At Georgia State, brand new marching band

Its musicians won’t always dress like characters from “Star Wars” and Supermario Brothers; the brass and woodwind sections are just indulging in a spirited costume competition this evening. But it’s fitting that GSU’s band looks a little, well, unconventional. This isn’t a school of hedges and greenswards. It’s an urban school, hunkered in the concrete canyons and the multicolored chaos of downtown Atlanta.

Observing from a scissor-lift 25 feet above the field, director Chester Phillips tells his band: “You’ve learned 21 pages of drill. This is all but five pages of your whole show.”

“Whoo!” the marchers cry in celebration.

They’ve been practicing 10 hours a day in the punishing late summer heat, and the 141 members of the band are wilted, but stoked. As the elements of the band coalesce — auditions, uniforms, a color guard, a new fight song, new instruments — the members are experiencing the thrill that every cast does before an opening night performance. Theirs is Thursday at the Georgia Dome, when GSU takes on Shorter University.

And it’s a show that could run for a long time.

As university president Mark P. Becker casually reminded Phillips recently: “No pressure here, but what you’re going to do could last 100 years.”

‘It’s just fun’

Phillips, 33, a wiry Newnan High School graduate, was a featured trumpet soloist with the storied University of Georgia Redcoat Marching Band, so he knows about collegiate tradition.

“Something we’re going to be hearing all year is that we’re developing traditions, and that term makes me laugh,” said Phillips.

Traditions are old, and GSU’s band is so new it doesn’t even have a name, like the Redcoats, or FAMU’s Marching 100. On the other hand, every tradition has to start somewhere. “Anything you do can be called a tradition,” Phillips said.

One non-traditional tradition of this GSU band is that it has drawn its members from far and wide, including students enrolled at other colleges such as Kennesaw State and Perimeter College that don’t have bands of their own. And even from abroad.

Adrian Degonda, 24, an exchange student from Zurich’s University of Teacher Education, heard about the new band before he left Switzerland for a semester abroad. He auditioned from home via YouTube, playing the euphonium. He made the cut, and is delighted to be part of this all-American art form.

“Our goal is to make the audience crazy,” he said. “They don’t have marching bands in Switzerland.”

(Nor football either, we imagine. Except the kind with a round ball.)

Georgia State has a noted school of music, attracting about 400 undergraduates and 120 graduate students, many of whom go into music education, but some of whom become performers in jazz, pop and classical music. The school can claim a role in three Grammy-winning recordings this year.

One might not imagine classical musicians yearning to sweat in polyester uniforms under the hot Georgia sun while the drumline pounds their brains into Cool Whip. But in fact, some do.

“It’s just fun,” said trumpeter D.J. Creech, 21, a performance major, who spends his days parsing Haydn and Hummel and his evenings blasting “Jungle Boogie.”

“Second of all, it’s good to be a well-rounded musician, especially in this day and age,” Creech said. “You have to be able to play all styles.”

The Dacula High School grad is particularly happy that GSU provided brand-new Yamaha instruments for every member of the band, so he doesn’t have to worry about smacking his costly Bach Stradivarius trumpet against some errant tuba.

A recruiting tool

Fun has becomes a significant draw for the school. Plenty of freshmen chose GSU this year because they marched in high school bands and wanted the peak experience that is college football.

Erica Schiller, 18, a freshman from Stockbridge, played tenor drums at Dutch Town High School. When GSU announced it was forming a band for the fall of 2010, “that pretty much made my decision in coming here.”

Schiller now plays a stationary drum set as the anchor of GSU’s “rock band,” an innovative part of the larger band. With electric guitar, bass and synthesizer, the rock band stays in place, at the feet of the drum majors, and adds amplified rock and roll to the marching routines.

This expands the band’s musical possibilities (it will play tunes by Journey, Cold Play and Lady Gaga) but is problematic on rainy days. Luckily, all GSU home games will be played at the Dome, which means the band will be one of the few college ensembles playing under cover and in air conditioning.

The routines? Their first half-time show has a jungle theme, in keeping with the Panther mascot, and they’re busy developing songs to play while seated in the stands.

“The audience may not know who Beethoven is but they will know who the Black-Eyed Peas are, and we’ll play both,” said Jonathan Grogan, one of four drum majors.

Symbol of spirit

Is music tangential to college football? You might as well ask, is football tangential to college?

Just as football focuses and enhances the emotions of those who are otherwise gathered to get an education, a marching band gives voice to the spirit of those gathered to watch a game.

Every good church service needs music, and in the religion of college football, the marching band provides the hymns.

Alumni returning for reunions may feel their heartstrings tugged by the sight of the library, or a visit to their old dorm, but the tears will truly begin to flow when they hear the fight song. Even if, like GSU’s, it’s brand new:

Fight panthers to victory

Our voices yell,

You’ll hear us mighty and strong

We’re from the ATL

we’re gonna give them hell.

What becomes a tradition most?

“At the University of Georgia [the band is] 105 years old,” said Phillips. “We are not yet five days old. In 105 years we’ll see where we are.”