DRUMLine Live! visits ‘Burgh in full uniform

The movie “Drumline” (2002) proved that historically black college and university band culture was in a league of its own. That culture is now coming to Pittsburgh live and in full uniform in the form of DRUMLine Live. DRUMLine Live!

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

Benedum Center, Downtown

Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

Tickets $35.20, $25.30, $19

The movie “Drumline” (2002) proved that historically black college and university band culture was in a league of its own. That culture is now coming to Pittsburgh live and in full uniform in the form of DRUMLine Live.

Inspired by the traditions of HBCU marching bands, DRUMLine Live is a 40-member marching band cast featuring one drum major, five dancers, one host and 33 wind players and percussionists. It’s composed of students and alumni from the nation’s top HBCUs.

The creator and musical director of DRUMLine Live, Don P. Roberts, promises, “It’s a show that you have to see to believe.”

Roberts’ inspiration for DRUMLine Live was the actual “Drumline” movie. He served as the executive band consultant for the movie, responsible for training the actors, writing the drills and rehearsing the bands and music.

“For that movie, anything band-wise came through my lap,” he said.

“And after I saw how audiences reacted to the movie, I told myself, ‘Wow, there has to be something more to this. Why not take it to the stage?’” he said.

He proceeded to do so, and now DRUMLine Live is a nationally recognized tour that has also graced stages abroad in Japan and Korea.

The success didn’t happen overnight, according to the show’s host, Slater Thorpe. But he feels audiences can appreciate the story.

“We’re trying to let everybody know that HBCU culture and HBCU band culture is a phenomenon and an art form,” he said. “You can’t see it anywhere else in the world.”

Thorpe stated that one of the show’s goals was to tell the world this particular story of the HBCU band culture because “it ties people of all ages and races together through music.”

“The reaction has been unbelievable,” Roberts said. “It has honestly exceeded our expectations. But most importantly, it has exceeded [our audience’s] expectations,” he said.

Cormesha Johnson, a featured dancer and original cast member of DRUMLine Live, has seen first-hand the warm reception that the show has received.

“It makes me proud to be a part of something that different cultures can relate to and love,” she said.

“We did about 20 shows in Japan,” Thorpe said. “And we were given a standing ovation every single performance. They were really excited and appreciative of the art form we were introducing them to.”

“People tell us all the time, ‘Wow, I didn’t know it was going to be like this.’” Roberts said, and that’s not only from the black audiences. “Our audiences in most of the cities that we’ve gone to have been roughly 80- to 90-percent white,” he said. “For a lot of those audiences this is about as close as they’re going to get to an HBCU football game.”

Not only do the cast and crew hope to entertain with DRUMLine Live, but they also hope to educate.

Once introduced to the culture, the show goes on to expose how an HBCU band is made up of more than just drums or other instruments. It’s an inclusion of various genres of music — classical, hip-hop, R&B, jazz, gospel and others — and their histories.

“[The show] is going to take you to Africa,” Roberts said, “because that’s where music on drums began.”

“We also take you back to the music of Motown and American soul,” Roberts said. He went on to list music legends like Aretha Franklin, James Brown and the Temptations, who helped shape those genres. “We educate you on the foundation from which we evolved. It’s musical education, a musical journey,” he said.

That musical education is made possible through the academic education that Roberts, Thorpe and Johnson have all received at HBCUs.

“Everything that I’m doing now, I learned being a member of an HBCU band,” Thorpe declared. Along with learning to hone his skills with selected instruments, he also learned the art of announcing and the discipline, versatility and endurance it takes to be a performer.

Roberts says that he’s seen an improvement in all the DRUMLine Live cast members since first starting the show years ago.

“They don’t really have a choice not to improve,” he said, laughing. “I stress to them that this production is all about growth. They have to exhibit two to three different talents within the show.”

In the show, the audience can expect a cast member to be on trumpet in one scene and then perform a dance number in another.

Roberts claims he might have to push his cast members to see their full potential in more than one talent, but “after a while they embrace it and display drastic growth.”

According to Blake Gaines, Morehouse College band director who has written songs for both “Drumline” the movie and DRUMLine Live,

another thing that makes the show so entertaining is that the broad musical repertoire  in an HBCU band.

He acknowledges that non-HBCU bands are great in their own way, but the difference is in the show’s novelty.

“The show is constantly changing,” Ganes said. “Depending on where the band is playing, that venue sometimes determines the show. The difference is also in the physical demand, the energy level and even the marching style.”

“What makes the HBCU band so fantastic is that you never know what’s going to happen,” Roberts said. “Some college halftime shows are predictable, but HBCU’s aren’t,” he said.

Though this isn’t the show’s first time coming to Pittsburgh, Roberts has high expectations of what he hopes for this particular performance.

“We have such love for Pittsburgh and we don’t want the people to give us anything but what they feel,” he said.

“It’s our job to make the audience feel a certain way, to make them feel special. So I think it’s going to be a great collaboration between the audience and our cast,” Roberts said.