State of TSA Banding - Part 1

Last October a fellow Salvationist asked why banding in the Toronto area has dramatically declined. I cannot speak of the state of any particular band but in most divisions across the continent Salvationist brass musicians under the age of thirty has declined. The decline has been evident for twenty years across much of the Canadian Territory and American territories. Corps bands with solid traditions are a shell of their former glory, and it appears the decline will continue for another ten to fifteen years.

Since that luncheon conversation my thoughts have distilled by drawing upon four decades of observations and personal experience with banding. To that I add what I see in the lives of my two sons, each of whom has been moving in different directions regarding Salvation Army banding. The one son became more tied to the Army through banding while his younger brother a declining interest in Army banding.

1. Cultural changes: Many people are too quick to point to fault cultural changes. If culture is at fault, whey do high school and college band programs with good music programs still have robust programs.

Cultural impacts upon musical expression within the Church cannot be doubted. Its impact is more upon styles and expression than upon the number of young people learning to play brass instruments. Every generation of Salvationists has faced changes in musical styles. When they changes have been embraced and our musical styles found exciting young people have wanted to be apart of banding. I would not agree that culture is one of the top factor behind the decline of Army banding.


2. Canadian Staff Band (any Staff Band): Apparently some fault the CSB for the decline in the Toronto. To those who hold such a view I would ask, if the CSB is to blame, why then the significant decline in banding across the country and in the USA which are well beyond the CSB's immediate sphere of influence? The CSB is an easy escape goat, but a fallacious one. Granted, the decline has taken place subsequent to the reestablishment of the CSB. The CSB has not created a decline in Corps banding any more than the National Capital Band is the cause for the poor state of banding in the Washington area. The Cap Band, nor any staff band’s mandate is to train and equip young brass instrumentalists. Such bands are at the top of the food chain and they will be as healthy as the system that feeds them, as system which is clearly in decline.


3. Decline in brass players below the age of thirty is a demographic shift: The Salvation Army’s music program rests upon a large cadre of men and women who view banding as an avocation and as an expression of their spirituality. This pool has decreased as the average ages in our congregations have increased. Banding is declining because our congregations have declined. Historically, far more young people were still playing into their middle teens than adults who were retiring. And within the pool of players rising in the ranks to fill bands were a sufficient nucleus of good to excellent players. This is pattern is no longer taking place.


4. New congregations lack an emphesis upon banding: This is a cause but not a sole cause. Our newest congregations tend to have contemporary worship styles where bands are not stressed. Such contemporary groups could utilize brass players and such congregations could still foster music development via solos and other small ensembles but elect not to do so.


To be continued next blog

"Your Mundane Life Would Be Ruined If I Go to Jail"

Jenn in a blog noted the sentencing of Paris Hilton’s. Last week the California judge sentenced part-time pop star and rich heiress Paris Hilton to 45 days in jail for driving twice with a suspended license. Hilton's first defense was to blame her minion/publicist claiming he told her it was just fine for her to get behind the wheel. The publicist quit her employ, only be to be hired back days later. When the judge refused to let Elliot take the fall, the spoiled heiress argued the awarded punishment was cruel and unusual, that she was being singled out and given a harsher judgment than others. Her argument made her look foolish as her sentence was in keeping with other cases.

Now she has changed her strategy by asking her fans to flood California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to pardon her because she provides "beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives." Wow, what a defense. She is too beautiful to go to prison. Being in prison people who rely upon seeing her would be denied such pleasure and would wallow in a joyless life without her. The reality is that Ms Hilton is a spoiled rich brat who has believed her own publicity material, who thinks that she lives by a different standard and that the laws of the land do not apply to her as they do to others.

Hopefully prison life for 45 days will burst her bubble and cause her to get a life. Unfortunately, I fear that she will forever maintain how unfair she has been treated. She will remain arrogant, haughty and aloof. While I blame her for her arrogant, haughty aloof self-important attitude, in statements made by her parents I find myself blaming them as well having attitudes that lead to their daughter’s thoughts.

Jonathan and Cap Band

Yesterday evening Jonathan flew to Michigan for a National Capital Band trip. The Cap Band is a guest band for the Tulip Festival. The band has been busy since Febraury. Since they have spent a weekend recording a CD, a weekend in Christiansburg, had to gather to have their pictures taken and now a weekend in Michigan. On top of this, Thursday morning the band flies to Switzerland for four days before traveling to France for six days.

