Battle of the high-stepping bands

The Marching Panthers are mighty, but Thomas Warner wants them mightier.

“Stop!” the assistant director shouts, after one note -- the first note -- of Monday’s practice.

Answering the unspoken question, Why are we stopping? Warner’s megaphone crackles: “You know. You know.” A hundred-plus students at Clark Atlanta University, assembled outdoors in the cold CAU stadium for yet another two-hour practice, wait silently for clarification.

“That needs to be ten times what it was yesterday,” says director, James L. Camp, over Warner’s shoulder. He points to the chain-link behind him, “You need to knock me through this fence here.”

Again, the drum majors blow three quick bursts of the whistle, the band shouts in unison, “C! A! U!” and pounds out the sternum-flattening opening bars to its routine.

Camp, knocked through the fence, smiles.

The Panthers are preparing to join the fray in this weekend’s Honda Battle of the Bands, a yearly meeting of the best marching bands from historically black colleges and universities.

The Georgia Dome will host 60,000 fans cheering eight bands Saturday, including two from Georgia: The Panthers and Albany State University’s Marching Rams. And while musical guest Bow Wow, who will also perform, has greater name recognition, the bands are the stars of this show.

This is the 9th year of the Honda event, held in Atlanta each year. The city's position as a center of African-American education has also made it a center of the black marching band tradition: it was the setting for the movie "Drumline," which recently became a traveling stage show. Most of all, Atlanta appreciates the highly-choreographed, acrobatic art form, which has more to do with dancing than marching. Musicians don't just hit their marks on the field, they lean, bop, shimmy and strut. Dancers fly while drum majors perform ground-scraping back bends.

Theoretically, this battle is over. Since September some 45 bands from around the country have sought online votes to earn a place in Saturday’s showcase. Only eight made it to the big show. Each of the eight will win a $20,000 prize. But as far as Clark-Atlanta is concerned, the fight is still on.

“We are always competing to defend our home, which is the Dome, and Atlanta,” said Warren Shaw, who writes many of the arrangements for the band.

The band has been learning those arrangements, and the dance moves that go with them, since the beginning of the month, minus a week of practice lost to ice and snow and a few rained-out nights. This week the pressure is on. Despite the cold at Monday's practice, the students shed jackets. Sweat streams down the faces of drum majors Devin Barkley, Joseph McKinney and Prentice Scott.

When too many members fail to heed one of Warner's commands, the entire group is invited to do a round of 50 push-ups. It promotes discipline, Shaw says.

Camp considered using a familiar routine from the football season, but would rather start over.

“They work harder when it’s a new show,” said the 72-year-old leader. Camp has been with CAU for 13 years, after being coaxed out of retirement from his first career teaching band students at King Middle School.

"I'm getting too old for this," he complains happily. "I already retired once." But Camp looks relaxed and youthful, in a soft leather jacket and leather cap.

And as the band plays through old standards such as "Proud Mary" and newer arrangements, including Cee-Lo's "Forget You" and Charlie Wilson's "You Are," Camp seems ready to go to battle.