This was evident when people walked through the community with their corps jacket on.
It was a great day to be a Carter Cadet.īeing in a top drum and bugle corps back then was equivalent to be being a major recording star, especially where I lived. I have never felt so proud in all my life. Once there, it was an ocean of people waiting for us to perform our repertoire. We seemed to be the Piped Piper of Hamlin Town, because a throng of people followed us back to our building. We had just finished doing the Brooklyn Day parade. I remember us marching back to our headquarters in 1969. It is kind of a sad testament to a once glorious past. We concluded that the drum and bugle corps experience had bypassed a lot of African-American children and its once great notoriety in our community had died out.Ī car repair shop resides where the horn line once practiced on the main floor. A few years back, I had a conversation with my lifelong friend Herschel Vaughn about the decline in numbers of the once-plentiful community based African-American drum corps. The activity did a lot of shaping us into fine adults. I wish I could thank him for his commitment to kids. He saw the importance of getting kids involved in this activity. He started a drum and bugle corps in our school called the Decatur Cadets. I reminisce about my junior high teacher Mr.
I'm a New York City public schoolteacher. I think about my young instructors from Carter Cadets who taught me the proper way to play snare drum. I think about the African-American drum corps icons of my era Eugene Bennet, Billy Cobham, Bill Hightower, Sol Anthony and Bobby Winslow, just to name a few.
No history or heritage has been passed down to this generation of marchers. As I scan some of the faces of African-American young people participating in drum corps today, I'm quite sure they have no knowledge of the once vibrant drum and bugle corps activity that flourished in black communities across the country. Carter Cadets legendary drum and bugle corps from Brooklyn NYĭespite those odds, black communities produced a lot of excellent and proficient drum and bugle corps.
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