competing again about ten years before and was advancing up the national grading system. Stantonbury Brass and the Bletchley Band also entered competitions regionally and the new Broseley Brass were already having success. Other bands concentrated more on local appearances, but the tradition of competitiveness was still a powerful one even for currently noncontesting bands, coupled with an awareness of the distinctiveness and pride of each separate band.
The competition world also had its own rituals. This made heavy demands on band members, for it meant not only playing at as high a standard as they could possibly achieve, but also the necessary travel and assessment of their own and other performances. The sense of occasion in these highly structured and intensive competitions had much to do with the enthusiasm of brass band players both for the ‘brass band movement’ as a whole and for their strong identification with their own bands.
Competitions were not the only occasions for band loyalty and sense of performance. Local brass bands had an accepted obligation to play at local events and in the community that they regarded as, in some sense, ‘their own’. Local fêtes, carnivals, outdoor carol services, charity occasions, the big events at Christmas and the Remembrance Day rituals all regularly involved appearances by one or another of the local bands.
Indeed at some times of the year, they had little respite from playing. Take, for example, the Bradwell Band’s 1980 Christmas events as listed in the local newspaper’s notice (not their only Christmas engagements): Thursday 18 December, Eaglestone Hospital, 7.0 p.m.; Sunday 21st, The Green, Newport, 10.30 a.m.; Monday 22nd, New Bradwell streets, 7.0 p.m.; Tuesday 23rd, Bradville streets, 7.0 p.m.; Wednesday 24th, New Bradwell streets, 7.0 p.m.; Christmas morning, New Bradwell streets, 6.0 a.m. Their very similar programme in the Christmas season in 1982 (out ‘carolling’ every day from 11–25 December inclusive) followed a long tradition in the area culminating in the famous ‘Christians Awake’ at six on Christmas morning in New Bradwell, a tradition which had not been broken for well over fifty years. It caused amusement as well as pleasure – who really wanted to be woken up or out at that time in the dark and freezing cold? – but was close to the hearts of band and New Bradwell residents alike, and players spoke warmly of going out before dawn, being greeted with drinks or gifts or, by the children, friendly abuse, and finding glasses of whisky waiting on the best doorsteps. Similarly, the Woburn Sands Band year’s events in 1982 covered over twenty performances – at local brass band festivals in February and October, the Regional Round of the National Brass Band Championship in March, then the Finals in London in October, local concerts in April and May, appearances at a dozen fêtes, carnivals, fairs and shows in local towns and villages throughout the summer, hymn-singing under the tree at Simpson village in July, Remembrance Day ceremonies in November, and OAP and Women’s Institute parties in December; in addition nearly three weeks in December were committed to carolling around the local areas.
Given the intensity of such commitments on top of the regular band practices which timetabled their weekly activities throughout the year, it is not surprising that players spoke of the band ‘taking over their whole lives’, with consequences for all their other obligations; but they added that this was well compensated for by the ‘good humour and fun’ of band life. For some, brass playing took a dominant role in planning their lives; at least one player had settled in a particular village because of its band. For others, band commitments had become almost ‘like a job’ – except that they felt less guilty taking a holiday from their paid employment than from the band – and a high proportion of their ‘free’ time was taken up by band obligations: performing and practising, travelling, organising uniforms and music, fundraising, or preparing and transporting instruments.
The band could be a source of more than just musical co-operation, for several bands had associated groups, and performed social as well as musical functions. The Wolverton Town and British Rail Band had a Ladies Supporters Club which met once a month at the BR Canteen at Wolverton to raise money for the band, while the Woburn Sands Band had its own madrigal society led by a horn player who was also a singer; members met in turn at each other’s houses after Sunday morning band practice. Bands took some social responsibility for their members, marking events like weddings, deaths, departures, successes, and also sometimes co-operating in baby sitting, arranging transport, and other less directly band-related exchanges such as sharing skills or information.
Participating in a brass band was more than just ‘going along for a blow’. Quite apart from the intensity of the musical commitment, band members – and above all the organising committee – inevitably became involved in a host of social and financial arrangements. Some of these practical aspects are explored further in part 4, but for brass bands particularly there was the heavy cost of instruments and uniforms and the importance of the music library. Brass instruments were not cheap, especially the larger ones, and brass players might find themselves using instruments worth £600, £1,000, £2,000 or more. Bands sometimes undertook to lend out instruments to players, a heavy drain on their resources, for £1,000 or more might have to be expended annually on purchases and repairs with all the fund-raising and background work that entailed. Uniforms too were expensive, and fitting out a band with a new uniform at the cost of many hundreds of pounds often had to be paid for through local fund-raising events and gifts – another way in which a band was bound into the locality in which it both played and raised money. Local people helped the Wolverton Town and British Rail Band to raise £3,000 for thirty-three new uniforms in 1981, for example, and were thanked by a free charity concert. The result was a highly visible group, clearly marked out by their military-style costume, clearly distinguished from other groups in the area (see figure 10).
The music library was an important band possession. This contained the multiple music parts played by the band and its predecessors, a mark not only of tradition through time but, as the players themselves put it, a ‘priceless’ resource for them. Of course bands experimented from time to time with ‘newer’ music, but given the availability of their own library of the classic band repertoire there were economic as well as sentimental reasons for bands to make good use of the (literally) well-worn music that had come down to them. This was yet another sign of their unity as one named band, and (together with their other heavy investment in instruments and uniform) one factor in the long life of brass bands compared to other musical groupings.
Figure 10 The eighty-year-old Wolverton Town and British Rail Band. The current members pose in their band uniform
Most bands were also bound by additional links of kinship and friendship. The local brass bands seemed to be full of relatives – at first sight, quite remarkably so until one recalls the common tendency for music in general and brass banding in particular to run in families and the long history of many of the local bands. It was common for several members of one family to play in a band, both within and across the generations, made easier by the lack of interest in age so long as members could play (in local bands the age range was from 9 to 70). Playing together forged intense relationships and provided a sphere in which more links could be formed which in turn bound the members together yet further. This was especially so in the longer-established bands, but it also extended to the more recent ones, some of which had been helped by friends or relatives in the others (the Bletchley Band, for example, was founded by players from the Woburn Sands Band and the Bradwell Band). These links were not always and in every respect harmonious, of course – but this was perhaps all the more evidence of the bands’ close-knit quasi-family nature.
It was not just the number of hours, social ties or amount of trouble that for participants constituted their affiliation to the brass band world, but the qualitative experience and the meaning this held for them. They were creating and transmitting music known to be part of the brass band repertoire, music coming down to them from the past as visibly enshrined in their own library and store of instruments or,
