Columbia University Marching Band

The Columbia University Marching Band (CUMB) has performed for Columbia University since 1904. It claims to be the first college or university marching band in the United States to convert to a scramble band format, making the switch in the 1950s. Today, all of the Ivy League bands (except Cornell), as well as the Stanford Band, William & Mary Pep Band, and Marching Owl Band have adopted the scramble band style.

The CUMB has a reputation for edgy humor and is often thought to be the most controversial and irreverent of the scramble bands. Since the 1960s, national news outlets have covered the band's most infamous pranks. CUMB bills itself as "The Cleverest Band in the World."

In addition to playing at every Columbia football game, the band also plays in the stands at Levien Gym for Columbia basketball games, and at various other events. These have included the New York City Marathon, the Walk Against AIDS, and at New York City's 34th Street post office on Tax Day. The CUMB has appeared on many television programs including an early episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the Late Show with David Letterman, The CBS Morning Show, MTV's Total Request Live, The Howard Stern TV Show (on WWOR), and Columbia's student run television station CTV. CUMB has also been featured in the films Turk 182! and Game Day. In recent years their musicianship has improved exponentially, and they have been invited to perform at New York Fashion Week, birthday parties, and Good Morning Tokyo.

Lisa Birnbach's College Book named the CUMB's Orgo Night performances as the university's most popular campus tradition. Since 1984 the band has performed at 11:59 p.m. on the night before each Organic Chemistry final exam. The course is notorious as one of the most challenging undergraduate subjects. In an effort to relieve pre-exam jitters, the CUMB interrupts studies at the main reading room of Butler Library. Several hundred students gather for the show, often standing on desks and bookshelves. Orgo Night performances are presented in a style similar to their halftime shows, and have sometimes included comedy banned from those shows by the university's censors. [A respondent adds: "Although I cannot personally attest to its continuity, the "Orgo Night" performance dates back to at least 1975; a photo of the event that night appeared in the New York Times of December 20, 1975."]

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