Location New Haven, CT Members 100+ Genre Pop | Founded 1917 Active from 1917 Fight song "Bulldog, Down the Field" | |
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Uniform Navy blue Yale blazers, white collared button-up shirts, white pants, black shoes, decorative pins and accessories known as "schwee" Website Yale Precision Marching Band Similar Harvard University Band, Columbia University Marching, Princeton University Band, Yale Glee Club, Dartmouth College Marching Profiles | ||
Yale precision marching band
The Yale Precision Marching Band (affectionately known as the YPMB, or more simply The Band, for short) is the official marching band of Yale University. It is a scatter band (what some peers might call a "scramble band"), as distinct from university marching bands that emphasize precise movements and geometric field formations. Band members refer to themselves as "The Members Of...", which is derived from their introduction at Yale events.
Contents
- Yale precision marching band
- About The Band
- The Game
- berprops
- Unterprops
- Notable stunts
- Drum Majors
- Repertoire
- References
About The Band
Aside from Director Thomas C. Duffy and Business Manager Stephanie Theodos Hubbard, the band is largely student-run.
The band performs at most Yale football, basketball, and hockey events, and travels with Yale athletic teams across the country. It makes regular appearances in New York's Village Halloween Parade. It has been featured on Good Morning America and in many newspapers.
The repertoire of the YPMB is constantly evolving, driven by student arrangers and pop music trends. Besides standard types of band instruments, the YPMB includes violins, bagpipes, accordions, keyboards, keytars, musical saws, and air guitars, and in 1973, was the first scatter band to incorporate electric guitars.
The YPMB's "Squids" section creates large cardboard props for halftime shows. The Squids evolved from the "Appoges" /əˈpoʊdʒᵻz/ (after "appoggiatura", a grace note) of the 1980s and 1990s, who handled props but also carried their own "instruments" (frisbees, stuffed giraffes, lounge chairs). The Squids have also been known to handle more visually stunning aspects of the halftime show, such as flaming sousaphones, blank-loaded firearms, and other non-traditional marching band additions. The appearance at certain games of smoke- and flame-producing pyrotechnics has also been linked to the YPMB Squids, but this has never been successfully confirmed via official channels. Squid alumni have gone on to join The Flaming Lotus Girls, The Cacophony Society, professional pyrotechnic companies, and other groups.
YPMB uniforms consist of white pants and dark blue blazers with the University emblem for football games; signature t-shirts for basketball and volleyball games; and hockey jerseys for hockey, lacrosse, and most other sports.
The Game
For the annual Harvard-Yale game - The Game - the YPMB puts on its largest halftime show of the year, featuring enormous three-dimensional props. Known as "Überprops", these typically serve as a means of destroying John Harvard. An Unterprop is the opposite of an Überprop. An Unterprop would be used to represent John Harvard and would be destroyed by the band during the halftime show. An Unterprop was used for the first time in 2001.
Überprops
Unterprops
Notable stunts
On October 27, 1973 in a rare political statement, the YPMB reacted to Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" (wherein he ordered the firing of the special prosecutor assigned to investigate Watergate) by forming a major "H" on the field and playing "10,000 Men of Harvard". The band paid tribute Harvard Graduate Elliot Richardson who resigned rather than carry out the order to fire Harvard Law professor Archibald Cox. The order was carried out by Yale Law professor Robert Bork.
In September 1977, at the conclusion of the halftime show at the Yale-Brown game, the YPMB formed a giant diaper on the field. The members of the YPMB dropped their pants en masse to reveal that all members were wearing diapers. (The band marched "Down the Field" with their pants around their ankles.) The announcer stated that the YPMB was the "Most Pampered Band in the Country" as they marched off. This became known as one of its more infamous stunts; the band parodied that stunt at the Princeton game in 1983, where the band dropped its pants en masse again, this time to reveal that all members were wearing sweat pants underneath their white uniform pants.
In October 1985, six YPMB members were suspended after dropping their pants at halftime during the Yale-Holy Cross game (New York Times, October 20, 1985, 11CN p. 17). Only one week earlier, the band was forbidden by West Point officials from performing its halftime show during the Army-Yale game for the script's insinuation that certain government officials were communists. The following season, in the Yale-Army game at New Haven, the YPMB took the unusual step of marching in straight lines for several minutes before breaking into its usual scatter formations. (NYT 10/7/86, B4) Before the band left the field, members removed their blue blazers on the field, spelling out "USA."
In 1992, before the combined playing of the "Star-Spangled Banner", the Harvard marching band attempted to "X-out" the Yale Precision Marching Band while the Yale band stood in its traditional Y formation; however, the Yale band caught wind of this plan and, as the Harvard band marched onto the field, shifted its formation into a large H, thus making Harvard X itself out.
In 1992, the Yale-Fordham halftime featured the marriage of two former band members, Drum Major James Lockman '89 and Props Goddess Rori Myers '92. ("At Yale, Wedding Band Takes On a New Meaning", New York Times, October 10, 1992.) During the ceremony, the band formed a three-tiered wedding cake; at each corner of the cake, serving as a candle, was a sousaphone that was on fire. In 2012, they celebrated their 20th anniversary during the pregame show at the Yale-Princeton game.
In 1993, the Yale-Harvard halftime show included the "assassination" of the Energizer Bunny(a bass drum player) -- the band formed a forty-yard bow and arrow, and "shot" the arrow at the Bunny. After they missed, the drum major took out a shotgun and blew the Bunny away. He was carried off by band members dressed as dining hall workers.
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the YPMB became a source of minor controversy for performing a halftime show parodying the history of jingoism in American media and culture, including patriotic bowdlerization, and addressing the possibility of conscription. A strong negative reaction from a several audience members, including boos (especially when "War" was spelled on the field) and angry letters to administrators and newspapers, led the band to limit the often aggressive political content of its shows through at least the 2002 season. Negative reactions were heightened by the fact the show took place on Yale Parents' Weekend.
Drum Majors
YPMB Drum Majors are the political, social, and spiritual leaders of the band. They are usually elected by committee in January, and serve their sentence through the subsequent football season. Most Drum Majors are elected in their junior year, passing the torch to the next generation before they graduate. The current Drum Major is Katharine Walls, SM '18.
Repertoire
The Band's repertoire includes hundreds of songs arranged by the YPMB Junta, the Band's own syndicate of arranger-transcribers. These dedicated and talented folks manage to add more than 30 pieces to the Band music library every year. The YPMB runs the gamut of genres, from Hip Hop to Techno, Pop to R&B, and, of course, plenty of straight Rock.