Why The 1934 Foundation Should Scare People in the Performing and Marching Arts.
George Hopkins might no longer be The Cadets Director, but his cruel legacy, power, and Dan Acherson endure in the Marching Arts and how such programs are run.
When I ask people who are former vets and alumni of corps belonging to the DCI monopoly why abuse of power continues without progress or change they point the finger at George Hopkins but don’t question why groups like DCI or BOA become monopolies in the first place. Then when I ask them what a world without DCI or BOA would look like to them they rage, troll, and send their Trojan Horses. The reason why is that in a highly demanding and authoritarian corporate culture like DCI and BOA, their group must come first after they trampled the well-being and dignity of other people.
It has now come to my attention that both groups are 501c3 non-profits that don’t pay taxes and hide blood money under the rug like Scientology and The Mormons. In this culture bands are not communities of performing artists but conglomerates of them and their success. A recent development is the 1934 Foundation created by Vets and Alumni of The Cadets which filed for bankruptcy and folded which in DCI lingo means not operating as a competitive corp. Yet the Cadets fan base won’t give up trying to skirt their money into another foundation and circle of wealth made on the backs of abuse victims.
The story of DCI and BOA is not just a story about George Hopkins but about how many men and women allowed a system of greed, exploitation, abuse, and lack of well-being for young people to happen. This includes many of DCI and BOA’s founding members Dan Acherson, and Larry Mc Cormick, and how they used women and minority groups as a token issue only for those people to become victims much like Disney both DCI and BOA like to weave stories that make them relatable, reliable, emotional, and educational when they are anything but a cult.
The Armor of a Band Director God
As a homeschooled kid until 4th grade, I encountered kids who loved Bible Man whom I thought was goofy, anvilicious, and preachy much like Captain Planet, and my favorite tuba evangelist Larry Boy was way funnier. The whole embodiment and getup of Bible Man is based on a Bible Verse Ephesians 6: 10–18…
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
This video by YouTuber Profit of Zod explains how the Armor of God is used as a cult leader’s building blocks for kids without question and makes cult leadership later on in life look cool, strong, good-looking, and toxically masculine. Especially in Christian Nationalist and Dominionist cults of Christianity. Yet not all cults have ties to religion or religious groups but they do have ties to ideals that are toxic.
Now a big question kids, what happens after you don your armor of God? You then have to conquer the Seven Mountains!
I’m not saying all band directors or music educators follow these rules, yet these rules and tools presented to them in leadership as a whole are what inhibit them from being good people who do good things for the humanity and well-being of children and teens. Leo and Nancy Rebuke who directed our Flint New Horizons Band were people who did not follow the Armor of The Band Director God but followed Arnold Jacobs’s teachings of Song and Wind.
Along with studying music Arnold Jacobs also studied the mental and physical health of wind players and his method of Song and Wind is much like Ying and Yang, one cannot exist without the other and must not be separated. Song is the Mental and Psychological part of how musicians play, Wind is the physical motions a player must do to achieve a good sound. Arnold Jacobs says musicians regardless are the storytellers of sound and helped many musicians in his clinics, lectures, and lessons.
One user on Reddit told me that Tubby the Tuba is not a Concerto when that piece has a Concerto Structure in a story a child can understand. It tells the story of the stigma tuba players face to this day about their instrument without making weird showy sounds like some other pieces of work. It’s a work that even predates the Ralph Vaughn Williams Concerto for Bass Tuba. It’s a work where the tuba is in control and is a storyteller of sound which makes it a fun piece to play around with and display emotions. So many tubas have encountered people who don’t think we are good enough to one day perform with a group like Canadian Brass. One of the pieces that got me into playing the tuba was Largo al Factotum played by Charles Dallenbach who is an amazing tuba player and founded The Canadian Brass. Well, guess who was his teacher and mentor, Arnold Jacobs!
We tubas have to always keep fighting for our style and self-expression it’s even harder when you’re Asperger’s and a woman navigating a world full of Mister Incredibles and Mister Impossible at fifteen with a three-valve Jupiter Tuba.
Yet the performing arts and marching arts in the 90s and 2000s were going through a point where they had to evolve into other venues of entertainment against a toxically competitive culture created by both DCI and BOA. Brass Theater was a show by Canadian Brass created when Star of Indiana, a prestigious Brass and Drum corps, left DCI’s toxic culture to pursue the performing arts in different ways.
