Marching Band Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Buckhannon Hosts International Music Competition

Marching and concert bands from across the world are in Buckhannon this week for an international competition.

Updated on Thursday, July 20, 2022 at 5:01 p.m.

The Swiss were marching down Main Street in Buckhannon Wednesday afternoon in anticipation of the opening ceremonies for the 2023 World Association of Marching Show Bands Competition later in the day. Marching and concert bands from across the world are in Buckhannon this week for an international competition.

Drummers tapped out a booming beat, punctuated by cries of “Do that funky groove,” as majorettes carried Swiss flags, all led by a baton-wielding band leader.

The WAMSB event, which also includes concert bands and drumlines, has attracted bands from 19 countries, including Colombia, Nigeria and Taiwan.

Randy Sanders, president of the WAMSB Buckhannon Host Committee Inc. said it’s only the second time in the competition’s 27 year history to be held in the U.S. The previous U.S. host was Palm Springs, California in 2017.

“This really is a big deal,” he said. “If you can buy a ticket, come to some of the events, support this. It’ll be a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Sanders said the international nature, as well as the music format, add to the unique experience.

“That’s why this is such a phenomenal competition, the different countries bring a little different flair to the way they present their marching band programs,” he said. “Marching show bands, they really put on a show.”

Buckhannon is no stranger to big events. The town has hosted the West Virginia Strawberry Festival for almost 90 years.

“When we put on an event, it’s always more of a festival than anything else,” Sanders said. “So we have a carnival. We have an entertainment stage with a lot of food vendors in the heart of our downtown in Jawbone Park.”

But Sanders says the marching bands are bringing international attention.

“You’ll be able to see all the competitions for free on the internet on livestream, so it’s gonna put the eyes of the world on our small town here Buckhannon West Virginia, USA,” he said.

The Twistmen Winds are led in a rehearsal by their founder Kel Law in the the Virginia Thomas Law Center for the Performing Arts July 19, 2023.

West Virginia Wesleyan is hosting many of the musical performances and competitions, as well as a few of the bands, on its campus. One of those is the concert band Twistmen Winds from Hong Kong.

The band’s leader Kel Law was leading his band in a rehearsal at the Virginia Thomas Law Center for the Performing Arts. Law says that in Hong Kong, his band wasn’t well supported, with neighbors often complaining when members practiced, especially during lockdown.

“Back in Hong Kong, we’re not really having any support,” he said. “We can’t, not really having like a venue, a grand hall, no, we can’t.”

But Law said his passion for music guided him to form the band, and continue growing it to the point where they could travel internationally and share their music.

“I love how people get together playing music, share the joy, and then travel around together because of music, come to West Virginia, tell the world that I’m here with my music,” he said.

Law had some of that passion returned Tuesday evening. He and others recounted how as bands arrived in Buckhannon, they ended up putting on a sort of showcase for each other, each band from across the world playing and in turn listening.

“They just show it all the way to you with their music, this really wonderful, really nice experience,” he said. “We are not need to talk. We can just feel it. You can feel the power of the story. This is really, really amazing.”

Law says he hopes attendants of the festival can experience something similar.

The competition events run through Sunday night July 23.

***Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include additional quotes from Randy Sanders, as well as the portion about the Twistmen Winds.

Marching Show Bands Championship To Be Held In Buckhannon

The World Association of Marching Show Bands is having its 2023 Championship in Buckhannon in Upshur County.

Seventeen bands will compete for the international title while three exhibition bands will also perform. Bands compete in areas of concert, field marching performance, drumline, and street parade.

“Buckhannon rolled their sleeves up and just worked hard to present the town and the infrastructure that we have to the international committee and convince them that Buckhannon would be the perfect place to host the 2023 World Association of Marching Show Bands competition” said Randy Sanders, president of the Buckhannon host committee.

This is the first time in six years the event is hosted in the United States and the first time hosted on the East Coast.

Countries represented are Canada, El Salvador, Germany, Honduras, Ghana, Poland, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United States, Hong Kong, Ireland, and Sweden.

Grammy Award winner Lee Greenwood, known for his song “God Bless the U.S.A.” will perform in the opening ceremony on July 19 and the U.S. Marine Drumline and Bugle Corps will perform for the official closing ceremony July 23 at 7pm.

The competition will take place July 17-24.

WVU Marching Band Celebrating 50 Years Of Women In Their Ranks

This college football season, West Virginia University’s marching band is recognizing 50 years since women entered their ranks.

The Mountaineer Marching Band started as a males-only military band in 1901. Back then, every man attending WVU was required to take at least one course in Military Science, and joining the band was a way to fulfill that requirement while continuing their interest in music.

Fast-forward to the early 1970s, and female students are participating in their high school marching bands across the country. But aside from a period during World War II, many collegiate marching bands still excluded women.

It was a point of contention for students like Joyce Dawley. She says pushing for opportunities for women to join collegiate marching bands was important to her as a music education major.

“That limited the scope of applying for jobs, you know, you couldn’t apply to high school, etcetera, if you had no marching band experience,” Dawley said.

Fellow student and eventual bandmate Angie Bowman says Dawley started a petition to allow women to join.

“They said that Penn State just allowed females in their band, marching band, and so we should be able to be in, so I signed the petition. And then soon after I received the letter about band camp,” Bowman said.

Dawley says she doesn’t remember exactly if she was the one who created the petition or not – but she also doesn’t doubt it.

