Post by exterminator on Oct 6, 2005 19:08:15 GMT -5
VIEW THE VIDEO
www.news-record.com/indepth/mtb/slideshow/slideshow.html
Blue and gold: rhythmic perfection
By Lanita Withers
Staff Writer
The sunshine was bright, the atmosphere festive during Monday’s Aggie-Eagle Classic in Raleigh. At halftime, the golden-clad football players from N.C. A&T jogged off the field.
But none of the fans left the stands to grab a snack. The entertainment was just beginning. Corralled on the sidelines, the Blue and Gold Marching Machine was about to enter.
Weeks of dedication were invested in the moment. The fans would experience only the final results of the band members’ efforts –– the rhythmic perfection of the march, the sway of the dancers, the heartbeat of the drum line.
The fans hadn’t seen much more: the auditioning, constant practice, early-morning exercise, midday rehearsals or late-evening field drills. They missed weeks of blending and meshing, polishing and perfecting necessary to unite individuals into a Marching Machine.
“It’s culture shock for a lot of people when they think that they can just come into any band and just be in it,” said Katima Underwood, one of the band’s five drum majors. “No, it doesn’t work like that.”
They work hard to make it look easy.
Revving the engine
Planning for the Marching Machine’s 2005 season began as soon as the last season ended.
Student leaders were selected in the spring. Since May, Kenneth Ruff, A&T’s director of bands, auditioned nervous students, sent off instruments for repair and worked with his staff on season goals –– such as emphasizing a more musical sound.
Band members returned to the campus in waves –– first the drum line in the heat of late July, then the auxiliary, next the freshmen and the upperclassmen in August –– long before many of their fellow students.
Close to 80 students tried out for Cold Steel, the band’s drum line. About a third of them dropped out or were cut. Jubilation radiated from the faces of those who made the squad. The disappointment was tangible among those who didn’t.
Freshman Amanda Lewis made it.
“I feel like I’ve accomplished something big,” she said minutes after the list of drummers was posted. “This is A&T’s drum line. This is big.”
During band camp, the newest members were taught A&T’s high-stepping style, where the knee is raised to a 90-degree angle. Students ran laps and did calisthenics to get ready for the physically intense routines. They started to learn the 50 to 60 songs they’ll memorize during the course of the season.
“Usually A&T’s band camp is not as hard as it was this year,” said Colby Evans, a drum major. “We had a lot of people to quit or to maybe quit for a couple of days then decide, 'OK, I want to come back.’”
Jeff Morton, a sophomore clarinet player, said camp was a blur.
“Ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been running, trying to catch up with everybody,” he said.
Charles Conner, the leader of the baritone section, likened the band’s effort to “a full-time job times 10.” The work is “endless, but it’s well worth it in the end,” he said.
Members have to love the band, said Turquoise Accoo, a captain for Golden Delight, the flag and dance squad.
“If you don’t have the heart for it, you aren’t going to last,” Accoo said.
Some don’t.
“One young man said it wasn’t in his heart” when he told the staff he was quitting a few days into camp, Ruff said.
“I didn’t argue with him. I told them the first day that it has to be in your heart,” Ruff said. “Some kids come with the expectation it’s going to be easy. It’s the farthest thing from easy.”
A day of camp could last as long as 14 hours. Ruff coached students on musical phrasing and dynamics, fussed at them when they neglected to bring pencils to mark the music. Staff members taught them how to pinwheel around street corners as they marched though campus. Band members ran together, ate together, worshipped together.
The time spent as a unit did more than set the foundation for the band.
“We’ll do anything for each other. We’re a family,” Underwood said. “A lot of people don’t see how such a big group of people would be so close, but we’re around each other all the time.”
Powered by pride
Members of the Marching Machine are part of a program with a proud, 90-year history. About 200 members strong, it is A&T’s largest student organization. It’s also one of the most well-recognized groups in the city.
The Marching Machine is “one of the best advertising tools that the school has,” said Andre Winstead, the president of the Alumni Band, a group of former band members who give money and time to the program. At parades and other events, “people will run down the street just to see A&T’s band,” he said.
