The Development of Marching Band Traditions at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: The Human Jukebox versus the Sonic Boom of the South
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study investigated the development of marching band traditions at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), as told through the rivalry between Southern University (SU) and Jackson State University (JSU). I interviewed directors from SU, including Lawrence Jackson, Nathan Haymer, and Kedric Taylor. Directors from JSU included Dowell Taylor, Lewis Liddell, and Lowell Hollinger. Paul Adams directed at both schools, David Ware is an HBCU bands researcher, and Julian White directed at Florida A&M University (FAMU). I found traditions established through the intense rivalry between SU and JSU. Interviewees agree that a desire to outplay and outperform the other band is a major factor. This study highlights similarities between HBCU bands and New Orleans-style “second line” brass bands, which were historically driven by a competitive edge. Narrations revealed combinations of happenstance and careful planning that birthed traditions such as the famed pre-game “zero quarter” and post-game “fifth quarter” rituals that are now commonplace at HBCU football games. Directors discussed how these traditions changed with improved video sharing. Fans now demand more music, more shock factor, and flawlessness. This competitive environment forged unique traditions which can inform modern music educators about the important and complex role of competition in performance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".