The 12 scholars draped themselves on the floor, their caps and gowns signaling their prestige as graduating seniors. The opening rite in honor of the elegance of 2024 ended, but the exhibition had barely begun.
In their final performance of the school year, the Inglewood High School Band bid farewell to the departing seniors, swaying to the beat they had marched to all year.
The crowd that filled the stands (parents and cousins, brothers, sisters and neighbors) knew what was coming; they had probably attended the exhibition several times. But it was still a spectacle not to be missed.
“Do it, baby!” He cheered, and the elders did the same, walking past their bandmates who were covered on the track and toward the soccer field. Some older people stayed simple and walked with their heads held high. Others incorporated more striking movements, jumping, dancing, leaping to the applause of the crowd.
This failure is an Inglewood culture that ended 4 years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures and remote learning. For a while, there were no in-person educational sessions for the marching band, or soccer games to energize. There are no skills to master. Students were trained – in music, style, rhythm – Zoom. As a result, the program has grown from over a hundred students to just 20 group members.
Itevia “Ivy” Jack, the 2023-24 lead drummer, has postponed joining the organization until the summer before her freshman year. “Being at home, inside the house, you can’t do anything and you can’t have an online marching band. hard,” Ivy recalls.
But a year into the pandemic, a new band director began stabilizing the program, hoping to restore it to its former glory and provide a lively, functional flavor derived from historically Black school and college marching bands. With the firmness of the band director and his parents, Joseph Jauregui, 37, a graduate of Cal State L. A. and former member of the USC marching band, he restructured and relaunched himself, little by little.
Today, approximately 1 in 8 Inglewood High students are part of the organization. Prospective freshmen are already registering for the 2024-25 season. All of the organization’s seniors — including Ivy, who will attend Talladega College in Alabama for a full ride — have received a scholarship from the organization. And next year, the organization will march beyond the White House, bringing Inglewood pride to the nation’s capital.
“In my opinion, the band represents the soul of Inglewood,” said director Lamar Collins. “It’s the city of champions, and that’s what the organization is all about. “
::
For decades, the Inglewood High band dominated major school competitions under the leadership of band director Conrad Hutchinson III, whose father, Conrad Hutchinson Jr. , had been a mythical band director at Grambling State University in the 1950s and 1960s in Louisiana.
Under the direction of Hutchinson, who arrived in 1977, Inglewood followed a taste for functionality, with its lively combination of music and dance, backward movements with high steps, swaying and defying gravity, which at the time was largely absent on the West Coast. The band has come to dominate show and taste competitions in Southern California.
It’s strict but fair, the scholars said. Under his tutelage, the organization continuously captured the national war of the best school teams (in 2006, 2008, and 2013) and appeared in advertisements and television programs.
Hutchinson has trained generations of disciplined students, who have praised him for opening doors to music.
Ivy’s father, Louis Jack, graduated in 1989 and remembers Hutchinson’s “drill sergeant” attitude and his challenge to be the best. Jack, who played the sousaphone, recalled how the band would walk down the street from the school to Caroline Coleman Stadium, the home football stadium and neighbors would come out of their homes en masse to watch them.
Ivy “asked me a lot of questions about what it was like when I was in school and the traditions and heritage that came from being in the group,” Jack said. “Besides the school’s football and basketball [teams], it’s whatever appeals to everyone online when the season comes. »
After graduating from Inglewood High in 2003, Daniel Anthony Farris, also known by his rap name D Smoke, pursued a successful music career, performing with artists such as Snoop Dogg and becoming the winner of the Netflix music festival, “Rhythm + “Flow”. Array ”But before he took off his professional career, he was a student honing his craft with Hutchinson.
“Being in the band just meant my brother was in the band, my most productive friend was in the band and I still learned the cadences of drums even though I wasn’t in the drum line,” Farris said. He played an electric keyboard connected to a bass speaker that circulated during the marching season.
