Marching Band's Got Culture!

So, my old high school band teacher put together an interesting marching show this year. She compiles her own shows and usually chooses interesting themes (while I was in high school we did shows from Final Fantasy VI, Halo 2, X-Men, and Cowboy Beebop, and has also done Rush). This year, she wanted to make a statement about how the internet and technology have dehumanized music. Here's the show if you'd like to watch it:

Reflecting on my high school marching band years with a digital culture lens gave me some insight into why this seems a little weird/meta to me.

I thought this negative view of technology (as de-humanizing music) was interesting, since the show itself could be considered a remix of other sources. And it's also interesting because the previous shows this very band did were based on video games, a movie, and a TV show. The music from those originators was adapted for band, but they were still very obviously borrowed and reused content from other media. Seems like a remix to me. And part of the fun was that we were putting pop culture in a new format: a marching band show.

Another element we tapped into was fan bases. Band kids are also known to play video games, and some of the best audience reactions we got were for our Final Fantasy VI show. I think that's because other highschoolers in the audience loved that we were speaking to them by remixing content they were already fans of (and it might've also been because we had a fight scene in it). Like a fan-to-fan communication. And that game has a very tight fan base. A YouTube posting of our Final Fantasy VI show got comments from other high schoolers that said they wished their school would play stuff that was interesting to the students. So YouTube let them talk about the show even though they weren't physically present when we performed.

I just thought those things were interesting. And as far as the Internet de-humanizing music? I think it does in some cases—I've heard enough songs die via auto-tuning—but it also allows us more ways to collaborate, like with HitRecord, Kickstarter, and Kompoz. And not to mention all the bandsyou and individuals that can showcase their ability on YouTube or their own blogs. Being able to communicate about music and collaborate over the Internet opens up new possibilities, even though it also creates opportunity for junk to be created and some music pieces to be demolished.