St. Augustine 100
The New Orleans Museum of Art’s 100 year anniversary kicked off this morning with the St. Augustine Marching Band marching up LeLong Avenue. We got out there right at the band had gotten into formation, at the entrance to City Park, and what ensued was nothing short of magical. I’ve always seen the band marching during Mardi Gras, but to have this outside on this splendid day almost to ourselves was just splendid. They were like a well oiled machine, a hundred black beautiful young men in royal purple and gold uniforms holding their instruments as if they were limbs on their bodies. The guys with the cymbals were like zen masters, they raised one then the other and their arms floated in the air – everyone else was quiet – and then they began – every horn from clarinet, oboe, trombone, trumpet, tuba you can imagine to drums began all at once. Tin was mesmerized, and so were we.
We ran to get ahead of the band to watch them march towards us, and I saw a few older men getting out of their cars with purple jackets that had the script A emblazoned on them and then I realized what that A symbolizes – the one on the flags I see hanging from people’s houses throughout New Orleans – St. Augustine – that’s it! There they were coming towards us marching in amazing precision – someone said there is a lot of arrogance at the school and I could see nothing but pride in this high school band – that’s right, high school – tighter, better, than most musical bands you will ever see – these guys had the moves, the tunes, the rhythm, the march down to a science.
What joy! A for Amazing is what I say. I didn’t have a chance to take a photo or a video – I was too into watching. But later I got a shot of Tin and Maxwell playing on some girl’s big wheel.