Their following even includes celebrities. In late August, William Drayton — better known as the rapper Flavor Flav — was in town to host a CD release party. But before the event, he went to see the band he’d heard so much about.
They put on an impromptu miniconcert for the rapper.
“That was devastating,” he told them, “and I feel sorry for whoever goes up against y’all.”
Ask members what it means to be a part of the band and you’ll get the same reply.
“It’s a privilege, an honor to be here,” said Evans, a drum major.
Band alumni also hold a fierce sense of loyalty to the organization. Some drop by rehearsals to say hello and listen. About 135 march with the Alumni Band during Homecoming.
Ruff is also an alum, having served as a drum major as a student and as a volunteer for close to two decades before taking over as director in 2003 when longtime director Johnny B. Hodge Jr. retired. All but one of Ruff’s staff members are alums who now offer their expertise.
Through the years, the ensemble has earned a reputation of being “the small band with the big sound,” for not backing down when battling bands with bigger numbers and more resources.
Winstead, a 1993 graduate of A&T, said that in his day, the band made up for what it lacked with ample amounts of pride.
“We traveled on subpar transportation. We didn’t have the best of uniforms. We didn’t have the best of instruments,” he said. “When you step out and you go against other bands that seem to have the best of everything, it was just another driving force to say, 'OK, even though we don’t have, we still can.’ ”
In certain ways, the band is still beating the odds.
Some historically black college and university bands are able to award ample scholarships, Ruff said. The Marching Machine isn’t one of them.
The band’s budget from the university is about $180,000, which is sometimes augmented by donations from paid performances in the community.
It’s expensive to transport the band and equipment to engagements. Students and staff filled up five charter buses for the trip to Raleigh for the Aggie-Eagle Classic, and it cost about $2,000 to feed people after the game.
Ruff has a tiny pot of scholarship money he gives to a few upperclassmen who “go beyond the call of duty.”
“I have lost some students to other universities because I wasn’t able to give them a scholarship or match a scholarship they had been offered. That does play on the recruitment aspect,” Ruff said.
“When you see our band, you’re generally seeing a band (where) they do it because they love it.”
Many of the students play university-issued instruments, but the equipment is getting old and some of it needs replacing. The band room is cramped, and when the air compressors that cooled Frazier Hall broke at the beginning of band camp, students practiced in saunalike conditions.
Ruff said improvements that will benefit the band, such as renovations to the band room, have been discussed.
“We’ve always had to take the situation as we have it and ... make things work,” he said. “We don’t have the best facility. We don’t have the best instruments. We have to work with things and pull it together so that we produce a good band and have good shows.”
Gearing up the Machine
Four words on the front of this year’s band handbook describe what it takes to make the band a success: loyalty, dedication, commitment and consistency.
“North Carolina A&T never goes out unprepared, and we never take mess out there,” Ruff told students during band camp. “When we go out there, we go out there ready.”
During camp and into the fall semester, musicians spent hours in the band room every day, dissecting music into sections, reviewing it time and again until the repetitions were memorized.
In the evenings, the sound of the band reverberated through downtown Greensboro as members practiced drill formations.
They moved through plumes of dust kicked up by their boots from the bare spots on the field. The lights from the practice field behind Aggie Stadium reflected off the brass instruments as dusk melded into dark.
Ruff knew the talent of the returning upperclassmen, and he told people he had a great group of freshmen.
“I was eager to put the two groups together,” he said. “I knew when I mixed the two together it would be something. And it is. ...
“When we put them together for the first time, a chill went through my spine,” he said.
The sound was crisp, round and full.
Alberta Hairston has tracked the band’s progress for 11 years from Thea House, the Catholic campus ministry near Frazier Hall.
She can pinpoint the new students and when they start to get a feel for the band. She hears when the brass section plays with power or the woodwinds aren’t as strong.
“I like to watch as they improve their lines and sound,” she said.
And, every day, Ruff and his musical army got a little bit closer to where they wanted to be.
Every day, they oiled and tuned the Machine.
Preparing for battle
Among historically black colleges and universities, the competition of football game days extends from the field to the stands.
“On Saturdays, the football games are great, but a lot of people come to see the halftime show, and that’s our moment to shine,” Winstead said.
“The football team has four quarters; the band has one.”
