At the Drum Corps World Championship, Perfection Is the Expectation

The 159 members of the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps are on the field. Sixty-four of them are standing on a fire-engine-red platform that fills the space between the hash marks and the 40-yard lines. They are dressed in white jumpsuits adorned with red lines.

Members of the color guard are spread across the field from one 10-yard line to the other. They are all carrying white mock rifles, which they toss high into the air and then catch just as horns play their first notes, a major chord. The sound is picked up by microphones and runs through a digital effect. It hovers in the air for six seconds. The horn players hit the chord six more times as they move together, confined by the platform. Each time the chord comes back more quickly.

Then they are off the platform and moving. The trumpets snake toward the front sideline. The drums are finally playing. The opening song is taking shape — it’s “Foreplay” by Boston, a spinning organ number that is already musically ambitious when played by a stationary rock band. The notes from the organist’s left hand are coming through the tubas. This isn’t stiff. It has some drive. The group is really blowing now. It’s loud. Its members spread 60 yards wide. Then they play that same major chord again three times. There is a moment for the crowd to whoop.

This is modern drum corps. It is a competition for mostly college-age students, but the groups are not affiliated with any schools. When they are in season, the corps consume the lives of their members — perfecting a single performance, and then continuing to drill it until it is somewhere beyond perfection. Rehearsals last up to 12 hours a day, and intense tours dominate the performers’ lives in July before culminating in a world championship in Indianapolis.

A drum corps show usually takes about 12 minutes and may last no longer than 13. Every show has a title, announced over a loudspeaker before each performance. Themes vary from abstract and serious to campy and smack-you-in-the-face literal.

Each corps is made up of distinct groups of performers. A horn section is filled with trumpets, mellophones, baritones, tubas and sometimes trombones, but never woodwinds. There’s a drum line, which is in motion, as well as a front ensemble, which features stationary percussion instruments like the marimba, vibraphone and xylophone. A color guard dances, complementing the music by spinning and tossing flags, rifles and sabers. And a handful of conductors keep the groups in time.

The conventions and rules of the form provide a unique canvas: an opportunity for dramatic staging, complex musical arrangement, demanding choreography and borderline braggadocious solo performance all at once. At any given moment, there are more than a hundred bodies in motion on the field and dozens of flags spinning through the air. It is overwhelming by design, and also capable of providing moments of startling clarity.

The activity is a study in passion — or perhaps delusion. It is not easy. It does not make money. It does not clearly translate to a career. And it ends; groups like the Bluecoats that compete in Drum Corps International’s world-class division are made up exclusively of participants under the age of 22.

“I can’t do this ever again,” said Mebibora Akerejola, a 21-year-old member of the Bluecoats drum line and a computer science major at Georgia State University. “So I’m willing to sacrifice a summer just to do it at least once.”

But there is something special to be found in the rules and schedules and restrictions, in creating perfection and then leaving it behind.

Community Roots

Drum Corps International, the main organizing body for drum and bugle corps competition, did not form until 1972, but many of the groups that participate in the activity have roots that stretch back as far as the 1920s and are connected to various civic institutions of the 20th century like Boy Scout troops, Catholic parishes and American Legion outposts. (The Bluecoats began in Ohio in 1972, sponsored by the Canton Police Boys’ Club.)

There are currently 21 groups in the D.C.I. world-class division. Each is at least attempting the same kind of rigor and output: the intricate program, the long and frequent rehearsals, the grueling tours. But this is an activity defined by competition, and there is a clear hierarchy even within the division that is created by money, organization and time.

Groups with less funding have mostly weekend rehearsals until July and go on abbreviated tours of around 10 performances. Top groups usually make camp at colleges in May and rehearse six days a week until their tours begins in July. At that point, the group performs nearly 20 times, mostly in high school and college football stadiums, before the season-ending world championships, which are held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis every August.

A handful of groups each year contend to win the world championship, and the Blue Devils of Concord, Calif., have won first place in nine of the last 14 seasons. But in every case, from the Blue Devils and the Bluecoats to the various up-and-comers, rather than earning a salary for all of their hard work, the performers pay to compete.

