NEW ORLEANS -- During their bus rides out to Mardi Gras parades, Marine Band New Orleans musicians hang their dress blues above their seats. By the time the uniforms make it on the bus, stray pieces of strings have long been trimmed or burned out of the edges of pockets and from behind belt loops. Every perceivable wrinkle has already been ironed and re-ironed out. Ribbons and badges stand firm in their precisely measured positions between certain buttons or perpendicular to certain seams.
The Marines don’t wear their jackets while they sit on the bus, even if it’s just to hop across town, because they want to look their best for the cheering multitudes.
On their way back from a parade after marching, not walking they stress, up to six and a half miles while playing almost constantly, they hang their dress blues above their seats. Not to preserve a starched approximate perfection. That’s long gone. Soaked in sweat, their uniforms need to dry.
“Everybody says, ‘Oh man, band must be skate,’” said Master Sgt. Kevin Hunter, band master and seasoned veteran of the musical marathon that is Mardi Gras season. “We’re not in Afghanistan or Iraq taking rounds, but what we doing here is a physical challenge.”
It happens every year. The city dons its purple and green streamers in preparation for the notoriously wild partying the Big Easy is known for, while the band starts what Hunter calls, “Mardi Gras two-a-days.”
Combat boots, complete with ample ankle support and thick, shock absorbing soles, are perfect for long marches. Marine Corps formal dress shoes, complete with imitation black leather and a stubborn shine, are not.
Few understand this fact better than the blister-weary military musicians that make up the Algiers, La. Based band.
“Obviously, it tears up your feet,” said Hunter.
Two miles of parade practice kick off a typical day and another two miles ends it, every day, five days a week. On average, the band will cover a dozen Mardi Gras parades each season .Most of their parades are squeezed into the two weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday.
They’re not the only band strolling past street cars and daiquiri shops, but they only one doing at a rigid, muscle-taxing attention while wearing full dress blues.
Band leaders give their junior Marines the same advice before physical training sessions as they give before Mardi Gras parades: hydrate. On bead littered streets, they say, music becomes hard labor.
Every instrument, from the feather weight piccolo to the bulging brass sousaphone, charges its own measure of punishment in exchange for its musical splendor.
The M240 medium machine gun, a common companion on treks through combat zones and training grounds, weighs just less than 26 pounds. The standard sousaphone, often used as a marching substitute for the tuba, weighs about 35.
Most relatively lightweight instruments like the clarinet or trumpet must be held in front of the players face with constant muscle support, mile after mile. One common physical training method drill instructor’s use is having recruits hold out their 7.8 pound rifles unsupported for extended periods.
“It’s different for everyone in the band because we all have different instruments,” said Cpl. Ashley Hunt.
The French Horn, one of the most complex and difficult standard orchestral wind instruments, requires a player with a finely tuned ear. Hunt, who can pick up on and follow the subtleties of instruments, is just that player.
His beloved “doughnut,” as he calls it, is carried in a chicken-wing manner under his right arm during parade movements. As velvet tones escape the bell of the horn, a throbbing pain grows beneath the brass resting on Hunt’s right shoulder until it reaches an agonizing crescendo.
“After the third mile or so it just starts to kill me,” said Hunt. “I just try to not to think about it.”
Weight and tension, however, are far from the only strains the Marines face as they play down crowded boulevards.
Back in their aging Algiers band hall aboard Naval Support Activity New Orleans, the saxophone sections takes turns standing in front of an open refrigerator to cool off as they prepare for a weekend of back-to-back-to-back parades Feb. 25. They sweat in the dead heat of an early spring less than a block away from what will soon be their new state of the art, and most likely air-conditioning, band hall in the planned Federal City complex.
Sgt. Walter Neira’s sax squeals and sings under his careful direction, but his face is flushed, almost desperate. His sheet music lays out an unforgiving series of notes to be played in rapid succession, so he has precious little time to come up for air.
During this practice session he stands still, but later on, breathless as ever, he’ll do it all on the move.
“Of course we get tired,” he admitted, cradling his alto saxophone. “But we can’t show it.”
Later, he demonstrates the way his instrument’s sound “bounces” if he doesn’t march heel-toe with his back straight, a basic Marine Corps drill requirement.
Another basic drill requirement: head and eyes straight to the front.
Far from the pristine parade decks of Marine Corps Recruit Depots Parris Island, S.C., or San Diego, Calif., the Marines must traverse an endless stream of pot holes and broken cobblestone without ever breaking their constant forward glare. This stoicism exacts its cost on many an ankle year after year.
Some injuries though, the musicians say, only hurt on the inside.
“Our drill master tells us not to focus on the ground, to just march on through whatever,” said Hunt. “I’ve stepped in horse [manure] many times.”
The crowd too, can trip up a band. The cheering revelers act as a double-edged sword. Their applause can rejuvenate weary musicians’ spirits, but their eccentricities can also distract them. It is Mardi Gras after all.
“You’ll be looking at this group and think, ‘Man, those are some ugly girls,’” remembered Cpl. Dyllon Basiloy of the saxophone section. “And then it’s like, ‘Oh wait, that’s a man!’”
Marching bands, especially military ones, must move and, in a way, think as one. That means everyone needs to be focused on the march, not the costumes or anything else. During a past parade, a drum major forgot to give the appropriate order before continuing down the parade route and ended up marching forward on his own while his band watched helplessly, frozen behind him.
The band gets breaks now and again when the parade processions stop to wait on tow trucks for carelessly parked cars (the city puts up no-parking notices along parade routes in advance) or to wait on lagging floats, but when they’re on the move, even between songs, the percussionists are always playing. It’s their job to keep the marching rhythm for the rest of the band.
The mark of a drummer, therefore, is a salty white blotch of accumulated sweat stretching from shoulder to shoulder.
Repetitive strain injuries are the norm.
Cpl. Ben Lary plays snare during marching performances and maintains an intimate relationship with consumer bleaching agents and detergents. With each parade his jacket gets soaked and re-soaked while his brilliant white belt yellows, saturated with sweat.
“I basically just [bleach] everything after every parade,” he said. “Next gig everything’s got to be back in good order again.”
So too must the Marines who wear the uniforms, Mardi Gras after Mardi Gras, song after song.
Every parade is a new audience and within any given parade route a musician’s audience changes every few steps. The clapping revelers that danced to and cheered “When the Saints Go Marching In,” are cheering something else in no time and the next group of spectators are complete strangers.
“You may be playing The Marines Hymn for the 20th time that night but for the people that you’re playing for it’s the first time they’re hearing it, so you have got to be on every time,” said Hunter.
As the band returned from their Feb. 25 gig, they knew they had another the next day and the day after that. So it went until Fat Tuesday.
For many of New Orleans’ Marines Mardi Gras means a long weekend uniquely granted to those working at Naval Support Activity in New Orleans. Not so for the band. As others party long into the night ahead of Ash Wednesday, the band works. Come Lent, they gladly swear off Mardi Gras parades. At least until next year.