Marching Band Definition

Although the actual game is usually the key focus during football games, there are many other integral parts that make up the game day experience. Next to football, the marching band is a main act that is a big part of the overall experience. From the high school level all the way up to the college level, marching band has become a competitive and admired aspect of football games. If you look up at the stands of a football game with a marching band playing, you can more often times than not find fans singing and dancing along to the music that is hyping up both the players and the crowd. The days of cheerleaders being the sole sideline entertainment are long gone. Now the cheerleaders share the stage with the marching band in order to provide

that excitement and exhilaration for those who attend the games.
This is more prominently seen at the college level. Game days are an integral part of the average college students’ experience. The marching band can be seen opening the game and setting the mood. They get the players and fans hyped for the teams’ soon to be success. They carry this energy throughout the game by teaming up with the cheerleaders and performing certain songs during different events in a game. Just when the excitement may be dying down, they pick the crowd and team back up with their half time performance. All of this, however, does not just come about spontaneously. The marching band works together as a group that can be classified a discourse community in order to achieve this game day experience.
The concept of a discourse community was introduced to us by John Swales, a professor of linguistics who studies literacies as a career. Swales argues that speech communities and discourse communities do indeed differ from each other. You can be literate in aspects of life other than reading and writing, and with that, formations of communities arise. Unlike a speech community, which simply has linguistic rules in common, a discourse community has a common area of ideas and goals that bring members together. These formed groups share six characteristics that by Swales’ definition is what makes a groups of individuals a discourse community.
Using that definition, college marching bands can be considered an example of a discourse community.

It is evident that a college marching band, as a group, has a set of common goals that they want to reach. As a team, they want to provide entertainment for those going to the games by playing their music. Their aim is to set an encouraging tone throughout the duration of the game. The group has a way of communicating to each other and participatory mechanisms that truly make them active members. Even more specific to their team, they have their specific lexis, or vocabulary, and genre that they possess a level of understanding far above that of an outsider.As for differences in ranks of members, there are many for this specific discourse community. The team contains members of all different diversities in majors, race, age, and experience. The highest rank can be seen with their director, professor, and head coach, Professor Reese. From there we have the assistant athletic director, the TA’s, the section and student leaders, the band members themselves, as well as the Hurricanettes and the Color

guard.
After observing the marching band first hand, a huge theme stood out to me: division. There are multiple clear divisions in the team. The Hurricanettes and the Color Guard are two separate divisions in the team that are most often not even thought of as a part of the team. The division that stood out to me most prominently, however, would be the fact that the drum line practices separately. Although they seem like a direct part of the team since they play instruments as well, they rarely practice with the team as a whole.Groups and their effectiveness have been studied as a wholes, but is it possible for a group to work effectively when there are so many divisions? What is it that makes this team with several divisions so effective and successful?

I observed the group on October 14th, 2015 during one of their regular 4:00pm practices. The marching band starts every practice with their warm up which involves a series of activities that will get them started before they begin practicing their drill formations and playing with instruments in hand. At first glance it seems like the whole team is there together, but within minutes you hear the drum line playing from a distance. Then you notice that the Color Guard and the Hurricanettes are doing different warms ups from the rest of the team. From this point on most of the practice is ran like this. Half way through, the Color Guard and Hurricanettes begin to practice with the rest of the marching band, but the drum line remains separate Among all of the team separations, there are also several divisions of leadership for each separate entity of the team. Adding all of these divisions up however, leads to a cohesive performing group.
After further analyzing the data collected during my observation as well as conducting an interview with a member of the marching band, I argue that there are specific differences that allow the marching band to be classified as one effectively functioning team despite their divisions. All team members share the same common goal and means of achieving that goal the fact that the groups practice separately does not take away from what binds the individuals into a one cohesive group.

For instance, let us take a look at the drum line subdivision specifically. As previously mentioned, even though the drums are a type of instrument, the drum line practices completely separated from the other three subdivisions. Upon conducting the initial observation the purpose of this set up seems unclear if not unnecessary. To an outsider, it does not make sense as to why you would separate a group from a category it is usually classified under. Those involved in the marching band however, know and understand the varying responsibilities each group has to fulfill in order to create the end product we see at the games. Jordan Craft, a freshman and first year member of the University of Miami marching band, helped me get that insider understanding of exactly why it is essential to separate the drum line from the rest of the group during practice. When I asked Craft why separating the drummers, as opposed to the other instruments, is an effective strategy for the team he explained,
Well drummers, the drum line itself practices on its own because they do things somewhat different from everyone else. Usually the different practices are the guard practices separate from the band, the drummers practice separately and the Hurricane dancers practice separately. Most of the reason is that the drummers do things that don't always involve us. There are drum line battles when we visit other schools. Even in some life they march around up in the concession stands without the band. A lot of the stands tunes, there's cadences that the drums do that don’t involve the band. In practicing separately it allows them to build what they need and us to build what we need and be able to meet in the middle for group practices.
Although the division of the groups outwardly seems to be creating disorder, it is actually bringing order to the team in several ways.

Rather than trying to figure everything out as big unorganized group, the team is separated, fine tuned, and put back together.

Similarly, in a case like this, divisions amongst leadership are also necessary in order to run an effective team. It would be near to impossible to prepare such a big group together at once under the oversight of one sole figure of authority. When I asked Craft about his thoughts on the division of leadership he responded with ,

It definitely helps because it stops from going to Professor Reese with every problem. It gives us a spot where we can go to someone who is closer to our level. Someone who is a student with us or we have class with. It helps working out problems without bothering someone higher up. It gives us many different levels to work at.

With all of these divisions and their separate leaders, it allows problems to be solved faster rather than having one person having the solutions and a line full of problems waiting to be addressed. As I analyzed the marching band further and further it became clear that these divisions were created in order to get the group to where they are today: an effective and successful team that provides quality entertainment at the football

games.
My findings show overall that not only can you have divisions successfully work in a group, but that in a group such as this one it is almost pertinent. There are simply too many people and too many different types of groups in the marching band to work together from the very beginning. Creating these divisions allows the team to build up and work to be that cohesive team you see out on the field during half time. Without the divisions and their different leaders, the band would not be as effective. Problems would be a lot harder to fix and each section would not receive as much attention as they need in order to reach their full potential.