World of Pageantry

The Billings Gazette announced this weekend that the three High Schools in Billings, MT would no longer field Marching Bands because the time it took to develop 2 Ten Minute Shows for the football season took far to much time away from the music studies and also had lead to many freshman not being interested in Marching Band. Music Director Scott Corey advised that Bands will continue to to play at sporting events but will not be playing on the fields at halftime of football games.

Since there are no Marching competitions in MT, it must be assumed that these directors see absolutely no value in Marching Bands.

We can debateover emphasis of competititive marching and Pageantry costs, however none of the three Bands in Question traveled during the football season and did not have any large Marching Costs.

Unlike their neighbors to the South in Wyoming who are trying to get competitions going and have a State Marching Championship, MT can join Vermont and Alaska as the only states not having competitive Marching Bands.

Here is one article to reference:
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/viewar ... hing-bands

Review of enrollments in the Montana High School Association List show that Billings West has an enrollment of 1,914 students, Billings Senior has 1,619 and Skyview HS has 1,569 Students. NOt small schools by most accounts. However looking at the size of their Bands, they are very small. These schools have Bands the size of most of our AA Schools in TX(enrollment between 200 and 400 students). I found the comments about Marching taking away from the Music program to be very similar to something we heard many years ago.

In the spring of 1974, the Anaheim HS Colonist Band toured Hawaii. At that time Anaheim was among the top 15 Parade Bands in So CAl under the direction of Ross Davis. We were hosted on the island of Kauai by the Band from the High School at Lihue whose Band Director upon greeting us smugly advised he had heard about the Colonist Band, but they did not "Waste their time on Marching Music", but emphasis was placed on their strong concert sound. Since we had some free time due to rain the next moorning, Ross Davis asked if we could have joint rehearsel with the host Band. This was agreed to , and wonder of wonder during the reading of our concert pieces it was determined that the host school did not "quite have the skill the kids from SO CAL Had, nor were they as advanced as their directors believed. I think In MT, the directors just did not want to put in the time and Marching Band was an easy "Bad Guy" Looking a pictures of the Bands in Question would lead this Texan to think that even when they "Did Marching", it was not like what we see or hear down in drylands of TX.

We can and should debate the Marching Band thing regularly. It is very expensive and time consuming. It also is an extremely good medium for teaching beat, subdivision of beat, breathing, breath support, posture, intonation, teamwork, critical thinking, self-esteem, form, artistic expression and probably a myriad of things that this old mind just can't come up with at this particular moment, but don't forget the 45 minutes of vigorous exercise provided to our students on a daily basis. I'll never forget the mom of a football player who was watching one of our band rehearsals and stated "They ain't no fat kids out there".

Technically, Montana still has ONE competitive marching band: Bozeman H.S.

They travel into Idaho or Utah every year or two for competitions because there are no competitions in Montana.