Forum: ‘The vibrations hit you deep. You can feel it in your body.’

By Cory Armstrong-Hoss / Herald Forum

We heard the marching band before we saw it.

In the spring of 2022 I was coaching my daughter’s soccer game at Explorer Middle School. Our 10-year-old son, Sam, was watching with my wife, and we heard the boom-boom-boom of the drums growing louder, the whistles of the drum majors. Then the band turned a corner and came into view, a moving, choreographed army of sound, practicing on a Saturday morning. Parents, kids and a few of my players in the game stopped and watched.

“I remember seeing them go by, and paying attention to their drum line,” Sam says. My wife leaned down and said, “Sam, that could be you one day.”

That winter she took Sam to a Winter Percussion performance at Kamiak High School. My wife describes Winter Percussion as “a magical blend of performance, percussion like you’ve never heard before, around a well-orchestrated theme or story. The kids work so hard. They carry in a massive mat, push heavy equipment, set up a whole world, perform, and take it down in 10 minutes.”

Kamiak has a nationally recognized program. “They create an amazing, immersive experience, and you feel the rhythm, in your core; in your heart,” she said. “It’s incredibly moving. I tear up every time I watch it. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Now 13, Sam remembers watching. “It sounds like video games. The vibrations hit you deep. You can feel it in your body.”

By then he’d joined his elementary school band, was practicing on a drum practice pad, and had Thursday lessons with Mr. Doug at Kennelly Keys. Soon we replaced the practice pad with a used snare drum. Then, for his 11th birthday, we picked up a used, full drum kit.

The kid became a drummer.

“Like a lot of boys, Sam was always hitting things; with sticks, bats,” remembers my wife, who has a certain genius for helping our kids find their passions.

Sam concurs: “Drumming suits my personality; hitting things, but turning it into what people could call art.”

He’s not just hitting drums or cymbals; the kid is constantly tapping out cadences, on table tops, books, cereal boxes, and — to her annoyance — the back of his sister’s headrest in the van.

Two years after that soccer game, Sam started at Explorer Middle School, and joined band. That fall he competed with 11 other kids who wanted a percussionist role. Mr. Valdez clapped out rhythms they had to mimic with drum sticks. He won one of five spots. Fall turned to winter and then to spring, which we now understand means parade season. The competition season for marching bands.

“Mom, it’s come full circle,” he said.

That year Ms. Valdez needed another kid to play the quads: four side-by-side tenor drums worn with a harness, weighing more than 20 pounds. Big for his age and skilled in the right cadences, she chose Sam to play alongside eighth-graders. That spring they competed at Ballard’s “17th of May” parade and Poulsbo’s VikingFest.

Like that soccer game years ago, in the parades we hear the Explorer Eagles before we see them, playing a funky version of Usher’s “Yeah” or “Sway” by Dean Martin. When the band comes into view — more than 60 kids in white shoes, dark navy pants, and red polos — first we see their school banner, then the color guard, head drum major, woodwinds, two more drum majors, the drum section, the brass drum major, and then the brass section: trumpets and saxophones and trombones.

In Ballard, my wife was floored.

“We’d just seen them perform in gyms at that point, and I remember how impressed I was with everything, and how the drums set the tone for the marching band. They were so well trained, so in sync.” At the parade, she’d “run down the road and say ‘Excuse me, can I get through, that’s my son,’ and I’d run down the road and watch, then run more and watch. I didn’t want it to be over in a few minutes.”

For Sam’s seventh grade year, he helped other students learn percussion parts and lead practices. This spring they competed in Poulsbo again, and then in Ocean Shores’ Flag Day Parade, performing “Cupid Shuffle,” “You’re Too Good To Be True,” and “You’re A Grand Old Flag.” Sam’s cadences on the quads — called call offs — set the dramatic intros, telling the band which song to play, while the whistles of drum majors let the band know the tempo, and when to begin the choreographed movements in front of the judges.

Leading up to parades, Ms. Valdez expects the best for morning, afternoon and four-hour Saturday practices. As one of the captains, Sam sets the tempo and helps organize the drum line.

My wife says marching band “has given Sam a source of pride, a community of people to which he belongs; a group of people that look to him for help when they don’t know what to do. It’s given him an opportunity to perform, to give something his best.”

At a big school, he’s known for something, sometimes hearing: “You’re the guy. You do the drum stuff, right?”

When he gets to high school Sam wants to join band, jazz band and, of course, Winter Percussion. For now he’ll be drumming out rhythms on every possible surface, creating waves of sibling aggravation.

At the end of the parade season, Ms. Valdez organized one last performance of the marching band at Explorer on a sunny June evening, between the school buildings and the fields. Parents and young girls with shin guards on — soccer players like CeCe used to be — had finished practice and were walking out. Many stopped to watch over 50 Explorer Eagles, the beats and brass section and movement drawing them in.

As they got into their cars after the performance, I imagine them asking, “Dad, how can I do that one day?”

Cory Armstrong-Hoss is nonprofit guy, father of three, and community volunteer.