At 4:20 am Sam Trainor breathed out, almost hoping they would see the slightest traces of their breath. Nothing. They looked over at the bleached and brittle toy houses and old buckets scattered around and crumbling among the rocks in back of the house. A slight breeze lifted a tuft of Sam’s hair as two humming birds swooped over the skeleton of a once-thriving orange tree now simply a bird perch and a meager shade structure. The metallic roar of battered air conditioning units juxtaposed the calm. Sam opened their creaky gate, hoping they wouldn’t wake up their children Michael and Midge and entered their solar-powered self-driving personal transport vehicle. In 4 hours Sam Trainor would stand in front of crying students, assuring them that things weren’t that bad, that there was life beyond marching band. Sam started the car and rode to Hidden Cholla high school.
Sam learned the band’s fate 5 months ago, the memory of winning state championships still fresh in their memory. As one of the most respected band directors in the state, they bristled at the idea that people would also know them as one of the first band directors to end their marching band program. Sam understood the data. Sam knew knew the average loss of body water through sweat and visible indicators of severe sun burn. They witnessed the frequency of dust storms and could cite how badly the air would exacerbate students’ respiratory issues while practicing outside. Sam scraped melted asphalt off their shoes along with students. Their experiment with substituting new types of plastic instruments for the metal instruments that singed students’ skin failed due to sound quality and the plastic melting over time. Ongoing water breaks disrupted any sense of flow resulting in unproductive rehearsals and the band exhausted all possible breathable fabric options for uniforms. The data and experts suggested that it was too hot for outdoor marching bands. Sam anguished over ending a key part of the music program and a core part of who they were as a music teacher. It wasn’t just the most dedicated students that Sam worried about. The school and community held the marching band as a source of pride and the students devoted a significant amount of their lives to rehearsals and competitions. What would they do?
Sam pulled into the Hidden Cholla parking lot, parked, walked to the side entrance of the band room, breathed in for 4 counts, held their breath for 7 counts, let it out audibly for 8 counts, and opened the door. At least the air conditioning still worked. It wasn’t that way in some of the other districts. Hey Trainor!” the clarinets greeted them while others looked up for a moment. Sam smiled, waved, and walked to their office. The Hidden Cholla band room buzzed with energy. The room could comfortably fit 100 people, its walls covered in banners and plaques. Lockers and cabinets lined the perimeter of the room, many functioning as makeshift trophy display cases. A chalkboard, WhiteBoard, and SmartBoard lined the walls at the front of the room in back of the podium. Chairs that encouraged excellent posture filled the room in a rehearsal set up and in stacks at the sides. A box of 3D printed moisture filtration and recovery devices, that most students called spit boxes, teetered on the edge of a table next to Sam’s office. Students milled about while some flutes bet each other over this year’s show theme. Nina Piñeda walked around chatting up fellow students and some of the parents. She figured she was one of the most excited people in the room. This was her year to shine. Emily Smith had graduated, which meant Nina was finally going to be drum major.
Nina was the county’s best Trombone player. Everyone loved her. She worked three days a week, helped her moms take care of her younger brother, aced her work, and was a model musician. She always seemed to have it together. Nina was serious about being a leader. She listened to podcasts, watched YouTube videos, and took every possibility to mentor younger people or support her peers. Nina was passionate about playing and creating with every possible musical style she could: Trap, Jazz, Acoustic EDM, Banda, Balmages, Beyonce, but especially the school’s marching band shows. She was one of the hardcore band students who stayed after school for hours rehearsing her parts, jamming with friends, and chatting with Sam, often making suggestions for ways they could improve the band or program as a whole.
The knocking startled Sam. Nina was at the office door. “Should we get this started”, Nina asked, the excitement audible in her voice, her eyes dancing with anticipation of learning this year’s show theme and being announced as the new drum major. Sam looked up and shifted their weight down into their feet pushing off the desk. “Yep, let’s do it. And Nina. Plan on staying after for a bit”
Nina nodded. “Sure thing, Trainor.” “This year is going to be the best” she thought. Sam walked into the room to cheers from the students and parents. Sam smiled gently and lifted their hand for people to quiet down. The quiet energy and eyes on them felt like the moment just before giving a downbeat at a concert. Sam looked across the room, glanced at the trophies, looked at Nina, and gave their last announcement as the director of the Hidden Cholla Marching Band. Kelly, one of the flutes laughed -“Whatever, Trainor – seriously what’s the show.” But the students looking at Trainor saw the pain in Sam’s eyes and the micro twitches rippling around their chin and mouth, realizing Trainor wasn’t joking. Exclamations of shock and expletives were juxtaposed with inquiries and ambivalence. The band members appreciated that this was minor compared to larger issues that their own families or friends were dealing with. But, they felt the loss and looked at each other not knowing what they would do.
Sam looked over at Nina. Her eyes with pride were wet with tears. She was more upset that she was caught off guard and didn’t have an immediate response or plan than she was that the band was ended. We’ll get through this together, Sam said to the band. Let’s take 10 minutes, do what you need to do, and then get set up to play for a bit. Sam turned to face the parents. Linda Sacks, put her hand on Sam’s shoulder giving a half grimace half smile “we’re here for you and the kids, Sam” Yeah – he said. Sam glanced to where Nina was standing and saw her speaking with section leaders and comforting her peers. They’ll be OK, they said to Linda.