Building a contending corps is expensive. “Students in drum corps that do the national tour pay something between $2,000 and $6,000,” said Mike Scott, the chief executive of the Bluecoats, while noting that even the high dues don’t come close to covering the operating costs.

For nearly everyone involved, drum corps is a logistical nightmare. But they go into it with open eyes.

“I think this activity pulls the type of people who literally do not want to be anywhere else,” said Ella McFarlane, the captain of the Bluecoats color guard. And there are plenty of them — 1,500 people auditioned for a spot in the Bluecoats this year.

Celebrities in Their World

The obsession extends beyond participants and auditioners. Members of high school marching bands look to D.C.I. corps members the same way that young athletes study and idolize professionals, even though the corps members aren’t much older than they are.

Keelan Tobia, a Blue Devils drum-line alumnus, became known online in 2008 after posting a video of himself playing a piece he called “the 10-second lick.” The piece spread in a way that was novel for the time — other drummers would transcribe and learn it, and then post videos of themselves trying to play it. In 2011, a video of Mr. Tobia playing a longer solo on a snare drum got more than two million views. That’s when things started changing. He said a young fan approached him in tears, overwhelmed that she was meeting one of her heroes.

Brandon Olander, who spent five seasons on the Blue Devils drum line in the late 2010s, became a microcelebrity as well. As a mop-haired 12-year-old in 2010, he was featured in a video playing show music alongside that year’s Blue Devils drum line that garnered over four million views. An early video on his own YouTube channel? An attempt at playing the “10-second lick.”

And there is enough enthusiasm for these kinds of videos that Eric Carr, who marched with the Jersey Surf and Carolina Crown corps in the early 2010s, was able to leave his spot on the drum line of the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps to run EMC Productions, a YouTube channel dedicated mostly to drumming, as a full-time job.

The passion of the participants can border on obsessive, but that is hardly surprising in an activity that is so concerned with time.

“To me, what drum corps has that no one else has is the perfection that you’re aiming for,” said Scott Johnson, the battery caption head for the Blue Devils, who has been a drum corps instructor since the 1970s. “College bands are kind of close, but … you cannot get that level of precision anywhere else.”

Days are long but tightly structured: an hour of dance, an hour of sectional rehearsal, an hour of ensemble rehearsal, a meal, travel, three hours of unloading gear and warming up and then the show. All of this for a show that runs 13 minutes or less.

“We live in a day and age where it’s hard to grab people’s attention,” said Jonah Hammett, 21, the horn section leader for the Bluecoats and a student at the University of Texas at Austin. “The fact that all these young people are able to grab the attention of thousands for 12 minutes, usually uninterrupted — that doesn’t really happen elsewhere.”

Once the season is over, a few members may return, but that particular show will be gone forever. Each year, the winning group plays a glassy-eyed encore performance of their program, knowing that all the work of the last four months is being put on display for the final time.

One Last Time

The red platform has split into four parts now. The bass drummers are standing on the one nearest to the stands. The percussion plays alone for nearly a minute while the rest of the ensemble swirls backfield. The horns are playing again, purposely discordant and halting. An amplified sample comes from the front ensemble. Now the horns are together, playing a crunchy, irregular-tempo groove. The lead trumpet is in the stratosphere, screaming over the top of everything.

It would be easy to miss the guard, which had assembled near the front sideline, holding Mylar flags. The sound of the flags shimmers, running through the reverb effect. It’s time for the ballad.

On the drum line, the quads are playing their feature, synchronized with the marimbas and vibraphones. The music is speeding up again. The mellophone players have all picked up trumpets now, and the newly giant section is playing a dueling feature. The platform has split into what looks like 30 pieces. A trombonist is playing a yearning solo. The ensemble has picked up the theme now as the show comes to its grand conclusion. The horn players sprint to the center of the field. They play that major chord one more time. It hangs in the air for a moment. And then it is gone.