We do it because we love it. That, and we'd be crazy if we didn't.
Drum Corps International is a competitive circuit of professional marching bands from around the country. These different corps go head to head at contests over the course of three months, performing at high school stadiums in a great majority of the 50 states.
It’s basically high school marching band on steroids. Except, it isn’t.
Sure, it has some similarities, but DCI is so much more hardcore. The performers’ love for the activity is so advanced they endure conditions close to ten times worse than high school students do, only to get the same amount of credit.
DCI is essentially the Super Bowl of the marching band world – but it isn’t recognized enough.
As a performer who is experienced in both levels of the art, I understand the struggle when someone posts a video of a synth player performing with her corps captioned, “This girl is way too into her marching band’s show!!!”.
No. Just, no.
That girl probably payed close to $3000 to spend her summer with a World Class corps, sleeping on an air mattress on gym floors, rehearsing 10-14 hours a day, everyday, for the entire months of June, July, and August.
It’s incredibly degrading when the amount of work we put into this activity is underestimated immensely, by people who don’t care to learn the difference between a trumpet and a tuba.
Here’s the thing: We audition for the corps of our dreams in November and December. In the event that we’re good enough, that all of our practice and hard work over the past couple of months or years pay off, we have to save up paychecks and tips to be able to afford this opportunity; An opportunity of a lifetime.
We shell out thousands of dollars a season to sleep in a smelly gym in an unfamiliar high school, roast our skin in the 100 degree sun, in the middle of July in Texas, do laundry twice a month, and not get near enough sleep.
We go back home at the end of August, take way too long adjusting back to normal civilian life, and go through post-tour depression when we’re separated from the 149 other people we’ve grown to recognize as family.
We go through all of that, and then go back to it all over again and again until we age out of the activity at 21.
Why do we do it? For bragging rights? No. To get paid? Absolutely not.
For the wicked tan we get after tour?… Maybe.
We do it, because we love it. We love the activity and the people we’ve made bonds with while we polished our horns.
We do it because our love for music has no end.
We do it because we’d be crazy if we didn’t.
I think that’s a great reason to get the recognition and respect we deserve. Don't you?
