a conversation with
Kristen Laine, the author of American Band

Q: How did you choose Elkhart, Indiana, as a setting for writing about marching band?

I had marched in a high school marching band in Indiana myself, so I was aware of the state’s deep and intertwined traditions of music and marching. In Indiana, as in many other places in America’s heartland, high school marching band occupies a holy trinity with high school hoops and college football. And more Indiana teenagers play an instrument or carry a flag in their high school bands than participate in any other activity or sport, including the fabled “Hoosier hysteria.” Nearly every community supports a marching band—from tiny Paoli, where more than a third of the school’s students march in the band, to the suburban Indianapolis communities that lavishly fund most of the state’s biggest programs, as well as such midsize towns as Elkhart.

The head of the Indiana school music association gave me a good way to gauge music programs around the country. Rather than compare the top bands in each state (even though Indiana bands often rank at the top at the Bands of America national competition), he suggested, “Look at the experience of kids in the 60th best band in a state, or even the 160th best band in the state.” Looked at that way, no state sustains such widespread excellence and broad commitment  to marching bands as Indiana.

I first met Max Jones at a meeting of band directors organized on my behalf by Tom Dirks, the former director at two-time national champion Center Grove. I liked how Max talked about the personal growth of the students in his band. I heard about his reputation for being able to mold any group of students into fine musicians, and also about his championship dynasties. It appealed to me that Concord is the only band in the state that routinely makes it to the finals of State Fair—the longest-running marching band contest in the country, which puts an old-fashioned approach on display—and also to the finals of the state field-show contest, a cutting-edge spectacle put on in front of 40,000 people in the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

Of course, there was an extra resonance in choosing Elkhart, in that it was also the home of many music instrument manufacturers and had been called the band instrument capital of the world.

Q: For people who haven’t seen one of these elite field-show bands, what are they like? What’s different from when you were in band?

These marching bands have grown some distance from their military roots. The straight lines and 90-degree angles of my band days are long gone, as is the high “chicken-scratch” step that I worked so hard to perfect. Band performances today can feel like a Broadway show on a football field, with their fast-changing, curving forms, props and even costume changes. The music is unexpected, too. Directors frequently select very difficult, sophisticated, and even dissonant music for their shows; it’s a way to show judges that their students truly are a concert band on the move.

Another difference is in the length and intensity of the competition. When I was in marching band, we prepared for one month and entered a single competition. The top bands in Indiana, and in other “marching band” communities around the country, have longer competitive seasons than their football teams, and put in many, many more hours of work.

But I think I was most surprised by the level of parental involvement in these bands. At Concord in 2004, nearly three hundred parents worked behind the scenes, some of them putting in extraordinarily long hours, to support their children in this one activity. That’s when I realized that marching band, at least in Indiana, was a much bigger story than I’d expected.

Q: There’s a surprising amount of religion in the book. How is that connected to band?

When I began the research for the book, I thought I would be looking at a nice little subculture story: kids, music, competition. At first I assumed that I’d find an updated version of my own story, band as surrogate family and a mechanism for instilling values. I found some of that, to be sure. But as I talked to the kids in the Concord band, I grew to understand that religious faith was the most important thing in many of their lives. And because conservative, evangelical Christianity is the overwhelmingly dominant form of religion in that community, what mattered most to those teenagers was maintaining the correct relationship to God through a personal relationship with Jesus. At some point I realized that I couldn’t write fully about the kids in the band without also writing about the role of religion in their lives.

I discovered that some of the students had been practicing their faith “on the field,” if you will—taking what they learned in church and from the bible and applying it to their work in the band. I’d call what they were doing “Sermon on the Mount” Christianity, or “servant leadership.” Although they weren’t trying to hide anything, they did this under the radar of their directors, their parents, and their pastors. That added an unexpected tension to the story I was telling.

You can’t extrapolate from such a small sample size, but I got the impression that I was watching a new generation of Christians come of age.

Q:So, religion played a much bigger role in the story than you anticipated. What are some of the other issues you explore in the book?

Immigration and the decline of manufacturing towns are other examples of issues that come up even though one wouldn’t typically associate them with a book about high school students. Elkhart County has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the country. And, like so many other former manufacturing centers, it’s struggling to find its bearing in the new economy. Having a wider focus allowed me to put the kids’ lives in the context of their community, which I think makes for a deeper story than the hermetic environment that sometimes passes for life in high school.

Q: What were some of your reactions to that community?

I had left Indiana as a teenager because I wanted more challenge, a wider cultural life, and a community that placed more value on individual differences and freedoms. Returning as a parent of young children, I felt those old tensions rise, and yet I appreciated the communal willingness to put children first, the strong support for public schools, the willingness to discuss and take seriously the Great Life Questions, an emphasis on acting responsibly—all of which, I had to admit, were lacking to some degree in the places I’ve called home as an adult. Many of the people I met welcomed me and my family with great kindness and generosity.

We were there in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. I saw many displays of the Ten Commandments, a sea of lawn signs for Republican candidates, and almost no evidence that alternative views existed there. Attending church services with students, I heard pastors claim that George W. Bush was “God’s tool in the world,” and that Democrats, liberals, feminists, and gays were doing the work of the Devil—comments that shocked me. But when people around Concord described a degraded popular culture, I didn’t disagree. I found myself in broad agreement with them on violence and sex in  the media; on the over-commercialization of American life; on what they saw as too much emphasis on making money, consuming, appearances, and the pursuit of pleasure; on an undervaluing of community and personal connection. I just didn’t give my views an evangelical Christian overlay, and I didn’t think that Satan was behind those problems.

And yet, thinking of the experience the Concord kids were getting in the band, I caught myself one evening wishing out loud that my son and daughter could go to school there.

I moved to Elkhart thinking I’d be reporting on a small subculture. Instead, I found myself in the middle of the country’s culture wars. I left with the sense that I’d seen what divides us as a country—but also what unites us.