Gregson Brass Band Documentary with John Fletcher

[2nd tenor]

I don't know if this has been posted before, but it needs to be again

[bloke]

I like the fact that Previn wasn't lecturing us, and fully admitted that he didn't know much about the genre and was heading up there himself to be educated.

[Dents Be Gone!]

I agree, guys. This is the way to go.

[2nd tenor]

I don't know if this has been posted before, but it needs to be again

Thanks for posting that video. As a youth I knew folk who knew folk in those bands and young lads like me aspired to join them - though it didn’t take me too long to realise that I’d never reach those heights.

One thing in the film that strikes me is the all male membership, in the 1970’s some girls started to be allowed into youth bands but historically Brass Bands were pretty much men only places. Now the future of Brass Bands seems, to me, to be pretty much evenly split between men and women - we certainly have some very gifted women in our Band and over half the membership is female. Currently the ablest Tuba players in my Band are male, but one of our ‘front row’ Cornet players used to play BBb in a Championship Section Band and that player is a woman. One of our recent Principle Cornet players moved on and is now a percussionist for a Championship Section band, again that player is a woman. Of the thirty players listed on Black Dyke’s web site eight are young women. The times, they are a changing.

[bloke]

I'm guessing that one of the reasons that they were traditionally only male is that they also seem to be even more company-related than town-related... and those companies were most often traditionally male occupation types of companies. Am I wrong?

In America, everyone is aware that the Jack Daniels whiskey distillery had a band in the distant past...resurrected but not (really) under their auspices anymore, and here in my shop was a Bach Stradivarius cornet with a stout metal emblem on the case indicating that it was originally owned by an elevator company in Memphis that had its own band.

[prairieboy1]

A terrific documentary with many examples of beautiful playing. Thank you for posting this!!

[2nd tenor]

I'm guessing that one of the reasons that they were traditionally only male is that they also seem to be even more company-related than town-related... and those companies were most often traditionally male occupation types of companies. Am I wrong?

I wouldn’t say wrong, but the picture is complex and I only know a limited part of it. Two types of Band existed those that were organisation/company sponsored/owned and those that were independent and the documentary gives an example of each. Bess O Barn recruited from its training band and that was all boys, girls simply weren’t admitted and - as far as I know - that practise was usual. The youth band that I played in did admit girls, but originally it was a boys only band. The company sponsored bands were similar (male only) in that skill levels required to join were very high (women didn’t have access to the necessary training) and the players did work for the company, married women were at home looking after children and domestic matters - that’s just how things were. I recall that if you were a player for Black Dyke then you had a ‘job for life’ - effectively high job security - and that the Mill employed many different trades in support of the manufacturer of its core products.

[andycat]

As a former member of Besses, they admoitted women in the late 1980's. I was a member of Faireys in 2000-2004, and they only admitted women after that!

Whereas Foden's (Where I was in the 1990-94 time, as now) already had women when I joined.