What We're Reading

American Band: Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland

Author: Kristen Laine
Publisher: Gotham Books
$26.00 Cloth (324 p.)
ISBN: 9781592403196
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Reviewed by Marcia Lusted, Statusing

If, like me, you attended a small high school in a relatively rural area, then the premise of American Band may feel like something from a foreign country: a high school marching band with more than two hundred students that prepares for the state finals, and whose kids practice for hours every week learning music, choreography, and marching steps for the huge extravaganza like an outdoor stage show. This book follows the marching band from Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, as they prepare for their final marching band season under the baton of their long-time director, Max Jones.

Author Kristen Laine not only focuses on the efforts of the band -- part of what would seem to be a huge music department to those of us who attended a high school with only 600 students in the entire student body -- and the preparation necessary for a show of this caliber, but also touches on the lives of everyone involved: certain students, the director and his assistants, parents, school administrators, and the high school music marching band associations that oversee these competitions. The result is an all-encompassing look at the Concord marching band and their impact on the school, community, and individual students.

If there's a downside to the book, it would be in Laine's attempts to show that today's Concord students don't fit the usual teenage stereotypes, and how students in general have changed over Max Jones' forty years of band directing. In an attempt to show how many of the students are becoming increasingly focused on religion and salvation, Laine follows several students through their personal conflicts and religious experiences. It seems to distract from, rather than complement, the focus of the book and slows down the pace considerably. However, even if you were never a band geek and never had a child in a high school music program, American Band is an interesting look at how much dedication is expected of these kids and how it comes together in their final competitive performance.