(School) War Bands

This is the English version of a post (in Spanish) published on May 19, 2007.

Today I was in one of the schools where I do Astronomy lessons, waiting for my students to begin a workshop. Unavoidably, my attention was focused to a section of the school’s backyard, because in that moment (actually, every Saturday) the School War Band was training.

I never understood why it is called “War Band” to those group of students with trumpets, drums and flutes. I understand it’s called Band, but not the “War” prefix! Is it supposed that they are going to fight with punching to other school’s War Band? Is it supposed they are going to fight? Are they going to demonstrate that their students are better than those from another school?

It stinks to me. Because they are approaching, in a clever way, to a standard of “order” or “discipline” more related with the military, so if you consider that, in my opinion, military=weapons=war=death=stupidity, I believe that that order and discipline shouted  by those people are perverted concepts, because I think that be ordered and disciplined in life has nothing to do with “stand up straight”, “synchronized march”, “don’t fail” or “obey everything without questioning”. At School War Bands that’s pretty typical, especially when a students make a mistake with an instrument, it is not standing straight, out of sync with the others, etc. Well, they look exactly like an Army Band, and that kind of music is the same from military marches! Oops, I think I prefer the Imperial March from Star Wars.

I will summarize from my today’s experience. Let’s put aside that any Band’s music it’s horrible for me and actually, just noise, even if it’s a bit synced (OK, synced noise), I think this is the first time I see a Band training in a mixed School, men and women (I was in a Catholic School, only men); actually, it was a bit impacting for me to watch that the person using the larger drum (from my ignorance, I guess that is the most important instrument, because it sounds louder and it’s clearly identified compared to the rest) was a girl! I hope not to sound like a male chauvinist (I would need an entire post to argue that I’m not one of them), but I think that in coherence with my “military=weapons=war…” sequence, and trying to understand that the stupidity comes from a misunderstood virility and a poorly used testosterone, the least I could hope for was that the person hitting the large drum (the most important and louder instrument) is a guy trying to look like “very male” or “stronger” (at least in my school was in that way) .But… not this time. The person in charge of the drum was a 17-year-old girl, and I don’t deny that she can be as skilled and able to do it compared to a guy, but it was very weird for me (at least, the girls playing the flutes were more discrete).

It is curious, as well, that people really like to see School War Bands (same as they enjoy watching military bands). At least in my city, people crowd in the streets when the students are performing a parade, headed by the band. I never was part of the band, but every year I had to participate in the parade because it was almost mandatory, and even if it wasn’t too uncomfortable to do it (except for being very tired at the end after walking so many streets), I think I always opted to be a rebel to follow the “rules”: I never sang the National Anthem (actually, I never do it), I never was too synchronized, most of the time I was walking (not doing that stupid “left, left, left, right, left”) and I wasn’t looking straight ahead (actually I was inspecting, curious, the faces of all that people watching us, a lot of students with uniform and suffering the hot weather).

I think parades are a bit lower level of “military” compared to the bands, but I don’t like them either. Although schools can say that this is a way to “show” their students to the community, I think that using traditions from those people whose main objective is to handle weapons, to kill and trying to make us believe that “virility” is a synonym of being tough or insensible, is not the best option. If a school wants to show how great/better are their students compared to others, in intelectual terms, I guess they can use the SIMCE tests or PSU trials used in Chile, mathematics Olympiads, grammar contests or science fairs; if they want to show how good are their students in other areas, they could use sport championships, chorus groups, acting groups, music or gym; or, if the school really wants to just show how “beautiful” are their students, better they could send copies of its yearbook to the entire city!