Adjacent News

There is a distinct kind of quiet that settles over the practice field behind the Music and Dramatic Arts building just before the brass sections begin their scales. Long before the traffic on Nicholson Drive starts to back up and the smell of smoked boudin begins drifting from tailgates near the PMAC, the morning air belongs entirely to the metronome and the steady, patient instructions of the drum majors. You watch the freshman trombone players adjust their slides against the humidity, finding that precise angle where the morning dew doesn't interfere with the slide grease, and you realize this machinery requires just as much calibration as any offensive line package.

Down on the turf, the sound carries across the asphalt toward the river, catching the top of the levee before dissolving into the industrial hum of the port. It is a meticulous, unglamorous business, repeating the same eight-bar transition until the spacing between ranks is precise enough to satisfy a geometry professor. Nobody writes about the fourth row of the sousaphones in the national previews, but they are out there at eight in the morning, working through the countermelody with the kind of focused devotion usually reserved for emergency room surgeons or master coopers.

By the time the sun burns through the haze off False River and hits the top of the stadium lights, the rhythm has settled into something familiar and ancient. Cher, the whole morning gets to singing when that bass drum finally finds its heartbeat against your chest, steady as a slow roll down the bayou when the water is right. Dat music just takes holt of the air, cher, till you can't tell where the brass ends and the live oaks begin, just keeping time right along with the river.