At one point the group was booed by members and fans of The Cadets for their show The Greatest Show on Turf which was circus-themed and did stuff that many band directors were too afraid to do or pursue out of their greed, power, and prestige but at a cost to the pain and suffering of others. They ended up winning the World Championship in 1991. Gorge Hopkin’s sword of faithfulness and the breastplate of righteousness was broken by Bill Cook who exposed a culture of toxic competition and ideals in DCI leadership and culture that began at every EST Lecture by a shady group called The Forum. Many future leaders and members of DCI and BOA including George Hopkins attended Landmark Education seminars and encouraged leadership in other corps and bands to follow suit. Ken Mazur, a percussion instructor, and teacher, who sadly committed suicide after he was too put on trial, sums up Warner Erhard Training in his deleted article The Marching Industry Cult…
Pageantry competitions are built upon Erhard Seminar Training, a 1970s sales tool by former Scientologist Warner Erhard. Instead of psychiatry, those seeking help for the self-invested up to $300 for Erhard’s lectures in the mid-1970s and 80s. Known as EST, the technique involves psychological analysis, new hopes and dreams, a regained sense of control over life, release from past mistakes, and the search for a “new self” using religious-like connotations and false discipline. — The Marching Industry Cult by Ken Mazar
Band Directors like to think of themselves as Gods. When victims of George Hopkins were interviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s article A Failure to Protect they said about his leadership, “Hopkins was God”. Yet there is a process involved for young bullies in DCI and BOA bands and corps who work as staffers to become the next band directors even without experience in the education of young children and teens who according to recent brain studies are more suitable to cults because they can’t question their system of beliefs until they become young adults. Along with our beliefs telling us that we have the potential for good and to do good, some seem benign but become toxic, painful, and dangerous for young children and teens. When I try to talk about emotional well-being and intelligence to band directors or music educators they treat it like a Woke Liberal Word Salad for respecting the well-being of very vulnerable people. They don’t even want to touch a film like Inside Out or any exercise in ethics and emotional intelligence with a nine-and-a-half-foot pole.
I hope in the Third Inside Out they introduce Lust (Eric Idol) which not only makes girls like Riley question their beliefs about gender and activities around her gender but also damages them and puts her in very dangerous situations yet sees Anxiety and Fear as the problem because Riley needs more men in her life, even if they are harmful and predatory. Trying to help her is Anxiety, Fear, and Disgust, and when Joy starts doubting Doubt finally appears as an emotion that Michel Sheen from Good Omens could nail because his character is always questioning, asking, and doubting but does things in the end that end up being ethically good and kind.
Yet for men Doubt is something made to be ashamed, torn out, and beaten out of and The Cadets is not the only DCI group that is an example of this behavior. When a story about Drum Major Taylor Smith decided to walk away from Bluestar's, he was met not with open arms but harassment, abuse, and abandonment by a community he thought he trusted and invested in. A common theme in the DCI circuit is Rodger/Hammerstein's ballad You’ll Never Walk Alone which comes from a musical Carousel about a Sexual Abuser who gets away and the town does nothing but sing an uplifting ballad. It was even played when Dan Acherson won a lifetime of DCI Achievement after he made countless victims feel ashamed for coming out and sharing their tales of horrible conditions, neglect of medical needs, and abuse they had to endure and hide.
Phi Mu Alpha Males
And beasts of the field say a prayer
First, I carefully aim for the liver
Then I shoot from behind!-Deleted lyric from Gaston by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken.
What happens when these young men in DCI and BOA staff culture age out and head off for colleges and universities? Well, when one leaves a toxic masculine cult they are addicted to joining more of them via fraternal groups like Phi Mu Alpha. This is a process called by sociologist and psychologist Cult Hopping. One man who left a cult to study how they work was Steven Hasan of BITE Model fame who also wrote about people with cult personalities outside religions like Donald Trump. I refer to much of his work when I study or explain why DCI and BOA seem appealing to impoverished public schools desperate for resources. They create the image like a Disney Movie about what one person can gain from success and education via DCI or BOA corps, bands, programs, and charities when it’s all delusional and has no evidence in real academic or real-life music education application.
