This way to Pasadena - He's NCCU's music man
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Bro. Askia Musa Afiba:
NCCU Marching Sound Machine Offers Tribute to Haitian Earthquake Survivors
Published: Friday, January 22, 2010
http://www.nccu.edu/news/index.cfm?ID=57FFFA8E-19B9-B859-785F2E1F5720E79E
The North Carolina Central University Marching Sound Machine will make their sixth appearance in the Honda Battle of the Bands (HBOB) Invitational Showcase, scheduled for Jan. 30, 2010, in Atlanta, Ga. Performing on a national stage, before a crowd of more than 65,000 cheering fans, this electrifying, high-energy band will take a moment to offer respect to those who have lost so much. The Marching Sound Machine’s 12-minute routine will include a tribute to the people of Haiti.
“It was the students’ idea,” said NCCU band director, Jorim Reid. “A lot of people are reaching out to help, and we wanted to do our part.” Band members selected Michael Jackson’s, “Earth Song” as their tribute. With a poignant chorus, “What about us,” the song will be the concert selection, or ballad of the performance. Band chaplain and auxiliary captain, Turquoise Thompson, first introduced the idea of the tribute. “This is the first tragedy of the New Year, and it is so sad. There is no way you can see that terrible footage on the news and do nothing.”
This will mark Thompson’s fifth and last performance. She will be graduating in May with a degree in public administration. A well-liked and respected band member, Thompson understands the universal nature of music, “music let’s you express yourself, it speaks every language. We are going to use what we are good at to honor someone else.”
For Reid this appearance is also significant. “It has answered my prayers,” he said. When Reid came to NCCU in 2001, there were only 30 band members. Today, the 224 member band is one of the largest student units on campus, with a unique sound that incorporates drum corps techniques, a pit percussion section, and a large dance and equipment auxiliaries. “We are a hybrid band,” said Reid jokingly, “that means we can do anything any other band can do, just with limited resources.”
To prepare for the Atlanta appearance, the band will observe “Marching Sound Machine Week” with an open practice on Thursday, January 28, for the NCCU campus, at 7 p.m. NCCU was selected as one of eight bands to perform from among 45 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that participated in the “Road to Atlanta” in October 2009. The Marching Sound Machine was also selected for the 2011 Tournament of Roses Parade and fundraising efforts have begun to help send them to Pasadena, Ca. To help support this upstart band, visit https://www.nccu.edu/giveonline.cfm .
In addition to the show-stopping performances, the HBOB program will also feature the third annual “Fox Music Experience” music internship program – of which NCCU’s own Donald Parker, III is in the running – and fifth annual HBCU Recruitment Fair. The “Fox Music Experience” will take one student inside the music and film industry of Hollywood. Through the recruitment fair, young adults will have the opportunity to meet with admission recruiters and band directors from across the country to learn more about their admission requirements, academic offerings and scholarship opportunities.
Bro. Askia Musa Afiba:
Published: Jan 23, 2010 02:00 AM Modified: Jan 21, 2010 08:08 PM
http://www.thedurhamnews.com/news/story/200699.html
This way to Pasadena
NCCU ready to sell the uniforms on its marching band's backs
Trombonist Reuben Ahukanna, second from left, leads the NCCU Marching Sound Machine trombone section as they go over a new score last week at the university's O'Kelly-Riddick Stadium.
PHOTOS BY HARRY LYNCH - hlynch@nando.com
Reid Staff photo by Harry Lynch
NCCU Marching Sound Machine drummer Markus Wilson stands ready for his cue to move during a recent band practice. The band has been selected to march in next year's Tournament of Roses Parade in California.
Staff photo by Harry Lynch
BY ERIC FERRERI, Staff Writer
Jorim Reid is determined to raise the $600,000 needed to bring his N.C. Central University marching band to Pasadena for next year's Tournament of Roses Parade.
If that means turning his 200 or so band members into walking billboards, well, so be it.
"I call it NASCAR marketing," said Reid, now in his 10th year as the Marching Sound Machine's band director. "We'll put stickers all over the uniforms."
Reid may have been exaggerating a little. Maybe.
The fact is, NCCU cannot use public funds for the biggest band trip in its history, and it has less than a year to raise the money privately. For a relatively small university still dealing with years of budget cuts, it is a daunting task.
Here's how university officials hope to pull off the feat:
1. Find a corporate sponsor. This is an imperative, a company willing to pony up $250,000 to be the lead sponsor and reap the benefits of the advertising that will come with a corporate logo prominently featured on the uniform of each band member. That's the NASCAR-style marketing.
"We have alumni well-positioned in the corporate community, and I'm confident we'll be able to get a corporate sponsor," said Chancellor Charlie Nelms, adding that he isn't necessarily looking for a local company. "I'm viewing this as a national effort."
2. In-kind donations. The university also expects to hit up companies that may not want to donate money but could offer their services. Specifically, transportation. It's no small task shipping 200 band members and all their instruments all the way across the country.
"We have to move a ton of equipment," Nelms said.
3. Alumni support. As it would for any fundraising initiative, the university is looking to alumni. But for the band fundraiser, Nelms and others plan to create direct relationships by encouraging alumni to sponsor a single student - at a cost of about $2,000 each. Alumni chapters will be similarly encouraged to sponsor small clusters of band members, perhaps a group of five for $10,000.
"We're trying to make it personal," Nelms said.
4. Student support. This isn't where the big money is, but Nelms and others say student support of the band initiative is vital. Student leaders are being encouraged to drum up support and push fundraising drives for the band, one of just about a dozen bands from across the nation selected for the high-profile, New Year's Day parade.
