Drumline Live Performed at the Overture Center on January 5th: A Dazzling, Electrifying Performance
Drumline Live celebrates the marching band tradition of HBCUs, Historically Black Universities and Colleges
by Jonathan Gramling
Besides it being an excellent academic experience, those who have attended Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HBCUs, know that it is a unique cultural experience. The university may be small and in a rural area, but the campus is jumping with many cultural experiences.
One big part of that experience is during football season. Now the team may be experiencing a winning or losing season — and that is important — but a winning feature of the game always is the school’s marching band. It is sure to entertain and dazzle with the music and the moves. In many ways, they are marching military bands with soul.
Don Roberts, the director of Drumline Live, is steeped in the history of the marching bands.
“The history of the marching bands go way back depending on how far you want to go,” Roberts said. “If you think about the first HBCU band director — band director as recognized by the institution and not a student-teacher or student volunteer — it was Nathaniel Clark Smith in 1905 with Tuskegee University. He was appointed by the president of the United States, who was Theodore Roosevelt. What is significant about that also is that the president of Tuskegee at that time was Booker T. Washington. Think about where we are now compared to then, that was probably the first formal aspect of it. And then you go into modern day, you take a person like William Foster from Florida A & M University who modernized the HBCU band. His band was the first one to do a band dance routine. It modernized the whole HBCU thing. And look at where we are right now in terms of television, Beyoncé and movies. We’ve come a long ways in our history going back to the military bands. That was somewhat of an influence from the military on HBCUs where you had the Marching Men of Cookman. That program came from a military
background. If you look at the band from Southern and early HBCUs, most of them were men in the early 1960s and 1970s. That came from that military influence. There are a lot of ties historically to different aspects of America.”
And it is the HCBU marching band experience that has lifted Roberts up from the projects he lived in in Atlanta, Georgia.
“I never, ever saw the Florida A&M University band in person,” Roberts recalled. “I saw them on television doing a performance. It blew my mind. And I said, ‘That’s where I am going to school.’ The first time I saw the band in person was when I arrived on campus. I went to Florida A&M University because my high school band director was role model and idol. I played trumpet, but I became a drum major in the band.”
When he graduated from Florida A&M, Roberts’ career really soared.
“I became a high school band director,” Roberts said. “I then became a music coordinator for the DeKalb County School District, which is the third largest in Georgia. I always tell people, ‘I didn’t find Hollywood. Hollywood found me.’ I was the band director in Southwest DeKalb High School. We have a pretty good band program. We performed in Macy’s Parade, the Rose Bowl Parade, and France. We are a pretty renowned program. And we were participating in a Battle of the Bands in Atlanta. This one day, I got a call from the executive producer of the movie Drumline. He was a two-time Grammy winning artist. He said, ‘Hey, I’m working on this movie that is going to be coming out around March. It’s called Drumline. Do you think you would be interested in being my band consultant for the movie?’ Once I started working with that movie Drumline, I was one and done. ‘Hey, I actually worked on a movie.’ Fortunately for me after that movie, the phone never stopped ringing. And I’ve done so many things since then. But that was the first of my career in terms of being a movie consultant and the stage show.”
Drumline Live, a touring marching band, has taken Roberts to over 200 cities and he has performed with Beyoncé. And it is a show that reflects the HBCU experience, but also delves into many aspects of Black musical culture.
“With our name Drumline, we do a little bit of everything,” Roberts said. “We have drums. We sing and we dance. We perform. We have a full creative team that covers every creative aspect of the show that we do. So it is way more than a drumline. It’s for all ages. We do music from 1935-2023. You might get a little bit of Duke Ellington. You’ll get James Brown. You’ll get Aretha Franklin. We’ll do a little Beyoncé as well. You get everything all the way back. You can be five or 95 and enjoy the show. You don’t have to think about it. Parents can bring the kids. Grandparents can bring the grandkids. Sometimes you have to think if it will be a little too much of this or that. But with our show, you don’t have to think about it. We have some incredible horns. Again, we have a full brass line. And we have some of the best musicians in America representing HBCUs from all across America. We have some of the best drummers. We have some of the best vocalists. I would tell people, ‘Be prepared for the unexpected.’ This is the one show where you can’t predict what you are going to see. You think you’re going to see one thing. But you’re going to see something beyond that.”
Roberts is very aware of Madison, Wisconsin. He is well aware of UW-Madison’s own marching band tradition, which does pretty good for not having HBCU roots.
“We have been to Madison,” Roberts said. “And I am very aware of the University of Wisconsin high-stepping marching band. We’ve been there before. And it is a band city. And we love performing in band cities. Again, I walk the line very carefully. We will bring an energy and a soul that most HBCUs will bring on the field, except we bring it into the theater. You’ve got to see it to believe it. I tell people it’s like going to the circus. And I mean that in a positive way. It’s like a roller coaster ride in a theme park. It takes you to the highest peaks. You’re going to be laughing and screaming. We go up, down and around.”
Roberts has a lot of pride for the group that he has put together, representative of HCBU bands from around the country.
“We are the greatest show on stage,” Roberts exclaimed. “I guarantee you will never see anything like us on stage because we’re the only thing like it in this entire world. If you don’t sing, dance or feel a part of the show in one way or the other, we’ll give you your money back. It’s an incredible show. And there is a reason we’ve been around as long as we have. There’s a reason why Beyoncé called us. There is a reason that every major artist calls us. There is a reason why every big movie studio calls us. It’s because we are the greatest at what we do.”
Drumline Live represents HBCUs at their finest.
