ARKADELPHIA — The Arkadelphia High School marching band had plenty of hardware to haul back from the Showcase of Bands in Little Rock on Saturday night, but that doesn’t mean the band had a perfect performance.
With the top rating for Class 5A division and the Brandon Award for Outstanding Musical Performance of the day in hand, the Arkadelphia band members and directors sat down Monday morning to critique their performance in their first competition of the season.
“We put a film of the show up on the wall, and we just cut it up,” Assistant Band Director Aaron Seel said.
It sounds harsh, but competing against themselves, as Seel put it, is how the band improves.
Despite qualifying for the Class 3A division based on the school’s size, the high school marching band competes in Class 5A, the largest division in the state, based on an especially large enrollment in the band program. Last year’s band enrollment hit an all-time-record 123 members. This year, the band is up to 131 members.
“It got to the point that we were competing against bands half our size [in 3A],” Seel said. “It felt like we were picking on everyone.”
Last year, the band moved into Class 4A before finally being moved to 5A this season. Now the band competes against groups from Cabot, Conway, Benton and Bryant. The band has competed at the Showcase of Bands for several years, but this is the first time the group took home the Brandon Award, given to the top performers of the day out of the more than 40 groups that compete.
Seel said the marching band’s winning tradition and longtime coaching staff have kept the enrollment numbers high. Seel has been working alongside Head Director of Bands Jim Lloyd and Assistant Band Director Whitney Smith for more than a decade.
Despite moving up to a class filled with new competition, Seel said band members were calm before they took to the field at War Memorial.
“We go out and practice this every day, and for us to go into competition is no different,” Seel said.
This year’s marching routine is to the original composition “Serengeti Sketches” by Andrew Yozviak. The routine, based on African folk songs, lasts around eight minutes and puts particular emphasis on both the drumline and color guard. The drumline includes African instruments such as djembes and doumbeks, in addition to marimbas, during the routine.
“We’ve had a lot of success with folk tunes,” Seel said. “We try to find music that is culturally enriching and entertaining to a crowd. … Folk music is, by definition, melodies that a common person knows.”
In addition to winning the Brandon Award and being named top band in Class 5A, the Arkadelphia Marching Band also received a superior rating for the band’s drum major, percussion, color guard and band. They were also given awards for outstanding drum major, color guard, percussion, marching performance and musical performance.
The band will compete at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs next week before heading to the Bandmasters’ Championships at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis on Oct. 27.
Staff writer Emily Van Zandt can be reached at (501) 399-3688 or evanzandt@arkansasonline.com.