To be a leader of DCI or BOA is to be a Gaston and Phi Mu Alpha is a hunting lodge for soon-to-be Gastons of Band Directing. Some Gastons love to show off, but some are sneaky and hide it in small places of power like a TED TALK or a Music Conference. If you have lived ten years with a curse in a castle, Phi Mu Alpha is a fraternal order of Band Directors part of the DCI Corps to College Pipeline. Their secret leadership and campaigns of harassment, silence of critics, and hazing of both members and non-members have become news because John Watters of Ohio State’s Marching Band known for Dot the I and eye-catching formations was a Phi Mu brother who became the band director and allowed a culture of hazing and abuse to happen. When the former president of Ohio State came out and condemned John Watters and band staff for allowing hazing and abuse to happen his video was taken down off of YouTube.
Hazing does not care what race, creed, status, disability, gender, or ethnicity you are. It’s a monster that lurks in every high school, large college, and even high-ranking university because powerful people including those in Hollywood allowed it to lurk. Movies like Drumline, American Pie, Pitch Perfect, and Glee live in a Disneyland where no one dies no matter how many times they are harassed, bullied, abused, and discriminated against. The cruel reality that is ignored is that people die when hazing is taken to the highest heights of spectacle and danger.
Media when in the right hands can be used as a tool for good like Mister Rodgers, Sesame Street, and tons of other shows for kids. I’m glad that kids today now have movies like Turning Red and Inside Out 2 to have hard emotional conversations with parents and peers about puberty and trauma. I’m glad Julia and her Family are good role models for what a nonjudgmental and accepting Autism family looks like for kids. Yet when kids leave the Baby Shows behind, and grow up in Middle School and High School there are no tools only magic mirrors and wands to navigate some dangerous things even if those things are cursed. There is a scene in The Dark Crystal when Jen and Kira discover what to do with the shard of a piece of The Dark Crystal and Seikis Chamberlin appears.
The world of The Dark Crystal is called Thra, if you want to learn about the Gelflings Prophecy I recommend you watch Netflix’s Age of Resistance which is wonderfully done by Lisa Henson. Yet one very important character that is missing that I hope comes up for the Second Season is Augthra’s son Raynip who played with the Gelflings and also Dreamfasted with them which is a form of contacted telepathy. What people don’t realize about escapist fantasy is that it too can be a guide and building block to navigate hard concepts the Adults in The Room choose not to address to kids because they assume kids are stupid.
Yet there are adults out there who use fantasy as a tool to make kids feel powerless, stupid, afraid of who they are, and even worthless no matter how hard they imagine or create. It’s what Tolkien warned C.S.Lewis about his preachiness in the Narnia books which doomed him. It’s why I don’t like Neil Gaiman's original Coraline which in the Laika version is smarter, independent, and speaks her mind. It’s the message of a movie that was banned in my house, Danny DiVito’s Version of Ronald Dahl’s Matilda which is very head cannon Autistic.
The whole backbone of ABA and its founding fathers sounds a LOT like Ms. Trunchbull describing Autistic children as little monsters. So many kids and teens who come from ABA or homeschool backgrounds end up in DCI or BOA programs to escape parents who could not help their goals as musicians or performing artists. So many ABA homeschool kids like me feel angry, ignored, disbelieved, and betrayed by parents who drank the Koolaide of Good ABA and Other Fairy Tales to snowclone Abigail Disney. If there is a real-life example of The Choky it’s Judge Rotenberg Center. Yet DCI and BOA recruiters use students who have escaped trauma or abuse as tools of what WE can do to help performing artists by donating to The Activity or The Cause of DCI and BOA. By doing this they put the responsibility and blame on liberal music teachers, failed public schools, and local programs when so many of those programs die due to lack of funding or have already drunk their share of the Koolaide.
Music All For Me, But Not Thee…
Religion is a divisive force in public schools. Choosing a religious theme and props for marching band performances alienates those non-Christian students, teachers, and members of the public whose religious beliefs are inconsistent with the message being promoted by the school, including the nearly one in three Americans who now identify as religiously unaffiliated. These students certainly should be commended for their hard work that led them to the semi-finals of Bandsthe of America Grand Nationals, but there are plenty of appropriate secular alternatives that the band director could select that would utilize their clear work ethic and talent more appropriately.- FFRF (Freedom from Religion Foundation) Letter to Lake Hamilton School District whose band show was themed to Christian Evangelist Tent Revivals.
