40 Fun Facts About Drum Corps International

Boston Crusaders made which US president, a longtime supporter, an honorary corps member?

John F. Kennedy received the honor only 34 days before his assassination. His brother Ted had earlier secured West Point uniforms that the corps converted to its own colors.

Bluecoats, founded in Canton, Ohio in 1972, chose their name to honor which group of city workers?

Police officers ran the Canton Police Boys' Club that sponsored the new corps, and two of its three founders were on the force. The name salutes the city's retired officers in particular.

Which Canadian city is the only place outside the United States to host the DCI World Championships?

Montreal staged the finals in 1981 and 1982, when Santa Clara Vanguard and then Blue Devils took the only two titles ever decided on Canadian turf.

Unlike a marching band, a DCI drum corps fields brass and percussion but leaves out which instrument family?

Woodwinds such as clarinets and flutes sit out the field show, though in 2005 DCI's offstage solo festival began letting corps members compete on them.

Three DCI World Championships in five seasons, in 1996, 1999 and 2000, ended in which unusual result?

A tie for first crowned co-champions each time, with Blue Devils sharing the 1996 title with Phantom Regiment and the 1999 title with Santa Clara Vanguard.

Santa Clara Vanguard's famous Bottle Dance, first performed by its guard in 1973, comes from which musical?

Fiddler on the Roof supplied the wedding dance in which men kneel with bottles balanced on their heads. Crowds loved it so much that Vanguard repeated it in 1974, 1975, 1979 and 1982.

Boston Crusaders took a penalty at every show in 1985 for fielding which then-illegal instrument?

A synthesizer cost the Crusaders points all summer in 1985, one more gamble from a corps that had to wait until 2025 to win its first DCI world title.

Which city, home to DCI's headquarters, became the long-term host of the World Championships in 2009?

Indianapolis stages the finals at Lucas Oil Stadium, and a 2023 extension keeps the championships there through 2033 after decades of moving from city to city.

Carolina Crown's 2013 title show, which earned a perfect brass score, was named for which scientist's equation?

Albert Einstein's E=mc2 gave the show its title, and the brass players spelled out the formula across the field as if it were written in his own hand.

Boston Crusaders jumped from twelfth to sixth in 2017 with Wicked Games, a show dramatizing which historical events?

The Salem witch trials played out with color guard members cast as the accused, and a stage prop that opened to reveal fabric flames made the show a crowd favorite.

Before adding buglers in 1970, Blue Devils spent years as a drum corps paired with which instruments?

Glockenspiels joined the drums in 1958, making the future champions a drum and bell corps. No bugle appeared in the lineup for another twelve years.

Which Blue Devils show, opening with a recording of founder Jerry Seawright, won the 2017 DCI World Championship?

Metamorph marked the corps' 60th anniversary. Halfway through, the members shed their blue jackets for sparkling sleeveless tops, a costume change to match a show about change itself.

Santa Clara Vanguard placed second at the 2017 DCI World Championship with which show named after a serpent symbol?

Ouroboros, the snake that swallows its own tail, scored 97.600 and finished less than a point behind Blue Devils. Vanguard came back to take the title a year later.

Which California corps jumped from third in prelims to win the first DCI World Championship in 1972?

Anaheim Kingsmen vaulted past Santa Clara Vanguard and Blue Stars on finals night. Their corporate backers at the time included Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm.

Which 1991 DCI champion left the competition field and evolved into Blast!, a Tony-winning Broadway show?

Star of Indiana quit competing after 1993 to tour with the Canadian Brass in an indoor stage act, the production that grew into Blast! and won a 2001 Tony Award.

Blue Devils scored 99.650, the highest total in DCI's first five decades, with which 2014 show in three acts?

Felliniesque saluted Italian film director Federico Fellini with acts on his religion, his circus and his fantasy, and it beat an old record of 99.150 that two earlier champions had each posted.

Phantom Regiment edged Blue Devils by 0.025 points for the 2008 DCI title with a show built on which ballet?

Spartacus, Aram Khachaturian's ballet about a rebel gladiator, suited a Rockford corps that has built its identity on classical music since its first all-classical program in 1974.

Bluecoats won their first DCI title in 2016, trading traditional uniforms for white costumes, with which show?

Down Side Up made the Ohio corps the first DCI champion to compete with no headgear at all, and numerous other corps have copied the informal look since.

Which corps from Rosemont, Illinois, a DCI champion in 1992, is known to fans as the Green Machine?

The Cavaliers began in 1948 as a project of a Chicago Boy Scout troop, and its scoutmaster, Don Warren, went on to push for the alliance of corps that became DCI.

Which ten-time DCI champion, founded in 1934 as a New Jersey parish youth group, folded in bankruptcy in 2024?

