“For the most part these institutions maintained excellent music programs,” affirms Southern (1983: 221). Like the professional jubilee troupes, small bands were formed in the burgeoning black colleges and universities to help recruit students and raise money for programs. Some of these early black collegiate bands included the Alabama State Collegians, the Florida A&M State Collegians, and the Kentucky State Collegians. Perhaps the earliest black college marching band existed at Tuskegee Normal School circa 1890—the Tuskegee Normal School Brass Band (Harland, Kaufman, and Smock 1974: 49). While many of these early bands were student-led and informal, they became more professional as the years progressed.Author Ralph Ellison attended Tuskegee Institute during the 1930s, where he majored in music and played trumpet in the band. He recalls how the band at another Alabama school for blacks, Alabama State University in Montgomery, had become so popular that it caused a rift between the band program and the college’s administration. He explains, “the state of Alabama didn’t support the college adequately, so the orchestra would go out and raise money. . . . The band was so successful in the North that they decided to go professional, which led to real contention between them and the President of Alabama State. He forced them to give up the name ‘Alabama State Collegians’ and they took the name of their leader, Erskine Hawkins” (Welburn 1995: 312).In 1907, Maj. Nathaniel Clark Smith “was commissioned a captain in the United States Army and joined the military faculty at Tuskegee Institute, where he organized bands, ensembles, choral groups, and instrumental ensembles, and toured widely with the groups” (Southern 1983: 301). Smith is considered to be one of the first African Americans to hold the band director’s position with faculty status at a historically black school. “Before starting his teaching career,” writes Malone, “Smith traveled internationally with minstrel companies and also directed several military bands” (1996: 145). After leaving Tuskegee, Smith joined the faculty at Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago, “where he taught many future jazz musicians, including Ray Nance, Milt Hinton, Nat Cole, and Eddie South” (Malone 1996: 145).In 1918, Captain Frank Drye took over the reins at Tuskegee. He was a veteran of Lieutenant James Reese Europe’s famous “Harlem Hellfighters” band during World War I and became the “best known, black, college-band director in the country during the years 1918-30” (Malone 1990: 64). Captain Drye trained scores of students who later became successful bandmasters at a variety of other institutions. Among the students Captain Drye mentored while on faculty at Tuskegee was Phillmore Mallard “Shorty” Hall, who eventually taught Dizzy Gillespie in North Carolina (Malone 1996: 145). So begins the cultivation of a formal process for training young musicians in America’s predominately black educational institutions.While some historically black colleges and universities hired veteran military bandsmen to lead their music programs, others dipped into the pool of top-notch musicians traveling with minstrel troupes and on vaudeville circuits. On June 29, 1900, W.C. Handy was playing the cornet in the Mahara’s Minstrels band when the chancellor for the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Huntsville, Alabama, recruited him to join the faculty and direct the band, orchestra and vocal music programs (Handy 1947: 57-58). In the early years, most predominately black educational institutions were run by Northern whites who often preferred the European classics to American contemporary music. W.C. Handy, however, felt that contemporary forms, such as minstrel music, had a significant musical contribution to make. Therefore, Handy went out of his way to help others, especially whites, appreciate this and other forms of American and African American contemporary music. Handy explains:I rendered a program one evening in the chapel, but I had a secret plan to include a stirring ragtime number, My Ragtime Baby, which our minstrel band had featured. It was written by a Detroit Negro, Fred Stone. I rewrote this high stepper and programmed it “Greetings to Toussaint L’ Overture,” so as the manuscript would create the impression of classical music without changing a note of the original. It did the trick. The students couldn’t sit still, nor could the teachers. The president himself patted his feet. At the conclusion, he remarked, ‘My, my, what a delightful program. Mr. Handy is the best band teacher we’ve had since the days of Mr. Still (referring to the father of William Grant Still). Let’s have Greetings to Toussaint L’Overture once more.’ I was only too happy to comply with his request, but explained how I had tricked them and made them appreciate the potentialities of ragtime by giving it a high-sounding name. (1947: 64)In her interviews with members of Florida A&M’s first marching band, Jacqui Malone discovered that many black college bands during the early 1900s were adopting the performance style of the popularblack minstrel bands (1990: 63). Nathan B. Young, Jr., one of the original members of Florida A&M’s first, sixteen-piece marching band (1910 to 1915), elaborated on this relationship for Malone:The minstrel bands were supermusicians and the amateurs would follow behind them and watch them. And they began to learn and imitate what the minstrel bands did. . . . In the last three years we were beginning to use syncopation. But in the early days we played straight band music from the books put out by the Germans. Of course the black musicians put on curls and did things, especially with the trombone. So the moment they started to play, they put in personal touches. You could tell whether it was a black band or a white band in the early days. . . . The minstrel showscame in and they influenced us. The black school bands were playing more like minstrel bands as the time went on. (Young 1988; in Malone 1990: 64)The commingling of band traditions helped raise the bar on musicianship. “Many minstrel men joined army bands and the army bands in turn gave the minstrels better musicians,” says W.C. Handy. “Everything was on the upgrade musically speaking” (Handy 1947: 65).Predominately black educational institutions continued to see slow but steady growth in their music programs over the next half century. These programs included concert, symphonic and marching bands; choirs; and jazz ensembles. The highly syncopated, foot-stomping, body-moving rhythms that had defined the music of black military bands, provincial and municipal brass bands, minstrel bands, and concert bands over the past century were slowly morphing into a new band tradition on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the South. By the 1960s, the collective style of black college marching bands had firmly taken root as a distinctive performance tradition that was unlike their predominately white college band counterparts._____________________________________________
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I am going to paste and copy this to a worksheet and read it in my class. This is some good information. Every minority bandhall should have this posted or at least cover this information.
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CHRIS... Hats off to you.