Please help me in congratulating the Rebel Regiment on a stellar season! These students have worked extremely hard these past few months to perfect their craft and have overcome numerous obstacles. They represented our school, county, and state with professionalism and decorum.
Placements:
Midlands Marching Classic - 4th in division II
Palmetto Esprit de Corps - 2nd in division IV and 4th overall in the Silver Division
Reservation Tournament of Champions - 2nd in division and 3rd overall in the Silver Division
2A Upper State Championships - 6th Overall and secured a slot for State Finals
2A State Championships - 11th Overall
There are 48 total 2A bands across the state of South Carolina and our Rebel Regiment has continued to be a standard of excellence for others to follow.
There are many people who put down marching band as an inferior craft but I would beg to differ:
Music is a science - It is exact, specific; it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
Music is mathematical - It is rhythmically based on the subdivision of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a foreign language - Most of the terms are in Italian, German, French, or Latin; and the notation is certainly not English - but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language. Also, many songs we study are from other cultures.
Music is physical education - It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
Most of all, Music is art - It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically boring (or difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion.
Please continue to encourage the arts in our schools and not belittle their efforts of creating or being a part of something grander than themselves. Always be kind.
Take care,
