MARCHING BAND CHIC: “One Time in Band Camp…”

Is it just me, or has 2006 been the year of the marching band? Here's my evidence:

-- A college marching band plays a big role in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. Dave shuttles the youngsters from Central State University in his home base of Ohio all the way to Brooklyn to perform at the event. Their enthusiasm is infectious and their rendition of “Jesus Walks” is one of the highlights of the film. And at the Grammies earlier this year, Kanye himself (along with Jamie Foxx) dressed up in a marching-band outfit and performed “Gold Digger” with college musicians from Florida A&M.

-- Outkast’s single "Morris Brown" from their new soundtrack album Idlewild is named after Atlanta’s Morris Brown College's Marching Wolverines, who provide the beat and the horns to this joyous and inventive track. The chorus includes the lines: “My heart is like a marching band, I’m a fan in the stands.”

-- Stones Throw Records recently released a slamming 2-disc collection, Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974, by the Kashmere Stage Band, who were an outrageously funky high-school band from Houston’s Kashmere neighborhood. A “stage” band was slightly different than a traditional “marching” band, in that it was modeled after a jazz big band. But Kashmere’s sound was more James Brown than Benny Goodman. Check it out. Highly recommended.

-- Earlier this year, there was a series on BET called Season of the Tiger about members of the Grambling State University football squad and marching band.

-- Even in the rock world, bands like My Chemical Romance have been performing in marching-band garb.

-- Part of the renewed interest in music from New Orleans that we’ve seen in the year following Hurricane Katrina has involved an appreciation of Crescent City brass bands.

Now, I know marching bands have been hot for a while (probably since the movie Drumline came out in 2002), and songs ranging from Destiny Child’s “Lose My Breath” (04) to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” (05) have incorporated drumline sounds. But something new is definitely in the air. Perhaps we have arrived at a cultural moment where the generation weaned on hip-hop is starting to grow weary of programmed drums, etc., and so they are drawn to the modern marching-band mixture of current hip-hop sounds with old-fashioned instruments like cymbals and French horns?