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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3363
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2009 - 02:34 pm: | 
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(Well, one is a drumline...)
BRANDON can’t stop drumming.
After rehearsal, when his drum and sticks are packed away, he uses his hands — on the table, on the floor, on the walls.
He drums in his room. He drums at meals. He drums with chunky fingers flying against his desk, even if the teacher shoots him a stern look. Brandon drums because on Tuesday he will march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, in the parade following the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
“That’s such a big thing, to march and be there to see the first black president. Seriously. I’m a little nervous, but practicing will make me better,” Brandon, 17, said the other day, with three rehearsals to go. “I see us doing great. People will like us.”
It’s an unbelievable, unlikely, undreamed-of honor for a boy like him and the 15 others who will be marching alongside him. They are residents of the Bonnie Brae Residential Treatment Center, a rural campus here housing 98 boys ages 8 to 18 who cannot live in the community at large because of what the state calls “psychiatric and behavioral challenges.” Nearly 80 percent were abused, neglected or abandoned, and failed to adjust to traditional foster care. Fifteen percent do not have homes in the traditional sense and are wards of the state. Some ended up at Bonnie Brae because they got in trouble with the law. They stay an average of 16 months.
Others might not have considered the Bonnie Brae Knights ready for national exposure, but the Presidential Inaugural committee chose them to march in the historic event, and millions of people will be watching. It’s a Cinderella story, about a ragtag group of kids who loved making noise, but didn’t have a clue about precision or style....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/nyregion/new-jersey/18Rbandli.html
Then there is the Showtime Marching Band:
On Tuesday, Howard University's Showtime Marching Band will high-step into history with the newly sworn-in 44th president, Barack Obama.
Howard's band is one of only six from historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, selected to play in the 56th inaugural parade.
More than 1,300 groups applied to be in this year's parade; 90-plus groups are expected to perform.
Howard's band director, John Newson, has been in charge of the Showtime Marching Band for 22 years. The group has performed in music videos, NFL halftime shows and Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
But this was the first time Newson ever applied to be in an inaugural parade.
"I'm not a parade person," he tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Liane Hansen. "And don't get me wrong, we've done major parades [with] Macy's and so forth before. But this was one that I felt that I personally wanted to do."
Newson, who decided in August he wanted the band to participate, shuns any notion that he applied early because he thought Obama was going to win.
"I'm just a good pray-er that's all," he said....
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99467288 |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3369
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2009 - 05:46 pm: |
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Another marching band story:
Florida A&M University's Marching 100 has been selected to participate in the president's inaugural parade Tuesday. This will be the high-stepping band's third appearance in an inaugural parade. But this time, the band, from a historically black college, feels more of a sense of history.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99561291 |
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