When Drum Corps Stopped Being Distinct

I do not dislike modern drum corps because I want to return to 1975, 1985, or even 1995. There are performances from every era that I enjoy and others that I do not. My concern is not nostalgia. It is identity.

Drum and bugle corps developed as a distinctive form partly because it operated within restrictions. Those restrictions were not defects waiting for later generations to remove. They helped define what the activity was.

This is not an argument for returning drum corps to any particular decade. I do not want corps recreating an earlier decade. An art form should develop. My concern is whether development can continue indefinitely by removing the very distinctions that once defined the form.

You’re going to see more references to Ceremony as Language in the coming months as I continue research for a forthcoming book built around that concept. The basic premise is simple: ceremonies, drill, uniforms, equipment, movement, music, symbols, and assigned roles all communicate. Like spoken language, they rely on structure, recognizable vocabulary, established relationships, and context. When those elements are clear, the audience can understand what is being communicated. When the structure begins to blur, the meaning can blur with it.

A Different Kind of Ensemble

The ancestry of drum and bugle corps reaches back to military signaling. Long before electronic communications, armies used drums, fifes, horns, and bugles because sound could carry commands beyond the human voice. Bugle calls could communicate orders across a camp or through the confusion of battle. The U.S. Army still recognizes this history, even though the practical need for battlefield bugle communication disappeared long ago.

The bugle was particularly suited to signaling. Its simple construction and penetrating sound allowed standardized calls to carry over distance. Its musical limitations were part of its usefulness: the instrument did not have to perform everything a concert instrument could perform. It had a specific job. That heritage eventually developed into something far beyond battlefield communication, but the identity remained recognizable.

Drum and bugle corps was not simply another name for marching band. The two activities shared considerable grammatical vocabulary. Both marched. Both created formations. Both coordinated music and movement. Both appeared in parades and on football fields. Both incorporated brass and percussion. But similar grammar does not necessarily mean the same language. A marching band served one purpose and developed one identity. A drum and bugle corps developed another.

Restrictions Created the Form

For much of drum corps history, instrumentation was deliberately limited. Brass instrumentation, percussion, and color guard established a particular sound and visual vocabulary. Those limitations created distinction.

This is important because an artistic form is defined not only by what it permits, but also by what it excludes. A string quartet does not suffer because it lacks a trumpet. A brass quintet is not incomplete because a violin is not present. The restriction helps create the medium.

The same was true of drum corps. The question was not, “What other instruments could make this easier or give us more possibilities?” The challenge was, “What can we create with the instruments and people that define this activity?” That constraint produced innovation inside the form.

Different Roles, Different Voices

The distinction was also visible within the corps itself. The musicians generally carried the structural identity of the ensemble. Uniform, military bearing, marching precision, musical production, geometric drill, and disciplined presence established order.

The color guard supplied another voice. Flags, rifles, sabers, equipment carving, movement, dance, and eventually increasingly individualized costuming allowed the guard to interpret the music visually and emotionally.

The contrast mattered. The musicians did not have to behave like the guard, and the guard did not have to behave like the musicians. Because their roles remained recognizable, bringing those elements together could create tremendous impact.

The guard could explode into movement because the brass had been restrained. A horn line abandoning disciplined posture for a dramatic movement mattered because that movement was exceptional. Stillness could be powerful because constant motion was not required.

This is role legibility: the audience can understand what an element is and what function it serves from its visual and behavioral vocabulary. And role legibility creates contrast.

Contrast creates meaning.

When Expansion Becomes Convergence

Drum corps naturally changed. Change itself is not the problem.

One important change occurred in 1981, when DCI permitted percussion instruments to be grounded at the front of the field. The modern front ensemble (“pit”) grew from that decision, and corps soon incorporated instruments such as concert marimbas, vibraphones, pedal timpani, and other percussion equipment that could not realistically have been marched.

That was not the end of drum corps. Neither was any single rule change that followed. But additions accumulate.

Concert instrumentation expanded. Electronics and amplification expanded. Props became larger and more important. Costuming became increasingly theatrical. Dance and body movement spread beyond the color guard into the brass and percussion sections. Performers increasingly became musicians, dancers, actors, characters, prop manipulators, and visual staging devices simultaneously.

In 2025, DCI went another step and authorized each corps to use one featured instrument that otherwise would not be permitted—including a woodwind, electronic instrument, or essentially any other chosen instrument. The proposal explicitly justified the change as providing greater artistic expression and avoiding previous limitations.

That language is revealing. The limitations are viewed as obstacles. I view many of those limitations as part of what made drum corps drum corps.

The Loss of Separation

This is where my objection to modern DCI really begins. It is not that props or dance are bad. It is not that concert instruments are bad instruments. It is not that theatrical design lacks artistic merit. The problem is convergence.

Marching band and drum corps once occupied neighboring territory while maintaining recognizable boundaries. Increasingly, they draw from the same instrumentation, staging concepts, electronics, props, movement vocabulary, costuming, and theatrical techniques.

At the same time, the internal roles of the corps have converged. Brass, percussion, and color guard increasingly occupy the same expressive territory. The result may offer designers almost unlimited possibilities. But unlimited possibility carries a cost.

If every section can do virtually everything, what makes each section special? If drum corps can continually adopt the vocabulary of marching band, theater, dance, concert performance, and electronic music, at what point does drum corps cease to communicate a separate identity?

This is not an argument against innovation. It is an argument that innovation within a form is different from dissolving the boundaries of the form.

Restraint Preserves Meaning

The older drum corps activity did not need to remain frozen in time. It never was. Bugles evolved from one-valve instruments to valve-and-rotor designs and eventually to more capable three-valve instruments, greatly expanding what arrangers and performers could accomplish. Drill became far more complex—thank you very much, George Zingali and Steve Brubaker. Guard work developed dramatically—thank you, Scott Chandler, April Gilligan, Sal Salas, and Peggy Twiggs. Designers experimented. Performers achieved things previous generations could scarcely have imagined.

But development did not require abandoning the characteristics that allowed the audience to recognize the language being spoken. There is an important principle here that extends far beyond drum corps: A form is defined as much by its exclusions as by its permissions.

And another: Integration is strongest when there is something distinct to integrate.

When musicians, percussionists, and color guard possess separate identities, their eventual combination means something. When drum corps and marching band possess separate identities, borrowing between the two can be interesting because the difference remains recognizable. Remove enough distinctions, however, and integration becomes sameness.

That is what I believe modern drum corps has lost. Not talent. The performers are astonishing. Not creativity. The designers are extraordinarily creative. Not difficulty. What contemporary performers accomplish can be remarkable. What has been damaged is distinctiveness.

Drum corps once spoke in a recognizable voice because it accepted boundaries. Those boundaries forced designers and performers to communicate creatively within an established language.

In the pursuit of greater expressive freedom, DCI has progressively removed many of those boundaries. The activity gained possibilities.

But in doing so, it surrendered much of what made drum corps something other than marching band. Sometimes restrictions do not prevent expression. Sometimes they are what make the expression intelligible.

The Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps, from Canton, OH, had a wonderful show in 2013. You can see it in the link below. What brings sadness to my heart is the last formation and that last, beautiful chord. It’s not just the ending to their show, to me, it’s a farewell to an activity whose groups numbered in the hundreds across north America and now a small fraction of that number.

I know that is not what the Bluecoats intended. That is simply what I see and hear when I watch it now.

Click here to watch a great interview with Scott Stewart, the former director of one of my favorite corps, the Madison Scouts.

Click here to download a DrillMaster infographic on this subject.