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Bands Folding

To: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Bands Folding
From: David Cooper <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 16:14:24 +0100
Priority: low
Reply-to: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I've heard reports recently that The John Laing (Hendon) Band and Castle
Point Band, both London(ish) based have folded. There were certainly a
number of their players playing in other bands in this weekend's
Folkestone contest.

The questions I have are - 

1) Have the bands both folded completely ?????

2) If so, how did this happen?? Both have been successful at their own
level quite recently, with Castle Point being regarded as an excellent
training band and Hendon having a good pedigree contesting nationally
representing the South East.

If these bands have disappeared from the scene completely this is a
great loss, to banding as a whole and particularly in the London area.
There must be more we can do as a movement to prevent further losses. I
have no wonderful ideas but suspect that the root cause of so many brass
band problems is our refusal to become more flexible, especially
reagarding instrumentation.

There is no doubt that the contest scene has a lot to do with this -
the traditional brass band formation is required for contests and bands
stick with that. But why should bands feel forced to disband when
playing numbers drop below contesting levels ?? Why can't we see our
worth as musical entertainers alone.

I feel that these issues need addressing and maybe some of you on the
list will have views too. For example I seem to remember a thread
concerning relaxing the rules concerning registration and wonder if this
may be an area worth exploring. 

Anyway, sorry to go on - I needed to get this off my chest though !!!!
-- 
David Cooper
Soprano, KM Gillingham Band


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