Ceremony at the US Capitol

(Okay, so I didn’t write this on July 23.  I’m backdating it so that it appears the evening after the event.  It’s my blog I’ll date things as I please.)

The Chorus performed this morning at a ceremony hosted by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the integration of U.S. Armed Forces.  The guest speaker was retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.  Also present were a contingent of Buffalo Soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen.  For the chorus, it was the usual ceremonial music; nothing out of the ordinary or special (except my ‘America the Beautiful’ of course).  But the event itself and the speakers were excellent.

Colin Powell is a fantastic speaker.  As far as we could tell, he didn’t have any notes to read.  He simply spoke fluently and from the heart.  He probably spoke about 25-30 minutes, but it felt like ten.

My favorite story he told was one about his childhood.  President Truman signed the Executive Order allowing blacks to serve in the U.S. military 60 years ago, and present at that signing was the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  (This is as good a time as any to point out that the military certainly predated the civil rights movement by several years, though I’ll certainly admit it wasn’t smooth sailing, pardon the Navy pun.)  Powell said that the eleventh Chairman was a kid of eleven playing in the streets of Brooklyn at the time.  He joked around saying that he was not terribly interested in what was going on in the news at age eleven or saying to himself, “Self, you’re going to grow up to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”  The idea of course was beyond imagining that a black man would be in that position, let alone be one of the most respected ever.  A truly inspiring story.

It was a special event of which we were proud to be a part.  Afterwards, we were told that our music was the perfect prelude to a memorable ceremony.  I thought it was most appropriate that we had SFC Colin Firth, an African-American man, sing ‘American Soldier.’  Very cool.  SFC Alex Helsabeck invited the audience to sing ‘God Bless America’ at the end of the ceremony, bringing it to a moving finish.

Thanks to SSG Jason Gottshall (or whoever took this photo) for the picture.

This is an interesting job

Music and the military sounds like a bizarre marriage, and it is.  It often surprises me, however, that when it’s done well, music serves the military.  It keeps soldiers in step, makes them march a little taller, makes them feel good and proud about what they do, and picks them up when they’re feeling down.  Music is usually a centerpiece when the Army (or any branch of the military) celebrates long-standing traditions in ceremonies.  A military parade or review without music just isn’t the same, and most high-ranking people recognize this fact.  They might not necessarily be great listeners, but they see how music effects the people they command and recognize music’s power to build bridges across cultures, to soothe, and to excite.

But even after 8-1/2 years in the Army, I still have to laugh sometimes at what I do.  It takes a different kind of artistically-minded musician to accept the grind of military life.  For example: This morning I go for a run around Washington as I do nearly every week.  I’m out for about an hour and cover probably six miles.  Running by Arlington National Cemetery always makes me run just a little faster than I would somewhere else.  I figure those thousands of servicemen and women buried there gave everything for their country; maybe I can give a little more running near them.  I cool down in the shadows of the Iwo Jima memorial, and I look at those Marines hoisting the American flag as I stretch.  Then after a shower, what do I do?  I sit down to study Shoenberg.

Well, of course!  Because the Gurrelieder has everything to do with winning the War On Terror!  This makes perfect sense!

This ranks up there with a command inventory at the 82d Airborne Division Band, where nylon straps in O.D. green designed to hold combat packs at the knees of a fully loaded paratrooper are counted in the same breath as sousaphones and clarinet reeds.

Also funny how military terminology invades (see, there’s another one) the musical vernacular.  Sometimes if the ensemble doesn’t stop immediately after I cut them in rehearsal I will show the hand signal and call out “cease fire” as if we’re at the rifle range.  No one thinks twice about this.  Using the right kind of language is important because we have to be able to articulate what we do to people for whom the military is the only life they know.  So when speaking outside of the band building, we don’t rehearse, we train.  We don’t work with people, we coordinate with them.  And we definitely don’t perform concerts, we conduct band operations. 

It’s a strange clash of cultures, but it’s also a lot of fun.