The first few months were difficult. Several students wrote letters to the board of education but most took the end of the marching band in stride as yet another change to high school life. The band members wanted to do something musical together but just couldn’t figure out what to do. Sam encouraged students to play in chamber groups, and some did. A small group tried to create their own marching band show that they could perform indoors a la WGI and winter drumline, but it never caught on with their peers or community and they often fought over control of decisions. Most delved into the music library, playing through pieces that they liked.
Sam tried to support each student group but just couldn’t reconcile their annoyance at one group that spent hours on laptops and mobile devices. On one day Sam twisted their back ducking as one of the students’ drones swooped down by the band room door before jetting off into a rotating formation with around 50 other plastic disks that Sam thought looked like flying robot vacuums with small but loud speakers on their wings. The group teamed up with peers across the school and with the help of a science teacher partnered with a local University and business that provided a set of drones, electrical components, and support for their programming of the drone band. “You’re not even playing the music,” Sam quipped once, but still let the group use the band room and other spaces around the music program and would answer their questions about balance, orchestration, and timing. Sam would nod cordially to the corporate folks who volunteered at the school helping the students program multidimensional movement to music and how to account dynamically for the wind’s speed and direction. Sam just didn’t get the attraction to typing or looking at lines of code sure they got the drones to move and form interesting shapes to music. “It all seems pretty disembodied and unmusical” Sam mentioned to a colleague.“Drones.” Sam, huffed. It ate them up inside just a little bit that the student-adult team earned so much attention from the local media and accolades from their peers and administration.
Sam reached peak frustration when fielding concerned messages from peers at other districts. “No” we’re not promoting a drone band in place of the Marching Band Sam told one peer. Yes, students are still playing live music here, they told another. No, I’m not pushing an agenda or trying to have drones included in the competition circuit they said exasperatedly to a state band association’s board member. But regardless of what other music teachers thought about the sad decline of Hidden Cholla’s once exemplary program, the students were moving their projects forward, and Sam would even say, thriving.
Sam was most surprised by Nina. They were confident in her leadership but Sam thought for sure that Nina would have been deflated by not having the opportunity to be the drum leader that she had been working towards for years. She was upset at first. And when Nina almost immediately announced with ferocious passion that she was going to do something and make a difference, Sam thought that Nina meant she was going to lobby administrators or the board of ed to allow the Marching Band to continue, maybe to give it one more year. “That’s what I would have done,” Sam had thought to themself. But Nina pursued a different path, organizing a group of students to design ways they could use music to make a difference in terms of climate change. When first hearing the group discuss the anthropocene, Sam assumed it was a video game or one of the Electronic Dance Neo-jazz producer group that the students liked. Nina was fed up relying on the supposed adults in charge to address issues of climate change, drought, and food or water scarcity. She and her friends already lived with rolling black outs, but the end of the marching band was the first time that something she really loved and cared about had been directly impacted by climate change in a more personal way. Nina wasn’t satisfied being angry. She wanted to do something and knew that letters to the editor or presentations to local politicians wouldn’t do much. Though Nina and the community loved marching band, she understood that people wouldn’t all of a sudden change their ways or pass policies requiring sustainable energy because some nice high school kids no longer had the opportunity to march around outside in 130 degree heat.
“Trainor, can you help us with our project?, Nina asked.”
“What do you need? I’m not sure what to tell you – it feels a little too political for me and you’re trying to do something with music that our country’s leaders aren’t even able to get done, they replied.”
“Well that’s sort of the point – to see if we can do with music what people haven’t been able to do with other approaches, Nina said.
Sam thought for a moment – “Maybe speak with Dr. Young – they might have some ideas – do you have anything for me to listen to yet?”
Nina and Sam were both frustrated. Sam helped as they could but mainly immersed their self in having the ensembles sound amazing. They had a program to maintain and Sam was not about to let the loss of the marching band program impact how people thought of Cholla High’s music program. Taking a positive outlook, Sam saw additional time to hone the ensemble’s artistry and step up the complexity of the music in the symphonic wind program. They folded the marching band budget into their wind band program, purchased new music, and commissioned a piece from a popular composer. Sam wanted to support Nina and her group. The group’s project included music but just didn’t seem to fit in the music program, Sam thought.
But, Sam dedicated themself to the students. Plus, after hearing Nina’s impassioned conversations with her friends, Sam thought she had a point. If things were like this now, what would they be like when their kids Midge and Michael were high school age? What kind of world would they grow up into? While Sam would have moments feeling they should do something, Sam could not get past what music or being a music teacher had anything to do with this. “We’re not going to save the world,” one of Sam’s band colleagues offered. “We can give students a great experience, we can help them focus and build skills, we can help them become great musicians – but let’s not pretend that playing Holst, Grainger, or some programmatic Save The Planet piece is going to help us lower the Earth’s temperature by 10 degrees. We’re music teachers.” Sam nodded along. But. “What if we could do something”? They thought as their eyes swept the contour of trophies around the band room. What if we gave as much attention to figuring out if or how music could move the dial on climate change as we do rehearsing that one passage to perfection, inching up yet one more point. . . .