Marching band

A marching band is a group in which instrumental musicians perform for entertainment, and prepare for a competition. Instrumentation typically includes brass instruments, woodwind instruments, percussion instruments, and color guard. Most marching bands wear some kind of uniform (often of a military style) that includes the school or organization's colors, name or symbol. Most high school marching bands are accompanied by a colorguard, a group of performers, who add a visual interpretation to the music through the use of props, most often flags and rifles.

Marching bands are generally categorized by function, size, age, gender, instruments and by the style of show they perform. In addition to traditional parade performances, many marching bands also perform field shows at special events like competitions. Increasingly, marching bands perform indoor concerts that implement many songs, traditions, and flair from outside performances.

Band is a general term for an instrumental group. The marching band originated with traveling musicians who performed together at festivals and celebrations throughout the ancient world. It evolved and became more structured within the armies of early city-states, becoming the basis for the military band, from which the modern marching band emerged. As musicians became less important in directing the movement of troops on the battlefield, the bands moved into increasingly ceremonial roles. This intermediate stage led to the modern instrumentation and music for marching bands. Many military traditions survive in modern marching band. Bands that march in formation are often ordered to "dress their ranks" and "cover down your file". They may be called to "attention", and given orders such as "about face" and "forward march". Uniforms of many marching bands still resemble military uniforms.

In the United States, modern marching bands are most commonly associated with performing during American football games. The oldest American college marching band, the Notre Dame Marching Band, was founded in 1845 first performed at a football game in 1887. Many American universities had bands before the twentieth century typically associated with military ROTC programs. In 1907, breaking from traditional rank and file marching, the first pictorial formation on a football field was produced as a "Block P" created by Paul Spotts Emrick, director of the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Spotts had seen a flock of birds fly in a "V" formation and decided that a band could replicate the action in the form of show formations on a field. The first halftime show at an American football game was performed by the University of Illinois Marching Illini also in 1907 at a game against the University of Chicago.

...
Wikipedia