| REGISTER TO WIN | |
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Amid the confusion of freshman boys and girls jostling for seats in the Schlagle High School band room, Reginald May hears a noise he won’t tolerate.
“I ain’t ready for no brass,” he shouts.
“We just playing,” says a boy holding a sousaphone.
“But I know where you’re headed. We don’t want loud noise. We want ensemble sound.”
May, 50, has been the band director since 1993. On this Monday morning in the final week of July, band camp has begun.
For five days, he and several colleagues will lead intensive, 12-hour-a-day practices for returning band members and incoming freshmen. On the last day, the students will perform in front of their parents in the school parking lot.
May equates band camp to the conditioning of preseason football practices. He believes the discipline needed to play an instrument can be applied to any endeavor and will prepare them for life after high school.
It begins here.
“Do you know your history?” May asks the freshmen. “The sacrifices your grandparents made to get your parents where they are so they could get you here?”
“I live with my grandma,” a girl says.
“Make her proud. You get along with your teachers?”
“I had one lied on me.”
“Fabricated. You got a new word to replace lie. Listen, I’m educating you. It’s more tasteful.”
The girl nods and covers her mouth.
“You know why you’re yawning? Because your brain is too hot. I learned that today.”
The freshmen stare at May blank-faced. Where’d he come up with that? What to make of this man?
He removes his glasses and looks back at them and offers no hint of his thoughts. He wants them to be curious about life, have inquiring minds. He doesn’t expect them to understand him or much of anything else at this point.
“Rule No. 1,” May says, “the band director is always right. Rule No. 2: When he’s wrong, refer to Rule No. 1.”
He surveys the students with a critical eye, takes in their careless heads of hair, loose tank tops, baggy shorts, eager faces.
“We don’t have a band yet. We’re living off the reputation of last year’s band. You have to continue that legacy.
“Some of you will get upset. Some of you don’t like to be told what to do, but that’s part of it. You let your horns and sticks do the talking, not your mouths.”
• • •
When I was 11, I first saw the Schlagle band. Everybody marching and stuff. Hear the drums. See the blue and yellow uniforms. I liked the moves. I’d like to get a band scholarship and go to college. I want to be part of something people talk about.
• • •
May does not know where music will lead these boys and girls. He guesses about 10 percent of them have hung out on the street and may still. One percussionist last year was shot in the shoulder. Twenty-five percent probably don’t have a father at home.
“Some of you, I know, yell at your teachers. You’re not yelling at teachers here. I ain’t scared. I been teaching longer than you been living.”
“I got suspended last year,” a girl says, “for something stupid.”
“Usually is. Tell me something good about yourself.”
“I cook hamburgers.”
“Good. I like my cheese melted.”
May won’t know what level of talent he has to work with until a few days into band camp. Some of these freshmen musicians may have trouble competing with better-trained upperclassmen. If kids can’t play at the level May expects, he will find something else for them to do.
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