Among African Americans, Florida A & M University is the fountainhead of marching band culture. The band's fame is national, but it has special meaning and influence in Atlanta, where several of its alumni direct marching bands of their own at area high schools.
"All these marching bands have copied FAMU, which is why the majority of these band directors are from FAMU," said Atlantan Scotty Barnhart, noted jazz musician who was recruited to play trumpet at FAMU and went on to become a protege of Wynton Marsalis and a soloist for the Count Basie Orchestra.
For this and other reasons, Atlanta is focused on the fate of the FAMU Marching 100 -- a fate that continues to evolve more than three weeks after the death of Atlantan Robert Champion, a drum major who died on the team bus Nov. 19. Champion reportedly had been forced to walk a gauntlet of punches from his colleagues after dropping the baton during the half-time performance.
Thursday, FAMU trustees reprimanded school president James Ammons. Band director Julian White, who had earlier been fired, is now on administrative leave while the university probes the hazing allegations.
Though the university has canceled all band activities, it reinstated four students who were dismissed after Champion's death. Two of them, Jonathan Boyce and Shawn Turner, are Atlantans.
Arguably, Atlanta has done even more than Tallahassee to enlarge the reputation of FAMU and other black marching bands. Every year Atlanta hosts the Honda Battle of the Bands, pitting the best HBCU bands against each other at the Georgia Dome, while area high school bands stage a similar contest in Philips Arena. And Atlanta gave birth to "Drumline," the 2002 movie produced by FAMU alum Don Roberts, now director of instrumental music in DeKalb County schools.
Roberts was recruited to FAMU by alum Alfred Watkins, who directs the nationally-recognized band at Lassiter High School in Cobb County. Roberts in turn encouraged James Seda, who now leads the equally-successful band at Southwest DeKalb High School, to attend FAMU.
Under Seda, Southwest DeKalb's band booster president, Reggie Brayon, went on to produce a stage show based on Roberts' movie called "Drumline Live" that has been touring for three years through the U.S., Japan and Korea.
"Atlanta is just rich in music and rich in that [marching band] tradition," said Brayon. "Atlanta, has 200- and 300-member bands, and other cities can’t fathom that, they can’t get 50-member bands."
Champion's death brought national attention to the issue of hazing at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and surprised many who thought hazing was reserved for fraternities, not for marching bands.
Barnhart, 47, said he never saw hazing in the band, but that those who followed him seem to have imported the tradition from the Greek letter fraternities. "This is a completely different generation than it was 30 years ago," he said. "Their parents didn't put the belt on them" -- and they aren't afraid of anyone, including their teachers or their parents, he said.
But in fact, election to an HBCU band, particularly the Marching 100, is a prize for which many young musicians are willing to suffer. "The drum major there might be the kind of big man on campus that the quarterback would be elsewhere," said Gregory Roberts, executive director of the American College Personnel Association. The acceptance of hazing "goes to show you the lengths to which people will go to be accepted."
To understand the intensity of devotion to the band, it helps to see the band's impact on the black college experience.
Outside the black community, awareness of the Clark Atlanta Marching Panthers, or the Grambling State Tigers, or the Tennessee State Aristocrats is usually limited to an appearance at a Bowl game or in a Thanksgiving Day parade. But for many African Americans, the band is an avenue into higher education.
Ormond Moore, 23, of Mableton, said playing the saxophone at Pebblebrook High School helped cover tuition at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
"For me it was the only means for mom to pay," said Moore, now assistant director of bands at R.L. Osborne High School in Marietta. "If I hadn't received a band scholarship, I probably would have never gone to college."
Administrators at HBCUs also depend on the images of flying drum majors and dazzling uniforms to help grab attention for their schools. "If you take a look at many of the fundraising and admissions brochures for our nation’s HBCUs, one thing becomes clear: Sports and the marching band are valued," wrote Marybeth Gasman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies black colleges, in a blog entry.
At FAMU the band is so deeply identified with the school, its image is on the school's home page. The band helps earn the school money, and in turn, hands out scholarships to students who are vigorously recruited, many from Atlanta high schools.
Its cachet is such that even Barnhart, who now teaches jazz studies at FAMU's chief rival, Florida State University, still calls FAMU "the best marching band in the world."
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