Thank you to Abdul Aziz, the Batiste family, LeBron Joseph, Aysja Mallery, Darren Rodgers, Derrick Tabb, and everyone at The Roots of Music for their generosity and friendship. Thanks also to Kyle DeCoste, Suzanne Raether, and Lee Veeraraghavan for their comments on an earlier draft, and to the reviewers and editorial staff at Southern Cultures for their feedback and assistance. This research was initially sponsored by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.
- Quotes for this essay are taken from observations of band rehearsals and performances and the following interviews: LeBron Joseph, in discussion with the author, June 11, 2019; Derrick Tabb, in discussion with the author, June 6, 2019 and June 15, 2021; Darren Rodgers, in discussion with the author, February 5, 2019; Jaron Williams, in discussion with the author, December 13, 2018; Aysja Mallery, in discussion with the author, June 15, 2021; and Keanon Battiste, in discussion with the author, June 6, 2019. This essay is part of a larger project and participants are protected by my university’s IRB protocols. Anyone named has agreed to participate in the study. Several children are not named in order to protect their identities.
- bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 58; Mark Anthony Neal, New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 2005); Darius Bost, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, and Brandon J. Manning, “Black Masculinities and the Matter of Vulnerability,” Black Scholar 49, no. 2 (2019): 4.
- Bost, Bruce, and Manning, “Black Masculinities,” 6.
- For an analysis of racial segregation in contemporary New Orleans charter schools, see Frank Adamson, “Educational Inequities in the New Orleans Charter School System,” SCOPE, November 2016, https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/library/publications/1572.
- Christina Lee and Regina N. Bradley, “Our Band Is Better than Your Band,” August 2019, in Bottom of the Map, produced by Regina N. Bradley, Floyd Hall, Stephen Key, and Christina Lee, podcast, 47:16, https://www.bottomofthemap.media/episodes.
- Beyoncé qtd. in Fredara Mareva Hadley, “Beyonce’s ‘Homecoming’ Film Doubles Down on Her Joyous, Unapologetic Blackness,” Billboard, April 17, 2019, https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/festivals/8507563/beyonce-homecoming-film-coachella/. Hadley, an ethnomusicologist and FAMU alum, makes a provocative comparison between Homecoming and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace,” a gospel performance recorded in a Baptist church in 1972: “Black churches and HBCUs are two of the most venerable institutions within Black communities and both Aretha and Beyoncé possessed a keen sense of how to honor the spaces and the people without sacrificing their own musical alchemy.”
- Jacqui Malone, “The FAMU Marching 100,” Black Perspective in Music 18, no. 1/2 (1990): 62; William Patrick Foster, Band Pageantry: A Guide for the Marching Band (Winona, MN: Hal Leonard Music, 1968), 29, 32; Richard L. Walker Jr., “The Life and Leadership of William P. Foster: The Maestro and the Legend” (PhD diss., Indiana State University, 2014), 143; Regina N. Bradley, Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021).
- “At a Glance–School Profile,” St. Augustine High School, accessed July 17, 2021, https://www.staugnola.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1801329&type=d&pREC_ID=1969743; Matthew O’Rourke, Between Law and Hope: St. Augustine High School, New Orleans, Louisiana(New Orleans, LA: St. Augustine School, 2003), 15.
- O’Rourke, Between Law and Hope, 101; “Bended Knees,” St. Aug Marching 100, May 29, 2017, You-Tube video, 56:45, https://youtu.be/5iS9ZydVLi4.
- Foster, Band Pageantry, 8.
- Video footage of the bands at the 2019 BoomBox Classic can be accessed at “Southern University Human Jukebox Marching In & Out Boombox Classic 2019,” Human Jukebox Media, November 17, 2019, YouTube video, 17:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzA1a2VDw-ZA&list=PLyLPqhafxEWcdFd4tICvTWLAoQv9mWEGp.
- King Bronze, “With My Friends BY: King Bronze (Official Music Video),” Mfcool Productions, December 19, 2018, YouTube video, 4:46, https://youtu.be/srIKbngbPzM.
- Video of The Roots of Music performing in the 2019 Mardi Gras parades can be accessed at “The Roots of Music Mardi Gras 2019,” mattsak12, March 31, 2019, YouTube video, 48:05, https://youtu.be/xBSpkae0MsU.