Which Version of Band Are You Teaching - 1.0, 3.0, 6.0? Jill M. Sullivan, Ph.D.


Editor’s Note: This article appears as one of a series written especially for Ala Breve by experts in the field of music education.


School bands in the United States continue to be influenced by over 250 years of band tradition stemming from the military, professional (Gilmore, Sousa, Goldman), and community bands. There was a time in mid- to late-nineteenth-century America when wind band performances were considered popular music and their concert venues would draw huge audiences. The literature played was often an assortment of orchestra transcriptions, original music written for band, marches, and dance music. Every town across the nation strived to have a band. A local band was a status symbol, and town bands were used to attract permanent residents. James Keene wrote, “Almost all towns had bands to perform entertainment.” Bands were formed by anyone who wanted to participate: There were women’s bands, family bands, immigrant bands, school bands, school- military bands, stringed- and-fretted instrument bands, and bagpipe bands, among others. Band historians call the periods of approximately 1870– 1920 the Golden Age of Bands. So popular were the bands that in 1921, the state of Iowa passed a band law that would allow city taxes to be spent on local municipal bands. This law was copied in thirty- three other states. Band composer Karl L. King even wrote a march in its honor called the “Iowa Band Law March.” The end of the Golden Age coincided


with military bandsmen returning to the United States after serving in World War I. Many of these men had served in Navy or Army bands and had been trained by the Lieutenant John Phillip Sousa of the Navy or orchestra conductor Walter Damrosch of the New York Symphony Society. Sousa alone had trained nearly 1,500 Navy bandsmen at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago, and Damrosch trained bandleaders for the U.S. Army in Europe. By 1920, public secondary education was


beginning to flourish as the Progressive Era came to influence more democratic offerings in America’s high schools. This situation offered perfect conditions for the launch of high school music programs. Some of the original band teachers came from the ranks of military musicians. These bandsmen established in the school the military traditions of marching and concert bands, along with high expectations for developing outstanding musicianship. Today, we are grateful for their insight in securing a place for the ensembles in the school curriculum. Unfortunately, in many modern classrooms, some of the drill- sergeant behaviors of the military still exist, evoking teacher-centered rehearsals instead of today’s more desirable student-centered music education.


With these band traditions that


continued to grow throughout the twentieth century comes some seemingly inflexible baggage: standard instrumentation, gender stereotypes,


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military-like uniforms, accepted and limited types of festivals and assessments, and a whole host of other outdated traditions embedded in our school- band culture. Questioning these traditions is a risky undertaking, but as a music-teacher educator, I strive for balance by encouraging learning about traditions while encouraging progressive change. In 2008, Randall Allsup and Cathy Benedict deconstructed the band tradition in their article “The Problems with Band: An Inquiry into the Future of Instrumental Music Education.” They critiqued our embodied traditions, suggesting, for example, that words like “directorship” imply that teacher expertise is a “highly prized commodity, ... and custom” never allowed to be called into question publically or allowed to be negotiated with student decisions or musical tastes. Allsup and Benedict questioned for whom the band classroom is “highly passionate, inventive and imaginative.” Who operates at the creative level—is it the students, or is it only the director? Allsup and Benedict pointed out that in band rehearsals, “We don’t ask our students to think or be vigilant.” They suggested that if the director/teacher is making all the musical decisions and students are simply waiting for the next command for ultimate ensemble efficiency, then we may be using an early twentieth-century factory model for the educational space rather than fostering a motivating, creative-collaborative-decision-making space for student-centered educational experiences. At one point, Allsup and Benedict go as


far to suggest that band directors in teacher- centered classrooms are propagating oppressed-and-oppressor relationships through the use of fear tactics and tight control. Who has the control and power? How does that feel and look in your classroom?


Are students even allowed to


speak in “your” rehearsals, let alone think for themselves in “their” rehearsals? When are they being asked to be “mindful and critical” in the band classroom? Is your band classroom really an educational, safe, creative space? Shouldn’t it be, since we’re teaching in schools? Are we curricular- or extra-curricular minded? David Williams reminded us in his 2011


article “The Elephant in the Room” that large- ensemble participation in schools continues to be on the decline. He provides an example with data from Florida’s Department of Education: “16.45 percent of high school students were enrolled in music classes in 1985. The number dropped to 14.9 percent by 1995 and 11.67 percent by 2005. If we were to project a 2015 figured based on these data, enrollment would fall to under 7 percent.”i


He


suggests that we are continuing to use an outdated instructional model and that this old model may be why so few students are enrolling. What is happening in your state? Is band participation shrinking? Do we need to all be rethinking our programs to be more inviting to and inclusive of


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Unfortunately, some of the drill-sergeant behaviors of the military still exist in modern band classrooms which evoke teacher-centered rehearsals instead of today’s more desirable student- centered music education.


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