And for some competitions, a sports team isn’t necessary at all. In 2003, the Marching Machine took top prizes in three categories –– best band, best percussion and best auxiliary — at the first Defeat the Beat/Battle of the Bands competition, beating both Howard University and Florida A&M University.
“They say we’re not a sport, but we go out and work just as hard and get hurt just like all the other athletes do to compete against another band,” Donte Robinson, a drum major, said. “It’s just as aggressive as football, basketball, soccer, whatever you want to call it.”
No band member ever wants to be outplayed by opponents.
“Either you’re going to blow or be blown on, march or be marched on,” Robinson said.
And every band member wants to bring honor to A&T.
Underwood, a drum major, said she doesn’t speak much on game days. “I get in the zone ... I’m about to go to war, so to speak,” she said.
Something about putting on the uniform, with the large “A&T” logo embroidered on the chest, “makes you feel powerful and it makes you feel like you can do anything,” she said. “If you love A&T like you’re supposed to,” she said, “you’re going to represent it like you should.”
The band met its first opponent, N.C. Central University’s Marching Sound Machine, Monday at the Classic. After weeks of hard work, show time had finally arrived. The energy began to build as the minutes to halftime ticked off the game clock.
“I’m glad this day is finally here,” Evans said before halftime. “We’ve been preparing a long time. It’s time to get something out of all that practice.”
In the stands during the performance, Aggies clapped and grooved.
“I think they’re great, always,” A&T alumna Ebony Ramsey said after the show. “Our band always has this crisp sound.”
For the band members, the love of the fans is the best reward.
“After putting in all the hard work ... seeing the crowd’s reaction for the show that you did is just really rewarding to me,” said Conner, the baritone leader. “It makes me and makes the whole band feel good that you can see someone excited about something you came up with from scratch.”
Their first shows behind them, the band will return to the drawing board, learning new music, dances and drills. More competition is on the horizon, and the Marching Machine never goes out unprepared.
“We go out there and give it our best every time we step on the field,” saxophone section leader D’Javon Alston said, “because that’s what Aggies do.”
Contact Lanita Withers at 373-7071 or lwithers@news-record.com
www.news-record.com/indepth/mtb/slideshow/slideshow.html
Blue and gold: rhythmic perfection
By Lanita Withers
Staff Writer
The sunshine was bright, the atmosphere festive during Monday’s Aggie-Eagle Classic in Raleigh. At halftime, the golden-clad football players from N.C. A&T jogged off the field.
But none of the fans left the stands to grab a snack. The entertainment was just beginning. Corralled on the sidelines, the Blue and Gold Marching Machine was about to enter.
Weeks of dedication were invested in the moment. The fans would experience only the final results of the band members’ efforts –– the rhythmic perfection of the march, the sway of the dancers, the heartbeat of the drum line.
The fans hadn’t seen much more: the auditioning, constant practice, early-morning exercise, midday rehearsals or late-evening field drills. They missed weeks of blending and meshing, polishing and perfecting necessary to unite individuals into a Marching Machine.
“It’s culture shock for a lot of people when they think that they can just come into any band and just be in it,” said Katima Underwood, one of the band’s five drum majors. “No, it doesn’t work like that.”
They work hard to make it look easy.
Revving the engine
Planning for the Marching Machine’s 2005 season began as soon as the last season ended.
Student leaders were selected in the spring. Since May, Kenneth Ruff, A&T’s director of bands, auditioned nervous students, sent off instruments for repair and worked with his staff on season goals –– such as emphasizing a more musical sound.
Band members returned to the campus in waves –– first the drum line in the heat of late July, then the auxiliary, next the freshmen and the upperclassmen in August –– long before many of their fellow students.
Close to 80 students tried out for Cold Steel, the band’s drum line. About a third of them dropped out or were cut. Jubilation radiated from the faces of those who made the squad. The disappointment was tangible among those who didn’t.
Freshman Amanda Lewis made it.
“I feel like I’ve accomplished something big,” she said minutes after the list of drummers was posted. “This is A&T’s drum line. This is big.”
