Posted by Volker on September 10, 2002 at 02:47:39:
We have several "Military Band Festivals" here in Germany per year: Bands from many nations perform this events in huge halls. Unfortunately, they have been leaving the traditional military music repertoire more and more over the recent decades, and rather play music that is not at all suitable for their configurations and instruments.
Exactly American bands opened the gate to this "fatal" tendency many years ago. The initial short exotic gap fillers like Glenn Miller evergreens etc. later were leading to a reverse of the ratio in their repertoire: Pop and entertainment evergreens 90% vs. military, operette, concert music 10%. Many other nations followed that bad example, and now we almost have a competition in performing non-suitable music for marching and stand performance shows - partly even with pop singers (girls) in uniform. The audience usually are not the youngsters, but medium aged and beyond. I listened around and could hear countless complaints about this development. These people want to hear the music for what this sound configuration was created (or vice-versa), otherwise would visit pop and jazz concerts etc.
The only exception are the British and the East Europeans who perform more in the traditional way. This is an example for the fact, that the public mass taste is forced to certain styles because of certain style promotion (in the broadcast program in the commercial way). Our former Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt - a highly sophisticated pianist himself - once complained in a public interview, that on a longer car travel he sometimes desperately trys to escape the uniform mesh of junk music that is served from almost every station but cannot find alternatives. No wonder, that younsters are forced into a certain taste direction, and no wonder, that brass bands are starving from lack of popularity as they have been doing lately. By the way, I recently was in the Ukraine and found their broadcast program much more versatile - as people's taste is over there - emerging excellent musicians - maybe not by coincidence.
... my opinion for what it's worth.