Comments on: Town Bands, a link to our musical past

By: robert medley

robert medley — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:44:24 +0000

You might be right Ken. My experience in town bands began in the 1940s and continued until just a few years ago. I belonged to at least 10 town bands. My experience though has only been here in Wisconsin. I know from friends that Minnesota has some well known town bands.
Its natural for each of us to claim the most number and best bands to be in
our state so I’ll agree with my friend Kenton—to a point—;^)

By: Kenton

Kenton — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:31:05 +0000

I would have to disagree with Robert on this one.

Although, there aren’t nearly the number of town bands as there once was, there are still many still in operation. Off the top of my head, I can think of a 1/2 dozen with 50 miles of me, and I live in rural Pennsylvania.

Here is a list of Community bands: http://boerger.org/c-m/groups.shtml However, it has none of the names of the bands in my local area, so it is far from complete.

By: Robert Medley

Robert Medley — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:04:41 +0000

Sadly Alice, the small town brass band is a thing of the past with the exception of a few small towns in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There might also be a few in the New England states. That part of our musical history will have to be visited in history books, not the bandshell.

By: Alice Elliott

Alice Elliott — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:17:09 +0000

How many small town bands are there now in the US? I’m doing a documentary film about the Callicoon Center Band in New York. You can see some information on my website, but I’d like to know if this is truly a dying art. How is band music being preserved?

Yours, Alice Elliott