Below is one of the latest pictures of the band that I took in the lobby of National Headquarters.

Civil Discourse and Talk Radio

The intense heat of the political summer is still a year away. Yet, the rhetoric and fervor is already hot. Talking heads and pundits are tracking each move. For the most part I am not paying attention to what the candidates themselves are saying or how they are jockeying themselves in the field. Though I am not paying attention to specific Presidential candidates,

I spend hours at a time traveling the highways and listening to XM radio. When I want a good laugh I will listen to talk radio. The other day I listened to one show on terrestrial radio. He pontificated and joked with his audience regarding the quality of his intellect and the correctness of his views. He belittled those of the opposite side with degrading comments and oversimplifications. Those with opposing views were demonized. He repeatedly took a statement made by a Democrat and extended to be applicable to all Democrats. He argued that there is a great conspiracy afloat that he is seeking to expose. If a caller called to question a point he would cut him off before the caller could finish his/her point by peppering the caller with tangential and irrelevant questions. All the while the person spoke of the lack of civil discourse in Washington.

That same day I listened to another person on XM who was doing the same thing. Repeatedly she railed on and on about the viciousness of the conservative talk radio. She demonized them and would take wild comments by a Republican as Republican dogma.

That which I heard from the liberal talk radio personality was along the same vein as the conservative personality. Both individuals had wild uncontrolled passion filled bitterness and anger. Fortunately, there are few commentators and personalities who are of such extremes as Rush Limbaugh and Randi Rhodes. Both need to get a life and stop taking themselves seriously. Unfortunately, talk radio does not have enough commentators who help foster civil discourse and seek to bring clarity to issues. Though they are not good sources of news and truth or civil discourse, they are good for a laugh and outside the criminal realm serve as good examples of the baseness of human life.

Lou Dobbs and Faith Community

This evening Lou Dobbs on CNN was railing about some Church officials should not comment upon or advocated for illegal amnesty. Lou Dobbs is an intelligent man with whose intellect I would not measure. While I may agree somewhat with his views on various issues including one of his main hobby horses, boarder control, I strongly disagree with his position that those of faith, including its leaders must remain silent and muzzled.

Faith if properly understood is more than piety. Faith is part of one’s life. Faith shapes one’s values and passions. It challenges us how we interact and treat each other, and how we conduct business. Faith calls for justice, both in the courtroom and in the boardroom.

The faith community is part of the overall community. It is a corporate citizen that like any other body should speak out. What the learned and informed Mr. Dobbs seems to have overlooked is that there are a host of those in the religious community, including religious leaders, who hold his views.

Faith if it is to be dynamic and true must interact with the issues of the day. Its practitioners must listen with there heads and hearts to the dialogue. In faithful reflection they must weigh out sets of biblical principles and interpretations in seeking how one should look at an issue.

Lou Dobbs is alarmed when religious leaders speak to the faithful and encourage their people to take a look at an issue from a particular point of view. He sees that the Church are interfering improperly in the business of the nation and that such interference is not only improper but insane.

He and his staff even push pulled a survey to demonstrate that 93% of viewers hold that religion should not be involved in pushing a political agenda. What would be the result if the church had not been involved in political debate and pushed particular issues in the last two hundred and fifty years. It was the faith community that pushed and political agenda for the funding of public schools. It was the faith community that pushed the agenda end slavery. It was the faith community the promoted and pushed the need for higher education. It was the faith community that pushed public hygiene agendas and public health. It was the faith community that pushed the agenda of limiting unfettered monopolies and robber barrens. It was the faith community that pushed the civil rights agenda, including voting rights and school integration. Would Lou Dobbs wish to argue that the nation would have been better off if the faith community had not spoken out on these issues?

The faith community nor its leadership is a monolith. I cannot concur with the Dobbs on this issue and hold that his position is untenable when understood within the context of history. The Church should not determine political outcomes or seek to rule. Yet its voice should be heard just as Mr. Dobbs’ voice and positions are heard across the airwaves. In conclusion of my views of Lou Dobbs’ position I would use one of his common phrases, “that is insane.”