During band camp, the newest members were taught A&T’s high-stepping style, where the knee is raised to a 90-degree angle. Students ran laps and did calisthenics to get ready for the physically intense routines. They started to learn the 50 to 60 songs they’ll memorize during the course of the season.
“Usually A&T’s band camp is not as hard as it was this year,” said Colby Evans, a drum major. “We had a lot of people to quit or to maybe quit for a couple of days then decide, 'OK, I want to come back.’”
Jeff Morton, a sophomore clarinet player, said camp was a blur.
“Ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been running, trying to catch up with everybody,” he said.
Charles Conner, the leader of the baritone section, likened the band’s effort to “a full-time job times 10.” The work is “endless, but it’s well worth it in the end,” he said.
Members have to love the band, said Turquoise Accoo, a captain for Golden Delight, the flag and dance squad.
“If you don’t have the heart for it, you aren’t going to last,” Accoo said.
Some don’t.
“One young man said it wasn’t in his heart” when he told the staff he was quitting a few days into camp, Ruff said.
“I didn’t argue with him. I told them the first day that it has to be in your heart,” Ruff said. “Some kids come with the expectation it’s going to be easy. It’s the farthest thing from easy.”
A day of camp could last as long as 14 hours. Ruff coached students on musical phrasing and dynamics, fussed at them when they neglected to bring pencils to mark the music. Staff members taught them how to pinwheel around street corners as they marched though campus. Band members ran together, ate together, worshipped together.
The time spent as a unit did more than set the foundation for the band.
“We’ll do anything for each other. We’re a family,” Underwood said. “A lot of people don’t see how such a big group of people would be so close, but we’re around each other all the time.”
Powered by pride
Members of the Marching Machine are part of a program with a proud, 90-year history. About 200 members strong, it is A&T’s largest student organization. It’s also one of the most well-recognized groups in the city.
The Marching Machine is “one of the best advertising tools that the school has,” said Andre Winstead, the president of the Alumni Band, a group of former band members who give money and time to the program. At parades and other events, “people will run down the street just to see A&T’s band,” he said.
Their following even includes celebrities. In late August, William Drayton — better known as the rapper Flavor Flav — was in town to host a CD release party. But before the event, he went to see the band he’d heard so much about.
They put on an impromptu miniconcert for the rapper.
“That was devastating,” he told them, “and I feel sorry for whoever goes up against y’all.”
Ask members what it means to be a part of the band and you’ll get the same reply.
“It’s a privilege, an honor to be here,” said Evans, a drum major.
Band alumni also hold a fierce sense of loyalty to the organization. Some drop by rehearsals to say hello and listen. About 135 march with the Alumni Band during Homecoming.
Ruff is also an alum, having served as a drum major as a student and as a volunteer for close to two decades before taking over as director in 2003 when longtime director Johnny B. Hodge Jr. retired. All but one of Ruff’s staff members are alums who now offer their expertise.
Through the years, the ensemble has earned a reputation of being “the small band with the big sound,” for not backing down when battling bands with bigger numbers and more resources.
Winstead, a 1993 graduate of A&T, said that in his day, the band made up for what it lacked with ample amounts of pride.
“We traveled on subpar transportation. We didn’t have the best of uniforms. We didn’t have the best of instruments,” he said. “When you step out and you go against other bands that seem to have the best of everything, it was just another driving force to say, 'OK, even though we don’t have, we still can.’ ”
In certain ways, the band is still beating the odds.
Some historically black college and university bands are able to award ample scholarships, Ruff said. The Marching Machine isn’t one of them.
The band’s budget from the university is about $180,000, which is sometimes augmented by donations from paid performances in the community.
It’s expensive to transport the band and equipment to engagements. Students and staff filled up five charter buses for the trip to Raleigh for the Aggie-Eagle Classic, and it cost about $2,000 to feed people after the game.
Ruff has a tiny pot of scholarship money he gives to a few upperclassmen who “go beyond the call of duty.”
“I have lost some students to other universities because I wasn’t able to give them a scholarship or match a scholarship they had been offered. That does play on the recruitment aspect,” Ruff said.
“When you see our band, you’re generally seeing a band (where) they do it because they love it.”
Many of the students play university-issued instruments, but the equipment is getting old and some of it needs replacing. The band room is cramped, and when the air compressors that cooled Frazier Hall broke at the beginning of band camp, students practiced in saunalike conditions.
