Filed under: News, President Obama, Race and Civil Rights
If you like those high-stepping marching bands who come on at halftime and play the latest music to get the crowd and fans pumped up, then you should be mourning the death of William P. Foster.
Foster, who died Saturday at the age of 91, was the founder of the Florida A&M Marching 100 band. He created the high-stepping style that so many other bands would imitate.
"He revolutionized marching band techniques in America," Julian E. White, a former student of Foster's and the school's current band director and music department chairman told the AP. "The most exciting response you can get from an audience is their reaction to well-choreographed dance routine steps. That's the kind of thing that Dr. Foster introduced."
Foster headed the Florida A&M band from 1946 until he tired in 1998. USA Today called Foster's band the best known in the country and the New York Times called it the most imitated.
"There's a psychology to running a band," Foster told The New York Times in 1989. "People want to hear the songs they hear on the radio; it gives them an immediate relationship with you. And then there's the energy. Lots of energy in playing and marching. Dazzle them with it. Energy."
And if you've ever seen some of today's high-stepping, dancing bands in action, particularly ones from black colleges, you'll know what Foster was talking about when he mentions "energy." Sometimes more people are at the stadium to see the band than the football game.
"They illustrate American music to me, which is to say the best of black music," Bastille Day Artistic Director Jean-Paul Goude told The New York Times about why he chose the Marching 100 to represent the United States in the parade. "Some things have never been exposed to the Parisian people, and this is more exciting than some pop star seen on MTV."
Today, the band has more than 400 members. Foster is an example of being the best at what you do no matter what it is.
Because of the band's success and prominence "members of the Marching 100 have played at Super Bowls, the Olympics, the Grammy Awards and the inaugurations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama," the AP wrote. Many of its members have gone on to careers as band directors and professional musicians, including Joseph "Cannonball" Adderley.
None of those things would have been possible without Foster's innovative thinking about how a marching band should operate.
Foster, who graduated from the University of Kansas in 1941, earned his masters degree from Wayne State University in 1950 and received his doctorate from the Teachers College at Columbia University in 1955, was a highly educated man who authored two books: "Band Pageantry: A Guide for the Marching Band" and "The Man Behind the Baton."
White said that even those who did not go on to careers in the arts benefited from the training Foster provided. Among the skills students learned in band were discipline, problem solving and perseverance. Those skills are important for success in life no matter what field you go in to.
"I've heard doctors, lawyers and professors say that Dr. Foster instilled those leadership qualities in them, and it caused them to be successful," White said.
So, while Foster is celebrated for the innovations he brought to the marching band, he should also be just as celebrated for being a shaper of young minds.