Aspiring musical excellence at NGU
Joy Till, Contributing Writer
Hearing the roar of the cheering crowd as sweat drips down your face after holding the last note at the end of your breath is an amazing, adrenaline-inducing feeling almost every high school marching band member has experienced at the end of a performance at least once.
Some of these high schoolers chase this feeling to the extreme after graduation to audition and participate in Drum Corps International (DCI), a fulfilling, exciting, and competitive tournament of drum corps across the nation.
This year at NGU, many students are auditioning and being contracted to participate in many different corps. These students who try out and earn a spot in the bands are determined, hard-working, talented, and eager to perform their best for thousands of people on tours across the country. A few NGU students auditioning for drum corps this year were excited to share what participating in drum corps means to them.
NGU Junior Shane Smith, auditioning for Santa-Clara Vanguard (SCV), said that many students trying out this year is partially due to the age limit for DCI. Young adults age out of being able to participate in drum corps once they’re 21 years old. Many aspiring to do drum corps go for it and audition when it’s their last chance. That was one of Smith’s main reasons for auditioning for the first time this year. Smith said that it’s been his dream since middle school to march in a DCI corps, and now that he’s aging out next year, trying out for it this year is his last chance before he’s too old for the requirements.
NGU Junior Acie Sistrunk, auditioning for Carolina Crown, said that knowing friends who participated in DCI drew him into wanting to audition as well. Sistrunk said he thinks so many people are auditioning for DCI at NGU this year because one of our members of the NGU marching band, Christopher Marbut, made it into a drum corps last year. Sistrunk described the realization for many students after Marbut was contracted as “Oh, this is like a tangible thing. This isn’t some separate world we’re not allowed to be in.” Sistrunk also credited NGU sophomore Blake Childs, who joined the marching band last year, as another inspiring reason for more students to try out for drum corps this year.
Smith added that another reason why many are auditioning this year is because DCI might not be around for much longer. With the costs of audition packets, camps, plane tickets and tuition fees rising, drum corps will need to become for-profit organizations. DCI, being a non-profit, is currently driving prices up and making it harder for the corps to make enough money to continue competing.
People unfamiliar with DCI are often told that it’s like the “NFL of marching band,” except the ones participating must pay and don’t get paid in return. If DCI were for-profit, people would get paid to do drum corps, Smith said.
Sistrunk and Smith both said that knowing people who auditioned and marched for drum corps made it a lot easier for them to audition themselves. People who could tell them how the auditioning process goes and how to be better prepared for it made it easier for them to feel confident that this was something they could do with enough hard work and practice. In high school, Smith said that making drum corps was something he felt would be impossible for him to do until he met people who did it and helped him feel like it was something achievable.
Sistrunk and Smith mentioned an impactful DCI show that was especially inspiring: Santa-Clara Vanguard’s 2018 show “Babylon.” They both watched it while freshmen in high school, and it kept their enthusiasm for participating in marching band and aspiring to march in DCI one day.
NGU student Blake Childs, who has marched for Carolina Crown since 2022, described his first time watching DCI shows on the TV in his high school band room, having his eyes glazed over and his mouth agape. Many different shows have impacted and inspired him, including SCV’s 2018 show and Carolina Crown’s 2012 and 2016 shows. Childs’ first DCI show he saw in-person, The Cavaliers 2019, said seeing it floored him.
Childs said he thinks he played a role in why people were motivated to audition for drum corps. He believes he had a positive impact on people in the NGU marching band and helped them see that doing drum corps is realistic and achievable. Childs said that the students auditioning had had dreams and ideas about doing drum corps for a while and that he was just the “pat on the back” to get them to do it.
Childs said that it’s awesome for our NGU program that so many are auditioning to be part of DCI. Childs added that it can only be good for the NGU marching band in terms of show quality, standards being set culturally, and the impact left on the program. “It will never be the same after we have a wave of people marching drum corps,” Blake said as a positive change for the marching band at NGU.
