Burkhard Bilger writes about how marching bands have evolved into a competitive and artistic form known as the "marching arts." These bands now incorporate complex choreography, formations, and creative themes into their performances.
Marching band is more than a pastime in Bourbon County. It’s an extreme sport. The real reason the students rehearse so hard isn’t to play well at football games. They can do those shows in their sleep. It’s to prepare for a series of fiercely competitive marching-band contests in the fall, culminating in the Grand National Championships, in Indianapolis. There are more than twenty thousand high-school band programs in America, some with as many as four hundred members. Over the past thirty years, their shows have evolved into spectacles that John Philip Sousa couldn’t have imagined. The top bands have dozens of staff, budgets of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and fleets of trucks for their instruments, props, costumes, and sound systems. They don’t just parade up and down the field playing fight songs. They flow across it in shifting tableaux, with elaborate themes and spandex-clad dancers, playing full symphonic scores. They don’t call it marching band anymore. They call it the marching arts.