On Sunday, January 28th, the Georgia Dome hosted another big event before its upcoming closing: Honda’s 15th Annual Battle of the Bands.
According to their website, “The Honda Battle of the Bands was created to celebrate, support and recognize the excellence of Black college marching bands and the unique academic experience offered by Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Eight bands are chosen to advance to the Honda Battle of the Bands Invitational Showcase. The Invitational Showcase features musical performances from these eight HBCU marching bands.”
This year the eight chosen bands were: Alabama A&M University, Alabama State University, Alcorn State University, Benedict College, Bethune-Cookman University, North Carolina A&T State University, Texas Southern University, and Winston-Salem State University with a special halftime performance from Grammy award winning recording recording artist Ne-Yo. In honor of the 15th anniversary of the event the showcase finale was a mass band performance; directed by Dr. Shelby R. Chipman, the Director of Marching and Pep Bands at Florida A&M University. We asked a few students that went about their overall thoughts on the event.
Sydney Broadnax, 11, said, “I wanted to experience to get like a better view of how HBCU schools are because I might be interested in going to one in the future and I just wanted to get a better look because I’ve never really seen a band perform besides the football games. My friend, her mom, used to go to a HBCU and I think she used to go to them “back in the day”, and they invited me and bought me a ticket to go. This was my first time going. I enjoyed it. I thought it was very unique, it was good music, and I think it was really good for my culture since I am African-American. I thought Ne-Yo’s performance was good. It was pretty interesting. All of the people weren't really into it but it was still a pretty good performance I guess. I think Bethune-Cookman and Alabama State were good. Bethune-Cookman won overall [in my opinion]. It was kinda quiet at times, the whole dome, when they were getting set up, if they weren't cheering for the bands it was actually really quiet and I didn't expect it. I was expecting it to be a lot more bands, it was a lot of bands but I didn't see a lot of them sitting out there at the same time.”
Nathan Hill, 12, said,“I thought it was a really cool experience. Even in between bands they had the announcer, he was telling jokes and playing songs, Ne-Yo was there and he did a concert; it was just a really cool experience all around. My dad, he heard about some tickets and he asked my sibling and I if we wanted to go. I was in marching band so I thought it’d be kinda cool to see what marching bands are doing in different colleges around the country. I thought Bethune-Cookman was really good. My least favorite… well, it’s hard to say because the less good ones I kinda forgot about. I didn’t expect the crowd to be so into it. Like, it took them a few bands to warm-up but by the time they were into it … This was my first time going.”
Picture Credits: HBCU Lifestyle
