Glamorgan and Yorkshire! What have they got in common?
Surely not much, must be the answer! Both parts of the UK, though in separate countries, the inhabitants of both would undoubtedly tell you! One is epitomised by the windswept moors of 'Wuthering Heights', the other by the tight, ever-loyal communities of 'How Green Was My Valley'.
The antipathy between the two is, at times legendary! Ask a proud Glamorgan man and a Yorkshireman to debate which is the better comestible delicacy between Yorkshire Pudding and Laverbread and a British civil war may erupt! Professional Yorkshireman 'Sir' Geoffrey Boycott, that legend of England's cricketing heritage, once famously refused to tour with the England winter team...because a 'Welshman' was captain! Yet there are links between the two areas that make them indisputable cousins...and bind the two proud heritages together as clearly as Cheddar is linked to cheese: coal mines and brass bands!
Even as recently as this past weekend the rivalry between the Cory Band of Wales and Black Dyke of Yorkshire was bitter and keen...the Brass Band Contest went to Cory...but many (even from other bands) went home to Yorkshire disappointed in the adjudication result! Such is the brass band world! If you ever need to know what brass bands mean to the people of Wales or Yorkshire one has only to watch the marvellous film 'Brassed Off'. If the great footballing philosopher Bill Shankley (the legendary manager of the great Liverpool team of the mid 1970s) was once quoted as saying that "football was not a matter of life and death...it's far more important than that!" - then, certainly in Glamorgan and Yorkshire, the same is as true - if not more so - of brass bands!
Yet where do brass bands 'fit' in the musical realm? They are not really taken seriously by the 'orchestral/classical' realm. And, although the Brighouse & Rastrick Band reached number two in the British pop charts with 'The Floral Dance' in 1977 they hardly belong in the world of 'popular music' either! In fact, outside of the mining communities, where their presence was so steeped in folk-lore and community spirit that they have outlasted the pits by far, there is only really one other bastion of brass banding that still thrives today - and that is, undoubtedly, The Salvation Army!
This branch of social protestantism, founded in Whitechapel, London by William Booth in 1865 is now a multinational church with activity in well over 100 countries. The 'Army' or the 'Salvos' are intrinsicly linked with lassies in bonnets with tambourines, amazing social work (in the UK today the SA is still the largest provider of social help apart from the governement itself)...and BRASS BANDS!
I have been a Salvation Army bandsman for 33 years this Autumn - but if you include service given while still in short pants - you can make that over 40! I started to play aged 5 when living in Bargoed - one of those coal pit villages in the Rhymney Valley, South Wales. My dad wrote out 'Onward Christian Soldiers' on staves ruled on the back of a cornflake packet and I marched around the front room learning, then playing it until he regretted it!
Tonight I shared with 32 others in a Salvation Army band rehearsal here in Portsmouth. There are not many rehearsals remaining now until the recording sessions for the band's next CD - their 3rd and the 11th album in total since 1968, which marked the band's first excursion onto vinyl. (There is a very rare recording of a 1956 radio braodcast which exists on coated metal discs that predates these but I only know of one copy that still exists...quite amazingly, Alex Manning, who played on that recording, is still the band's flugel-horn player today! He also owns the discs!)
Brass banding and coal-mining both instil into its participants an unbreakable bond of cameraderie...a deep friendship that transcends Yorkshire v Glamorgan or Cory v Black Dyke. At the end of a concert or contest the bandsmen will put sweaty arms around each others' shoulders and share a pint (or in the Salvation Army's case a steaming hot cup of tea!) and life will go on!
Bill Shankley's football could learn something from brass bands, I think!
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Great post, Marc. My brother plays the Tuba and Trombone, and I have dabbled with the Trumpet, so I know what you mean about how Brass Bands aren't given much credence in the music world. There is something about a brass band though...it's larger than life, and in no way can it ever be disregarded! I always associate them with the holidays; we used to go to the Tuba Christmas presentations at Rockefeller Center in NYC when I was younger. Roughly 50 Tubas playing carols, and popular songs. It was great.
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