"While a car wash won't raise you $600,000, it's a way of increasing support and camaraderie," Nelms said.
Bro. Askia Musa Afiba:
Published Sun, Jan 24, 2010 05:03 AM Modified Sun, Jan 24, 2010 05:30 AM
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/people/story/301140.html
HARRY LYNCH - hlynch@newsobserver.com
The N.C. Central University Marching Sound Machine has grown to 200 members under Jorim Reid's leadership. When he took it over in 2001, it had 32 members.
Tar Heel: He's NCCU's music man
DURHAM -- Two years into his tenure as N.C. Central University's band director, Jorim Reid reached a milestone in 2003 when he convinced the university to part with $60,000 for new band uniforms.
Though the band had been formally outfitted at times in the past, it had not for years. The band, tiny at 32 members when he took it over in 2001, had been performing in wind suits, humbling when compared to larger, more decked-out bands from other universities.
Some band members wept when they opened the boxes.
"Some said they slept in their uniforms," Reid remembers.
The uniform purchase was one of several key moments in the progression of the NCCU Marching Sound Machine under Reid's leadership, a slow slog that culminated in November with the band's invitation to the Tournament of Roses Parade next year.
The Rose Bowl, one of college football's preeminent bowl games, is considered "The Granddaddy of 'em all." For Reid, a coveted invitation to its parade in Pasadena, Calif., is a crowning achievement. The parade is considered part of the holy trinity of accomplishments for marching bands, along with an invitation to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the John Philip Sousa Foundation's Sudler Trophy given each year to the top college or university band in the nation.
The parade invite was an unlikely goal in 2001 when Reid took over a band program on a shoestring budget with little support. The $13,000 budget had to fund the Marching Sound Machine and the pep and symphonic bands. There was little in the way of facilities and there still isn't; Reid's is a rare college band that rehearses at the university's football stadium rather than on its own practice field.
Still, Reid soldiered forward in the face of a community that, he says now, did not appreciate what a successful band could offer the university. So he set out to "literally win souls one by one."
He wrote a 15-year plan of goals and the resources needed to meet them. The Rose Parade was on the list.
At first, Reid faced pushback. Administrators wondered why Reid insisted that all band members had to be included on all trips, a budget killer given the cost of buses and fuel.
To Reid, this was an imperative. The band had to grow and make a statement.
"There are high school bands in Texas with 400 members," he says.
Slowly, Reid began getting results. The band uniforms were a nice score. When the band hit 100 members, Reid made good on a pledge he'd made and shaved his head.
And then came a band showcase in Norfolk, Va., which Reid thinks of now as the band's coming-out party. There were more than 30,000 attendees, and the NCCU band, still largely an unknown, roused them to ovation.
"The kids didn't know how to handle it," Reid recalls fondly.
Reid comes from music. His family came from Gary, Ind., a music hotbed that gave the world the Jacksons, among other musical families. It bred a rich musical culture of gospel, R&B, blues and jazz. Reid's mother, Rose, was a gospel singer who also played clarinet and piano.
Moving to Florida
The family relocated to South Florida, where Reid grew up playing guitar, piano, drums and woodwinds.
He attended Florida A & M University, a historically black institution in Tallahassee with one of the most famous marching bands in the nation. Reid was drum major, the theatrical leader of the band.
He majored in music and later got a master's degree in music from Florida State. From there, he taught K-12 music while also giving piano lessons and selling pianos.
He came to NCCU as assistant band director in 2000 and took it over a year later. Now 36, the soft-spoken Reid is reluctant to take too much credit for the band's resurgence.
"He doesn't like a lot of limelight," said Ronnie Chalmers, a 2003 NCCU graduate who was Reid's first drum major. "He likes to put the students out front. That attracted a lot of people to the band."
The band now boasts about 200 members. From the beginning, Reid placed a premium on musical performance. A marching band performance is a high-energy, emotional event, but Reid insisted his students be technically sound as well.
While the marching band is the most recognizable NCCU music group, Reid says his student musicians have honed their chops playing with the smaller, less visible symphonic band.
"He's done a phenomenal job of recruiting good students and emphasizing the importance of musicianship," said Chancellor Charlie Nelms, who is now trying to raise the $600,000 needed to send the band to Pasadena for the big parade on New Year's Day. "There are a lot of bands that can put on a good show. But this man understands musicianship, too."
He understands his students, too, perhaps because he, like many of them, came from modest circumstances.
Reid still remembers an all-county band competition he performed in using an oboe borrowed from his school. It was a rudimentary instrument with a "Dade County Public Schools" stamp on it. Next to him, a young woman rolled her eyes at him as she performed on her silver-plated oboe, one Reid says was probably worth $8,000.
At NCCU, few students own their instruments, opting instead to use those owned by the university.
To many students, Reid is something of a father figure offering firm, wise guidance, said Marilyn Clements, president of the band's booster club.
"He can, all in one breath, build a student up and correct him when he's wrong," said Clements, a band member herself from 1970 to 1974. "He's very concerned and very dedicated to his students, but when they mess up, he tells them."
Chalmers, the former drum major, said that while Reid isn't an overtly rah-rah leader, his drive and leadership inspires.
Looking back at his time at NCCU, Chalmers said he might have even predicted the Marching Sound Machine would make its way to Pasadena someday.
"When [Reid] got here, I knew something great would happen," he said.
eric.ferreri@newsobserver.com or 919-932-2008
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