William Blake wrote a poem called The Garden of Love, the original context of the poem is about religious indoctrination from the child’s point of view and is filled with the loss of something special and very vulnerable which is the trust and responsibility an adult has to nourish the well being and love of a child.
One thing that I had to teach myself in college writing, and learn about as a writer was context, why a piece of work is the way it is written and why. When Toxic Competition tries to control a work of art like Blake’s Poem The Garden of Love the humanity of the poem’s original lesson is gone and is used as propaganda of pain and suffering that comes with DCI and BOA culture like Bluecoats show based on the poem which is ironic to the point of insanity that DCI and BOA targets Middle and High School kids with and indoctrinates them to accept all the suffering and all the pain.
People die when there is constant pressure to be perfect and painless like a robot and do the work for the benefit of someone else to win stupid games and prizes. Bluecoats won a Silver Medal for The Garden of Love, yet medals and trophies don’t absolve people they make them worse off and desire more off the backs of others because that is what toxic competition does to human beings. How many names of victims of abuse, depression, hazing, trauma, suicide, and neglect in these programs should I list before it becomes clear to NAMM and NAfME to stop donating money and resources to DCI and BOA? This is not just an issue of George Hopkins being the bad apple, DCI and BOA are rotten, they only pick the finest apples like the reaping in The Hunger Games to hide the putrid of all their bad apples. These people make The Grinch look like a tame Green Krampus compared to two of Dr. Seuss’s villains Dr. Terwilliker and The Onceler who are just evil.
The 1934 Foundation might not have The Cadet’s Trademark, yet it’s still the same monster lurking about as a charity that teaches what George Hopkins left behind to the next generation.
A World Without DCI or BOA
Brass Theater and its philosophy of teaching, creating, and educating without toxic competition or making art a sport is the foundation of the show Blast which not only won Tonys. It won people’s minds and hearts all over about using the stage in the marching arts as a tool for better inclusion, equality, diversity, and accommodation. Unlike the DCI environment where perfection and accuracy are an anvil, many of these people improvise a lot including Land of Make-Believe which was not in the original London Production but was done as a surprise for the audience. The show is also a showcase of how diverse the Brass Family is that it has been used in Music Schools including in 6th grade watching Gee Officer Krupke for the first time with a trombone on a unicycle.
When I first saw the full show at Whiting Auditorium in Flint, MI I wanted to grab a tuba and play alongside them. They were the circus and I wanted to run with them. I wish for a revival of Blast where disabled, LGBTQA, and Autistic people are included with Do You Hear the People Sing? Being included in the program to represent people in bands and corps who still don’t feel included and have been for years even after Blast’s inception. Much like there are High School productions of Seussical, The Music Man, and Les Mis. Blast needs to continue that legacy of making the show accessible and equitable for Middle and High Schools even if Band Directors won’t.
There are also a lot of musicals that can implement a marching band choreography in the story, in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T there is the famous Dungeon Ballet where every instrument that Dr. Terwilliker hates is locked up in a mass dungeon for Screeching Piccolos and Nauseating Trumpets. There are also new possibilities and stories to tell in this format like Schubert's Song Cycle Die Schoen Mullerin which is full of teenage drama, nature, wonder, and loss.
It could be a way to make opera more accessible and a teachable communal activity like Weber’s Die Freischultz from the perspective of German American settlement during 20’s Prohibition where old traditions were met with horrible and dangerous challenges from exploitive land ownership which still goes on in Frankenmuth, MI (The Prinz of Bohemia), and the Temperance Movement (The Black Huntsman Samuel) whose organizers wore black, smashed windows with axes, and terrorized German American businesses in rural areas. In many productions of the opera, Kaspar is an alcoholic who is also the guy you don’t know whether to pound him or give him an ice cream cone to quote the Ninja Turtles. In this version, Samuel uses Kaspar's vice of alcohol as psychological manipulation and torment to do his bidding and lead to his demise much like how casual drinking by many immigrants was depicted as an evil vice by the Temperance Movement to scare people only for those same people committed to Temperance to go off drinking again.
The Stage is an amazing tool of equality, equity, accommodation, and inclusion in the marching arts and Blast has laid down the tools, your choice is how you use them creatively.