Ruff said improvements that will benefit the band, such as renovations to the band room, have been discussed.
“We’ve always had to take the situation as we have it and ... make things work,” he said. “We don’t have the best facility. We don’t have the best instruments. We have to work with things and pull it together so that we produce a good band and have good shows.”
Gearing up the Machine
Four words on the front of this year’s band handbook describe what it takes to make the band a success: loyalty, dedication, commitment and consistency.
“North Carolina A&T never goes out unprepared, and we never take mess out there,” Ruff told students during band camp. “When we go out there, we go out there ready.”
During camp and into the fall semester, musicians spent hours in the band room every day, dissecting music into sections, reviewing it time and again until the repetitions were memorized.
In the evenings, the sound of the band reverberated through downtown Greensboro as members practiced drill formations.
They moved through plumes of dust kicked up by their boots from the bare spots on the field. The lights from the practice field behind Aggie Stadium reflected off the brass instruments as dusk melded into dark.
Ruff knew the talent of the returning upperclassmen, and he told people he had a great group of freshmen.
“I was eager to put the two groups together,” he said. “I knew when I mixed the two together it would be something. And it is. ...
“When we put them together for the first time, a chill went through my spine,” he said.
The sound was crisp, round and full.
Alberta Hairston has tracked the band’s progress for 11 years from Thea House, the Catholic campus ministry near Frazier Hall.
She can pinpoint the new students and when they start to get a feel for the band. She hears when the brass section plays with power or the woodwinds aren’t as strong.
“I like to watch as they improve their lines and sound,” she said.
And, every day, Ruff and his musical army got a little bit closer to where they wanted to be.
Every day, they oiled and tuned the Machine.
Preparing for battle
Among historically black colleges and universities, the competition of football game days extends from the field to the stands.
“On Saturdays, the football games are great, but a lot of people come to see the halftime show, and that’s our moment to shine,” Winstead said.
“The football team has four quarters; the band has one.”
And for some competitions, a sports team isn’t necessary at all. In 2003, the Marching Machine took top prizes in three categories –– best band, best percussion and best auxiliary — at the first Defeat the Beat/Battle of the Bands competition, beating both Howard University and Florida A&M University.
“They say we’re not a sport, but we go out and work just as hard and get hurt just like all the other athletes do to compete against another band,” Donte Robinson, a drum major, said. “It’s just as aggressive as football, basketball, soccer, whatever you want to call it.”
No band member ever wants to be outplayed by opponents.
“Either you’re going to blow or be blown on, march or be marched on,” Robinson said.
And every band member wants to bring honor to A&T.
Underwood, a drum major, said she doesn’t speak much on game days. “I get in the zone ... I’m about to go to war, so to speak,” she said.
Something about putting on the uniform, with the large “A&T” logo embroidered on the chest, “makes you feel powerful and it makes you feel like you can do anything,” she said. “If you love A&T like you’re supposed to,” she said, “you’re going to represent it like you should.”
The band met its first opponent, N.C. Central University’s Marching Sound Machine, Monday at the Classic. After weeks of hard work, show time had finally arrived. The energy began to build as the minutes to halftime ticked off the game clock.
“I’m glad this day is finally here,” Evans said before halftime. “We’ve been preparing a long time. It’s time to get something out of all that practice.”
In the stands during the performance, Aggies clapped and grooved.
“I think they’re great, always,” A&T alumna Ebony Ramsey said after the show. “Our band always has this crisp sound.”
For the band members, the love of the fans is the best reward.
“After putting in all the hard work ... seeing the crowd’s reaction for the show that you did is just really rewarding to me,” said Conner, the baritone leader. “It makes me and makes the whole band feel good that you can see someone excited about something you came up with from scratch.”
Their first shows behind them, the band will return to the drawing board, learning new music, dances and drills. More competition is on the horizon, and the Marching Machine never goes out unprepared.
“We go out there and give it our best every time we step on the field,” saxophone section leader D’Javon Alston said, “because that’s what Aggies do.”
Contact Lanita Withers at 373-7071 or lwithers@news-record.com
