BOA Nationals: Springs Valley, French Lick, Ind.

INDIANAPOLIS (Nov. 14, 2009)—The flat-out best entertainment today for your money is marching band, I’m sure you would agree. Hence we have the Bands of America Grand National Championships, where the entertainment starts at 7:30 on a Saturday morning with the semi-final performance by the marching band from Springs Valley High School in French Lick, Ind.

However, in 19th-century America, the hottest seat in town would have been as close to a great orator as you could get, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Daniel Webster. Although speeches in this period of American history were in fact the greatest thing going, entertainment wasn’t the main purpose of the speakers.

“The orator in his purpose and technique is primarily persuasive rather than informational or entertaining,” the Encyclopedia Britannica writes. “An attempt is made to change human behaviour or to strengthen convictions and attitudes. The orator would correct wrong positions of the audience and establish psychological patterns favourable to his own wishes and platform.”

That sounds a lot like what teachers try to do today, so Springs Valley takes that idea and runs with it in a show entitled “Lasting Impressions” that honors teachers. It’s like having your cake and eating it too:

The marching band entertainment side involves the nearly flawless execution of the Blackhawk Brigade. The oratory entertainment side involves quotes, mostly from Emerson, that line the field on little signs.

Emerson may have been making an analogy about oratory when he said, “A singer cares little for the words of a song. A good singer will make any words glorious.” (See the article in the New York Times.) However, he must have just known that marching bands in 2009 would perform pretty much the same trick: from the 34 bands in the semi-finals, we hear Rock and Bach, Stravinksy and swing dancing, all of it, every last note, glorious.

That is, Springs Valley takes music they were given, courtesy of people like Jeremy Trusty, and turns it into something entertaining on a Saturday morning, just as the great American orators used to do. The Web site for the Cavaliers Drums Corps, based in Rosemont, Ill., says about Mr. Trusty, “This person appears to be a pseudo-normal member of the public, an adoring fan, an admirer from afar, one of those without whom we wouldn’t have a chance. And we appreciate it. This is one way of saying that this person doesn’t appear to have any special roles or responsibilities on this site—yet.”

Again, quoting from a speech Emerson gave in Concord, Mass., back in 1875:

The most hard-fisted, brawny laborer sometimes turns out, in a public assembly, to be a fluent and effective orator. He is filled with a certain creative heat which perhaps comes to him only once in his life. Whenever there is grand eloquence, there is great accumulation of heat, which expands all the faculties into power. Every man may have that experience once.

In reminding us, then, of the magic of the orators, Springs Valley shows us a thing or two about marching band. There’s a special quality that draws fans back every year, that continues to evolve musically and dramatically, and that keeps students participating at higher levels in schools from those Emerson would describe as “hard-fisted” to those he would describe as “eloquent.”

Also quoting Emerson, the messages on the signs for Springs Valley say things like, “To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” Give it a few years: the “lasting impressions” of teachers’ success in French Lick will be the hard-working young adults before us on the field.

The Blackhawk Brigade is directed by Luke Aylsworth; drum majors are Elise McElroy and Morgan Elmore. The marching band has been named state champion once and runner-up three times.