo and Nancy Rebuke, and many others I gained some tools. If you are not familiar with what a New Horizons Band is or its philosophy it was founded to help older people regain a love of music and play again no matter the age with the right age starting at twenty and onward a musical journey with the core being that there is no competition or contest, but community. There are no auditions and you learn from your peers who become a family that understands you and your needs over time. We even brought snacks to keep us going and made soup during cold winters to warm everyone up. We were a group that Arnold Jacobs tuba player and teacher would be very proud of because the philosophies of the movement and his are very similar.
Yet when these groups have a director who retires and is of the Jacobs School of directing, bad actors enter the scene and see the band not as a community but as capital and business to be exploited for merit. Something the founders of the New Horizons Movement were not aware of, but Arnold Jacobs was very aware because of his work in Orchestras including the famous Chicago Symphony whose low brass section under Jacobs is still studied and admired to this day. Leo would even mention the Chicago low brass sound whenever he wanted us two tubas, Me and Brian to be louder and blend. At the time I played a three-vale Bb Jupiter tuba because I was a person of small stature which meant I had to work harder than people who played four-valve tubas and play in the upper register to blend with Euphoniums and Trombones and played in the middle register to balance out Brian who has a very big low sound.
Our hard work paid off when we did a joint concert in May with us and all the youth ensembles at Flint Institute of Music playing The 1812 Overture. When people think of this piece, they think about the cannons, tubular bells, timpani, cymbals, and bass drum. However, what do you do when you have a very nervous percussion section with no crazy leader like Zappel Phillip or Spike Jones, who have parents and directors breathing down their necks in fear? The answer is you let them flow with you without fear by hearing you, the low brass as their cue. We blended so well that we made the balcony, air, and floor vibrate and made a Youth Orchestra sound like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Sadly so many New Horizons Bands have fallen into the trap of many Community Bands that hire directors based on merit and achievement and treat bands as exclusive clubs rather than communities. They no longer become a New Horizons Band or respect the goal philosophies laid down by Arnold Jacobs and his students Charles Dallenbach and many others who laid the foundations of groups like Canadian Brass and the show Blast which won a Tony Award for their innovation of putting Marching Bands and Corps on the stage with people of many genders, states, backgrounds, and body types.
Yet did directors in the performing and marching arts see it as a new step to equity and even accommodation for people like me who could not traditionally have been in the pit, on the sidelines, and treated like shiny tokens? Nope, they saw Blast as a threat to their bread and buttering of band and corp competitions which had been their tradition and way of life, and continued a system of abuse and exploitation that would go unchallenged until twelve women in The Cadets booed the Star of Indiana's show The Greatest Show on Turf. They were victims of grooming and abuse by Gorge Hopkins who is charged, but still not a felon.
You see Gorge Hopkins, Dan Ascherson, Larry McCormick, and many important figureheads of Drum Corps International (DCI) and Bands of America (BOA) leadership loved Warner Erhard Seminar training. They even used Erhard philosophies based in Scientology as the core of DCI and BOA leadership along with the US Marine Corps. Tenants of Scientology include ditching psychology and sociology for self-help and empowerment through the manipulation of others and their alleged past lives. By letting go of a past life or struggle or trauma in that life then you can help able-bodied people achieve anything they want without question, critical thinking, and humanity—which is the opposite of Blast.
One example of a blatant lack of critical thinking or humanity in modern corps is the Bluecoat's show The Garden of Love. William Blake's original poem is about how dangerous joining a cult or any organized religion can become from a child's point of view.
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires
It's sad and ironic that this is the theme for DCI shows when many of DCI's targets are Middle School and High School children and teens with their shows coming into public schools to recruit as many talented kids as they can. DCI and BOA do not turn kids into little leaders of the next performing artist, but into cutthroat ruthless people who use toxic competition and “merit” as a castle to hide all the abuses they put on others to win.
What do they win for being cruel like their band directors are? A scholarship and Phi Mu Alpha brotherhood and fraternal orders of Band Directors still roaming with abuse felony charges just like priests of the Catholic Church. The calendar made by students in Ohio State's Marching Band for John Water's Eyes Only should have never been taken lightly or as a joke like this Deadspin Piece, but a sure sign of a roaming and working pedophile just like Morgan Larson of Pioneer, who staff knew had a criminal record at an all-female corps yet was hired and is now playing in a DCA All Star Corps and featured on DCI’s YouTube.
I find it even sadder that the said grown adults who become future music educators and directors, choose to continue donating to DCI and BOA which function like monopolies while posing as charities. When they are caught breaking their banks for these groups in exchange for more instruments and music they are the ones with the blood of many hazing, bullying, abuse, and discrimination victims on their hands. I still have scars mentally from my experiences with two band directors at Davison High School (Mr. Schuster) and Mott Community College (Mary Procopio) who still have their positions out of sheer merit and were not fired for discrimination, manipulative practices, hazing, and grooming.
If I continued in Music Education and sucked it up to be like the good shiny tokens that don't ask questions I would not be writing my stories, working on r/Struwwelkinder, or playing my new tuba Hubert. If you are an adult in music education or a band director I'm sorry to say it to you or your next generation but, a band is not a business. A Band should treat you like a good friend, give education, comfort, support, and cooperation, and encourage creativity and humanity.
In sociology, there is a word that would be a great name for a Volksmusik group called Gewerkschaft, it not only means labor union but a group of people working toward a common good. We say at r/FlyingCircusOrchestra the credo Be a Music Teacher, not a Band Director and that is because teachers care deeply about the well-being of their students and COVID has opened our eyes to how Music Teachers are treated and exploited by NAfME and NAMM which are trade associations who bow to DCI and BOA as a resource and create a culture of nepotism and silence around abuse.
Dr. Seuss before Oh The Places You Go became the Pain of Graduation Gifts along with The Giving Tree, wrote a manuscript that became the book Hooray for Diffendoofer Day. The story is about a public school with amazing, wacky, and talented teachers until one day the principal fears that if they don't get grades on a test they will move the students to an ugly charter school. Until the students and teachers fought back by acing the test that the principal rigged on them to look good when they already were good students and teachers at Diffendoofer who did not need a test or merit to be good people. When the people realize this they celebrate Diffendoofer Day. Sadly he did not finish the manuscript and died in 1991.
Yet another story of his that needs to be in all music curricula and pedagogy in music is his only film The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr.T which is now a cult classic because of its wonderful music and relevance to Authoritarian and Militant music teaching today in Middle and High School Band rooms.
The film even confronts issues like toxic masculinity, xenophobia, censorship, and nationalism. Toxic Masculinity is embodied in Mister Zabladowski until he realizes that he like Bart the curious protagonist should ask questions about the lies we tell ourselves and should stand up to. Asking questions is what makes you a music teacher and not a band director.
Who are the Angry Education Workers?
Thanks for reading By and for Angry Education Workers! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.
This is a project to gather a community of revolutionary education workers who want a socialist education system. We want to become a platform for educators of all backgrounds and job roles to share workers’ inquiries, stories of collective action, labor strategy, theoretical reflection, and art.
Whether you’re interested in joining the project, or just submitting something you want to get out there, get in touch! All levels of involvement are welcome. Burnout culture is bullshit.
Reach out to angryeducationworkers@gmail.com or over any of our social media.
Support Our Work
All of our work is freely available, but if you like what we do and want to support us, please consider throwing a little donation our way! It helps us cover the costs of printing, hosting webpages, and supplies.
What a sad transformation!