Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Military band music -- a couple of clips

Military band music was one of the very important influences on American popular culture from colonial days to New Orleans jazz (often first played on surplus instruments from Civil War regimental bands, according to one theory) to halftime shows at today's football games.

We'll hear a couple, just to demonstrate the continuity. Do you hear anything like this today?

The Old Guard drumline plays and performs 18th-century parade ground evolutions at the Saratoga muster of Revolutionary War and other reenactors. The first tune is an old Irish air sometimes known as "Minstrel Boy," and the second is a version of "Soldier's Joy." The Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps is part of the 3rd U.S. Infantry (known as "The Old Guard"), according to Wikipedia, and is the only unit of its kind in the armed forces. They're wearing red coats, by the way, not because the original fife and drum line was British but because band members in Gen. George Washington's army wore red so they'd stand out in the smoke of battle.

This clip from the movie "Gods and Generals" reenacts a minstrel-type performance of "The Bonnie Blue Flag" in a Confederate camp early in the Civil War. It's overdone by modern standards, and the movie was was a failure both with the critics and at the box office, but 19th-century audiences routinely saw worse acting than this. The song, related to the fiddle tune "Coleman's March," has Irish antecedents going back to the 1700s.

Reenactors playing as the 7th Cavalry regimental band perform "Garry Owen" Custer State Park's annual Buffalo Round Up festivities. The song was a favorite of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, and legend has it "Garry Owen" was played as the regiment rode out to the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.

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