The Cadets, long known as the Garfield Cadets, scored DCI's first three-peat from 1983 to 1985 and marched for ninety years before filing for Chapter 7.

The stationary front ensemble of marimbas and vibraphones at a DCI show is better known by which short nickname?

The pit usually sits at the front sideline around the 50-yard line, and its keyboards are amplified because they cannot project like brass or marching drums.

Alongside silk flags and sabres, which mock weapon do DCI color guard members spin and toss during a show?

Rifles in a color guard are non-functioning wooden or plastic replicas, equipment handed down from the military guards that once escorted a regiment's flag.

Which American network televised the DCI World Championship finals from 1975 until 2004?

PBS carried the finals for three decades before ESPN2 took over with a two-hour highlights program from 2005 to 2007.

Which tall, cylindrical military hat, usually topped with a plume, is the traditional headgear of drum corps uniforms?

Shako caps began replacing bicornes in the British Army in 1800, and marching bands and drum corps in the United States adopted tall versions with elaborate plumes.

Carolina Crown's name nods to the royal nickname of which North Carolina city, where the group was founded in 1988?

Charlotte is nicknamed the Queen City and has a crown in its logo. The corps later moved across the state line to Fort Mill, South Carolina.

Which phrase do drum corps members use for marching a final season before DCI's limit of 21 years rules them out?

Aging out normally follows a member's last summer at 21, though DCI raised the limit by a year for 2021 because the pandemic had wiped out the 2020 season.

Which category on a DCI scoresheet is worth 40 of the 100 points, more than music or visual alone?

General Effect comes from two judges worth 20 points each, while the music and visual captions supply 30 points apiece toward the 100-point total.

Which term covers the marching snare, tenor and bass drums of a drum corps, as opposed to the stationary percussion?

The battery marches with the brass, and a full-size one typically fields 7 to 10 snares, 3 to 6 tenor players and 5 or 6 bass drummers.

What do drum corps members call the tuba-like horns, the lowest brass voice, that players carry on one shoulder?

Contras, short for contrabass bugles, rest on the shoulder instead of being held in front of the body like every other horn in the line.

Which bell-front brass instrument fills the middle voice of a drum corps hornline, standing in for the French horn?

Mellophone bells face forward, so the sound reaches the stands instead of drifting backward as a French horn's would outdoors. Corps models are usually pitched in F.

Before a rule change reached the field in 2000, every horn in a DCI corps had to be pitched in which key?

G was the key of the valveless military bugles that drum corps grew out of. Since the change, most hornlines have been pitched in B♭.

DCI's founders rebelled against rigid contest rules set by the VFW and which other veterans' organization?

The American Legion and the VFW sponsored most corps and ran the big championships, but paid performance fees so low that directors decided to run their own circuit.

Which Wisconsin college town hosted the first two DCI World Championships, in 1972 and 1973, at Warhawk Stadium?

Whitewater drew thirty-nine corps to its university stadium for the inaugural contest, and the championship did not leave Wisconsin until Cornell hosted it in 1974.

Phantom Regiment of Rockford, Illinois took its name from a piece by which American composer of light concert music?

Leroy Anderson, best known for Sleigh Ride, wrote The Phantom Regiment. The founders heard another corps play it on a record and dropped the name Rockford Rangers before their debut.

Which corps from Casper was designated Wyoming's Musical Ambassadors by the state legislature in 1967?

Troopers founder Jim Jones chose the name for the 11th Ohio Cavalry, which guarded supply trains from Fort Caspar in the 1800s. His corps became a founding member of DCI.

Which California city is home to the Blue Devils, winners of more DCI world titles than any other corps?

Concord's VFW post helped launch the group in 1957 by taking over a defunct drum corps and drill team called the Martinettes.

Which Pennsylvania city's J. Birney Crum Stadium hosts the DCI Eastern Classic the weekend before World Championships?

Allentown stages the show in a stadium that spends the rest of the year as the home football field for three of the city's high schools.

Which 27th Lancers drill designer, a pioneer of asymmetrical formations, is the namesake of DCI's color guard award?

George Zingali replaced blocky drill with curves and clusters inspired by modern painters such as Kandinsky and Miró. He died in 1992 at the age of 40.

Bluecoats' 2017 show Jagged Line spread its percussionists unusually far apart with the help of which technology?

In-ear monitors let the drum line and front ensemble hear one another across distances that would otherwise have made playing together impossible.

The 27th Lancers, a Massachusetts drum corps, were chosen to perform at which 1980 event?

The Winter Olympics in Lake Placid invited the corps to both ceremonies, and its own visual designer was given a free hand to choreograph those segments.