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Street and brass band traditions flourish in many cultures (often inspired by and subverting colonial models) from New Orleans and Colombia to Italy and the Balkans to Kenya and India and the Far East. The New Orleans street band was one of the key influences in the birth of jazz and today samba bands resound throughout Britain. Street bands are strong, rhythmic and functional, playing for processions, dances, ritual and civic occasions. The street band has recently seen a strong revival; Bands like the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the Young Blood Brass Band, the Bollywood Band, the Klezmatics and various Balkan bands either regularly tour or perform as festivals. The creation of a modern street band drawing on these many models is the central element to these proposals.
The outdoor band is a key element in own rural, ritual and folk traditions, examples abound from medieval dance bands, the Waits bands of the Tudors and Stuarts, and the rural wind bands of the eighteenth and early nineteenth Century, like the ‘Scorpion Band’ from Puddletown in Dorset. These bands were functional, playing for processions, outdoor dances, ritual and civic occasions. The village bands also performed as part of the ‘West Gallery’ church bands and in non-conformist chapels and joined in ‘caroling’ outside on Christmas Eve. In the South West, Wales and the North the village bands merged into the ‘brass’ and ‘silver’ band traditions. Street and brass band traditions flourish in many cultures (often inspired by and subverting colonial models) from New Orleans and Colombia to Italy and the Balkans to Kenya and India and the Far East. The New Orleans street band was one of the key influences in the birth of jazz and today samba bands resound throughout Britain.
“The other great context for music is the original one, the outdoor environment, and this is the one in which most of the world’s music is produced.. .it is the context of street music, of the outdoor band or orchestra.. .of the shepherd with his pipe or of women singing at the village pump... It is inclusive rather than exclusive and tends to be free not purchased... above all it blends with whatever other sounds are present”
“The music of the streets has no beginning or end but is all middle. Something is already in progress before our arrival and it succeeds our departure. The dynamics of sound are a product of its position in space rather than shaping by the performer”
R Murray Shaffer in ‘The Book of Music and Nature
