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Veteran
How to fit a top-tier HBCU marching band and the gospel tradition onto one album
Sept 26, 2022
At the 2018 edition of Coachella, Beyoncé showed us how a global pop star celebrates the marching bands of historically Black colleges and universities in a spectacular festival performance, then translates that into a downright marvel of a concert documentary and live album.
Live performance is also the realm that the Aristocrat of Bands — pride of Nashville-based HBCU Tennessee State University — has excelled in for 76 years. The AOB's reputation for precision and high-stepping showmanship on the field landed it on national television during a 1955 NFL game and brought an invitation to President Kennedy's 1961 inauguration, both firsts for an HBCU band. In the last year, the AOB secured a coveted slot in the Rose Parade and an early July booking at Essence Fest alongside a couple of big gospel names, Jekalyn Carr and Sir The Baptist. That latter appearance served as a preview of a one-of-a-kind project, The Urban Hymnal, a studio album featuring the AOB as primary artist, fully in gospel mode for the first time, with an array of contemporary gospel stars in supporting roles.
Conceiving of the project took someone as connected in the industry as Sir The Baptist teaming up with someone as versed in the AOB's sound, culture and operations as one of its assistant directors, Larry Jenkins. While Sir is a rapper, singer, songwriter and producer from Chicago, who has sauntered savvily, and with a strong sense of social purpose, between gospel, R&B and hip-hop since the mid-2010s, dropped tracks with Brandy and Killer Mike and picked up a Grammy nod for his work with Kierra Sheard, Jenkins is a virtuoso on trumpet and one of the AOB's most skilled and imaginative composers and arrangers.
It was Sir who made the first move, expressing interest in the AOB and visiting Nashville to shadow the band on a game day. Jenkins, entrusted with running the school's artist residency program, then asked Sir to sign on, and over a meal at a Mexican restaurant the two discussed what making an album during Sir's artist residency could do for the students, filling at least one napkin with their ideas.
"We both wanted to see the kids win," Sir recalls, seated next to Jenkins again, this time in TSU's performance arts building. "We wanted to be a part of the kids' story as they are creating their legacy, and really, really zone in on how to preserve the future for HBCU bands. But doing that, we needed to give ourselves a job as musicians, as creators."
Sir and Jenkins would steer the students through the album-making process together, acting as co-producers on a few tracks, each taking on far more than the title usually implies before all was said and done.
In the AOB's typical wide-ranging, crowd-pleasing, popular repertoire, the impact of gospel music is a bit more diffuse, present as an influence on the band's secular selections, in the school song that shares its melody with the gospel chestnut "I'm So Glad" and via the backgrounds of students' who've utilized their talents in church. The Urban Hymnal, which opens with a straightforward rendition of "I'm So Glad," represents a fully realized union of towering, Black musical traditions.
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