The marching band seems the very essence of musical Americana, but in fact its origins are non-Western. Music has been used to inspire soldiers and to celebrate civic identity in every culture and time, but when the characteristic modern ensemble of brasses, winds, and percussion first appeared in Europe in the late eighteenth century, it represented an attempt to imitate the sounds of Turkish military music. (read more)

The marching band seems the very essence of musical Americana, but in fact its origins are non-Western. Music has been used to inspire soldiers and to celebrate civic identity in every culture and time, but when the characteristic modern ensemble of brasses, winds, and percussion first appeared in Europe in the late eighteenth century, it represented an attempt to imitate the sounds of Turkish military music. A Turkish tinge appears in many compositions of the Classical and early Romantic eras, including the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. European bands grew as new brass instruments were invented early nineteenth century, and by about 1840 a band might be a quasi-symphonic ensemble capable of a large range of tones and colors. Bands came to the U.S. with European colonists, and from the start, African Americans showed a special affinity for the combination of music and movement that band music entailed. Early American bands such as the fife-and-drum ensemble had slave analogues with strong African characteristics. Band music became a centrally important form of entertainment in big cities and small towns alike. The enormous massed ensembles of bandleader Patrick Gilmore were succeeded by the crack groups of John Philip Sousa and other bandleader-composers who toured the world. Sousa marches like The Stars and Stripes Forever, extracting maximum variety from a restricted set of musical resources as skillfully as did Johann Strauss II, have endured as part of the musical vocabulary of nearly all Americans. In addition to their purely musical value, bands also put in place a large educational establishment. Bands declined in popularity after radio and records came on the scene, but they never disappeared completely; even today, most middle-sized communities in both the U.S. and Europe boast one or more band ensembles. Meanwhile, bandleaders were migrating to school music programs. Many people gain their first exposure to orchestral instruments by playing in or listening to a high school or college band. Bands are sometimes subdivided into brass bands and wind or concert bands; the latter are oriented toward the concert hall, and their repertoire includes works by such composers as Gustav Holst. Recordings by the Eastman Wind Ensemble with their conductor Frederick Fennell topped classical bestseller lists for years and proved the continuing vitality of the band tradition.(collapse)