The addition of women in the band coincided with the creation of Title IX, the famous law that banned gender discrimination at federally funded universities. But one of the first women in the band, Jill Cochran, says it also came from a push from the band’s then-new director, Don Wilcox.

“He’s the one who said ‘Let’s do it.’ The Dean of Women was not happy about this whole idea, especially the idea that we would go off to band camp at Camp Dawson in Preston County, with all of those… men,” Cochran said, adding a sarcastic gasp.

Now-Director of Bands Emeritus Don Wilcox is recognized as one of the driving forces to include women in the WVU band. He joined WVU as band director in 1971, with the Dirty Dozen signing up a season later.

Wilcox entered the position in 1971 and is credited with making much of the band’s style and presentation the way it is today. He’s now celebrated as the Director of Bands Emeritus by the WVU School of Music.

After sign-ups took place and acceptance letters were sent out, Cochran, Dawley, Bowman and nine other women made the trip to Camp Dawson for band camp. This inaugural class became known as the “Dirty Dozen,” a moniker the group took in stride. Dawley remembers excitement, not fear, at the opportunity.

“I wasn’t scared,” Dawley said. “I don’t know if any of us were afraid. We were like, empowered. Like, yeah, this is no big deal. We can do this. We’d done it in high school.”

Dawley says a lot of the men initially thought the new members wouldn’t be able to keep up – but that assumption changed quickly.

“It was an awareness of, oh, they’re not going to screw us up. So we’re okay. They’re going to add to it, they’re not falling down and fainting or whatever they expected,” Dawley said.

A page on the band’s website detailing its history says the 1971 season fielded an all-male band of only 88 members. But by the end of the decade, the band ballooned to around 280.

An aerial shot of the 1972 edition of the WVU band. Membership greatly increased by the end of the decade, partially because of the inclusion of women.

Eileen Smith Dallabrida, who joined the band during the ‘72 season but after that first band camp, says she thinks the addition to add women was also a matter of practicality.

“Having women in the band vastly expanded the pool of musicians of candidates. And by 1975, the fall of 1975, there were more people who wanted to be in the band than there were positions for them,” Dallabrida said.

For those original alumni, joining the marching band ended up giving them lifelong memories. Dallabrida says she remembers her first game and how proud she felt to be on the field.

“I remember the first game that we were all encouraged to literally let down our hair, so that people in the stands could see that there were some women – even though there weren’t very many of us – that there were women out on the field,” Dallabrida said.

In Angie Bowman’s case, she found her husband of nearly 50 years. She and her then-boyfriend Dale started dating after the ‘72 band camp and got married in the winter of 1974.

Angie and Dale Bowman are widely recognized as being the first married couple out of the WVU band.

“Mr. Wilcox always likes to remind my husband and I that we started something because we may have been the first marriage out of the band. But there have been many, many
matches since that,” Bowman said.

Today, the WVU marching band consistently hovers around the 300-member mark, and half of its members are women. Heather Miller, a fifth-year member of today’s band, says her interest in joining a big marching band was something passed down from her mother.

“It was one of the major reasons I wanted to go to a university when I was looking at education after high school,” Miller said. “When she marched in the early 90s, she was given that opportunity, which inspired me.”

Cochran says she’s in the middle of an Internet-wide search for the “Dirty Dozen” so they can meet and have dinner after this year’s Homecoming game.

“I’ve turned into Sherlock Holmes, sort of a modern day Sherlock Holmes, trying to chase people down through the Internet,” Cochran said. “When I get them on the phone, it’s as if, oh gosh, we haven’t talked for a month or two.”

Scott Tobias, Director of Bands at WVU, says that this year, the band is recognizing the anniversary during their Homecoming halftime show at the end of October, inviting those original alumni to be honored on the field.

“Sometimes you look at it as a historical event, and don’t think about what the ramifications of that event actually were or are,” Tobias said. “We’re acknowledging it, and we’re celebrating it, but we’re also looking at what that means today.”

Cochran says every time she visits Morgantown for Homecoming, she’s pointed out to the current members as one of the first women in the band. She appreciates this year’s celebration, but she just hopes the recognition inspires young women to continue to pave the way forward.

“They don’t believe that there could ever have been a time when women weren’t in the band,” Cochran said. “I don’t need to be on the Jumbotron and have somebody call out my name but I would like people to know that we did something, we tried to make the world a little bit better for you.”

Editor’s Note: Shepherd Snyder is a former member of the WVU marching band.

Buckhannon, W.Va. To Host 2023 World Marching Band Contest

A West Virginia community will host an international marching band competition next year. The World Association of Marching Show Bands will hold the championship event in Buckhannon from July 17 to 24, 2023.

A West Virginia community will host an international marching band competition next year.

The World Association of Marching Show Bands will hold the championship event in Buckhannon from July 17 to 24, 2023.

“We are absolutely thrilled to bring this event to West Virginia and to heighten the exposure of our beautiful region and state to new audiences,” Randy Sanders, president of the association’s Buckhannon host committee, said in a statement.

Applications have been submitted so far by 47 bands from 24 nations to compete in several disciplines, including marching performance, jazz, symphonic, percussion and auxiliary dance.

This year’s event will be held July 11 to 16 in Bangkok, Thailand. The 2020 and 2021 championships were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The statement said the only other time in the event’s 26-year history that the competition was held in the United States was in Palm Springs, California, in 2017.