Drum Corps-The Music of Summer
Drum Corps music is intense, rich, and exciting. Each summer the thousands of members of Drum Corps International throughout the United States prepare for a very intense and very personal performance season.
For decades a little known genre of music has been garnering a steadily growing legion of fans. The music of Drum Corps is addictive and exciting to watch.
In the last ten years the musical sport of drum corps (pronounced cores) has taken on a new life. Born with small groups of community drum and bugle corps dating back over a hundred years today's drum corps members come from every corner of the world. This is not your typical high school marching band performance, however. Today many drum corps have million dollar budgets and a rehearsal and performance schedule that runs year round. Yet drum corps performers are not professionals, they are students, all under the age of twenty one, with a passion and drive that can be more profound than the mystique of the world's most famous professional musician.
A drum corp's repertoire can be pulled from any genre of music, from jazz to country and from classical to pop. Their movements are precisely choreographed down to the inch and all of their music is memorized from start to finish. The movements and music can be changed dozens of times throughout the year and performance season as the directors of the group strive to bring out the most impressive performance possible. When you sit back as an objective observer and watch a performance of the larger drum corps you begin to see the mammoth task that these young musicians are undertaking. Dozens of people moving to hundreds of specific spots scattered across a one hundred yard long football field in exact rhythm and each one moving their body with military precision. There is no such thing as lip syncing in drum corps, they do all of these things while playing a horn or beating on a percussion instrument.
While the spectacle on the field is candy for the eyes, the thing that will bring you back year after year to drum corps performances is the music and the passion of the performers. When a drum corps is playing really good music and they are really into the performance you cannot help but feel the intensity and power. The brass sound is lush and the percussion rhythms are penetrating, often causing a physical and emotional response in the listener that literally pulls you into the performance. When the performance has finished and you look down at the faces of the drum corps members you see a look of pride and exhilaration that you will never see at a rock or classical music concert. Drum corps performances make you feel like you are a part of the show, and they never disappoint.
Most drum corps perform nearly every night of the summer. Regardless of where you live in the United States or Canada there is probably at least one drum corps performance near you between the months of June and early August. Drum Corps is difficult to appreciate without experiencing a performance in person. If you have the opportunity to see a competition this summer please do. You won't regret it.
For more information and summer performance schedules visit Drum Corps International
