Banding Together

The musicians walked on stage, swallowing nervously. Harsh lights glinted on shiny instruments. A not very-expectant hush fell on the far from capacity crowd. The conductor raised his baton … and we were off.

Twelve minutes later, we were off …. stage, our performance of Journey into Freedom by Eric Ball completed, to muted applause. In the green room, anxious faces debated how it had gone. Melvin’s solo was brilliant as always, but there were some cracked notes. When are Dyke on?

Meanwhile, in the hot and muggy hall, another band was settling down with the same air of focused fear, shuffling their chairs, blowing through trombones, extraneous spit falling to the floor, waiting for a whistle from the stalls, the signal to start. Then another conductor raised another baton … and the band played Journey into Freedom by Eric Ball.

Welcome to the wacky world of brass band contests, where twenty bands drawn from all over the United Kingdom play the exact same tune, one after the other, all day, to a crowd of furiously concentrating ‘brass banders’, who mark each performance like judges at a prize fight. These brass bands, usually derived from long-closed coal mines, are not very New Orleans. There are no sousaphones, no jerking umbrellas, absolutely no funerals, and nobody stomps. The British version, considerably more staid, consists of half a dozen cornets (a smaller trumpet), some tenor horns (which are baby euphoniums), a few of the full-sized things, some trombones and, at the back, the big beasts, four tubas. Oh, and percussion obviously, which is why I was there. Coming on stage in gaudy uniforms, the musicians, all gifted and supposedly amateurs, their talent as polished as their instruments, play the same tune with fervour and attempted excellence, the product of weeks of intense rehearsal. ‘The test piece’, they call it, often a new work from some struggling composer desperate for a commission, designed to be as difficult as possible to play – and, therefore, to listen to. This is not music for pleasure. Toes seldom tap when the band lets rip. No melodies are retrospectively hummed. The test piece is exactly that, designed to assess the musicality, technical skill, and ability to control nerves of each participating band.

And the venue? You’d imagine some mediocre hall in a dingy suburb, right, maybe Croydon, or Staines? Perhaps Surbiton? Actually it’s the most famous venue in London, the Royal Albert Hall. For these bands are the best of the best, ‘championship section’, an accolade as lauded as the Premier League in football, taking part having won their regional heat, where lesser bands fall by the wayside.

The judges, vaunted brass banders themselves, star players or conductors, are there but invisible, sitting in a rickety box in the centre of the stalls which is aurally transparent but visually occluded, to ensure impartiality. They can hear but cannot look. When each band walks on stage, no Master of Ceremonies says ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, will you welcome….’. Instead, to silence and the tramp of thirty pairs of highly-polished black shoes, a glum-looking man in a tight suit and a white shirt with a too-narrow tie changes a large board on an easel: the next performers will be band G.

The crowd shuffle their programmes to check who on earth that might be. But everyone knows when the star band arrives; Black Dyke Mills, consistently the best, winner of most things, always, gliding on stage in their black and red uniforms, with an eccentric but unique convention of using silvered instruments, not yellowy brass. They are Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal all rolled into one, their arrival hush all the more expectant. ‘Ssshhh, it’s Dyke next’ people whisper, doubtless heard by the judges. But they’d know anyway, that smooth roundness of sound and perfected ability always standing above the rest.

Or it did when I first played that gig, anyway. I was fourteen, co-opted by my drum teacher to play cymbals and triangle with a bit of bass drum, travelling to the Ever Ready battery factory, next to the town in County Durham whose Craghead Colliery had given the band its original name, before the pit shut. We were the northern regional champions every year since God was a boy, always expecting to ‘go to the Nationals’ in London, never really expecting to win, but aways hoping, maybe this year. Given the history, and the working class neighbourhood, everyone in the band was a working man, except of course for Linda, a cornet player, the sole woman. Some were still coal miners in the few remaining pits. Others had jobs in the Ever Ready factory, making batteries by day, music by night.

When the test piece was announced, we’d wait anxiously for the parts to arrive, building up the practice until the final week, when we’d rehearse every night, three hours a time, usually with an invited guest conductor like Walter Hargreaves, a tiny, furious man who could reduce a six foot four, twenty stone tuba-playing coal miner to tears, with one biting comment. The intense schedule itself had risks: ‘how’s yer lips doin’?’ someone would shout, for brass players cannot perform with labial over-use injuries. Then we’d get on a coach from Fulton’s of Sacriston and take the long drive to London, instruments packed underneath. On arrival in the smoke, the band secretary Ray Hutch would shout ‘have yer got yer yoony-forms?’ in his rotund Durham accent (Geordie with a dash of Yorkshire), as we checked into some cheap hotel, all talk of banding, and whose was the latest marriage to fail. For brass band musicians put the music before everything. These guys lived and breathed their music, ignoring what ‘her indoors’ said, until she threw them outdoors. And then they kept on playing. When people love something so much, especially music, nothing else matters. And anyway, this might be our year, it’s sounding good - and last time, we was robbed.

I played the Nationals most years as a schoolboy, later flown up (my first ever flight, aged nineteen) during student years to rehearse a tricky timpani part. When I graduated, about to start work at the BBC, a letter arrived out of the blue from Black Dyke. ‘We have seen you perform with Ever Ready and would like to invite you to join the band as principal percussionist. And there’s a job in the factory for you’. I declined, but still sometimes wonder how life might have turned out if my love of banding had been sufficiently all-encompassing. Aka, mad.

Back in the hall, in late afternoon, the contest drew to a close and the vibrant notes of Journey into Freedom died away for the last time in the overly-echoing vastness. A glum silence fell on the crowd. How long before the judges opined? By now, all musicians were well into the beer (brass players cannot function long without a few pints), and the wary ‘aal reet’ nods to rival bands had given way to conspiratorial chats about ‘who d’you have to win?’ Finally, the judges were released from their box - which helpfully had a chemical toilet inside - and walked onto that hallowed stage, now accessorised with multiple pools of ejected saliva. Some desultory words followed, generic praise for this and that, when everyone in the crowd was wanting to shout ‘just bloody tell us’, before, finally, the big reveal. ‘And the winner is …. the band that played … seventh’.

A short pause ensued, as everyone tried to remember who that was.

Then a cry went up from the winners, and rueful cheers from the other nineteen bands and their followers. Dyke again. Always the ruddy same. Well, maybe next year.

Passion is seldom logical, not when it combines music, and competitiveness, and centuries of local culture. The Nationals continue. Ever Ready has never won.

Back on the coach lads. We’ll be home by 2am. Don’t forget yer yoony-forms.