Hutchinson “brought the total culture of traditionally black schools and their bands to Los Angeles, with the taste of knees, with dance moves, choreography and drum majors, and formations at the halftime show,” Farris said. “It’s a wonderful source of pride. “
Hutchinson retired in 2021 at the age of 81, but continues to appear at the band’s performances, praising academics who are excited to meet the band’s former director.
::
While the organization won titles and honors, the Inglewood Unified School District faced a revolving door of principals and money problems.
In 2012, the debt-ridden district received a $29 million state bailout after decades of mismanagement. The district still owes $21 million to the state and generates annual bills of $2. 2 million. In March, the district announced plans to close five schools at the end of the 2024-25 school year due to “declining enrollment, monetary difficulties and the need to fix facilities. “
Jáuregui arrived in 2021 when the group’s formation was going through one of its most complicated moments. The first week, he says, he thought about quitting. The trophies the band had won over the years were piled up and collecting dust on the floor of a warehouse. The tools were old, rusty and in desperate need of repair or often replacement. Of the six music categories assigned, 4 were for amateur students. Everyone was looking to be a drummer.
He remembers waiting for his last elegance of the day, the complex elegance, hoping to finally see a set.
“I arrived excited to hear the band, and there were only 8 other people sitting here in front, in a small circle with the approach books. I looked at them and asked myself: where are the others?Jáuregui called again. He temporarily discovers that none of the scholars of complex elegance have ever conducted in front of an audience. “Every elegance is a disaster,” he said.
The pandemic, Jáuregui says, has interrupted the cycle of seniors who supervise young academics. He needed to reconfigure his approach. So he started pushing scholars (who were nervous and untrained in the art of marching and gambling at the same time) toward other tools based on their abilities.
He then reorganized classes through the instrument circle, bringing students together in technique before bringing them together as an ensemble. And he brought in Collins, who came to the school in 2023, drawn in part by the marching band. legacy.
Band members have earned new uniforms, new drums and, most recently, new flutes and piccolos, all funded by the district’s arts budget. “Many of these young people have never experienced anything new like this,” Jáuregui said. “And so here comes this new sax logo ready to go, they can play it and they’re really excited to open it. It’s like Christmas for them. About 71 percent of students are eligible for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program . and the members of the organization do not pay to hire or use the instruments.
The first few months were also an era of learning for Jauregui, a former Los Angeles Unified music teacher. He had to be informed about the acting taste at work, a very different strategy from that of the drum corps, the most militarized and technically difficult taste that most of the best school bands can report. He admired the pleasure of acting and, as a teacher, dreamed of leading a big band. I just had to figure out how to get there.
::
Jáuregui uses a gentle technique with his students. He understands that they’ve been through a lot (the upheaval of the pandemic, the question of getting a new tool) and that school is rarely very easy for them. He pressures young people – from prom queens to dropouts – to be better because he knows they can. Everyone is on equal footing in his music room and he greets them all as soon as they enter.
‘Hello, Chaparra, where have you been?'” he asked a student, whom he called “boy” in Spanish, as the organization prepared to rehearse. “It’s good to see you again!” he said with a hug.
The key to developing the group, Jáuregui said, was for other academics to see how much the members laughed. Friendships became easier as their elegance grew and the students stepped forward as musicians. Sometimes they spend lunchtime with him and look for him to decompress about what’s going on at home.
“Every school has young people who are going through great suffering or struggles. . . And here, it’s simply one unhappy story after another unhappy story. “My parents did this and that. ” And sometimes it’s a little overwhelming,” Jauregui said. “So I looked for a safe and positive position where they could come without having to think about things like that and feel warm, loved, appreciated and desired. “
Amber Flores, a 17-year-old percussionist, learned to sing in the marching band. His own stress had kept him from doing extracurricular activities for much of his school career, but when he entered music class in his senior year, he found out that he might turn to Jauregui, nicknamed “Mr. S. J” among students, for recommendations and a shoulder to cry on.
Amber submitted a full ride to a school in Arkansas, but declined to attend Prairie View A&M University, a school in Texas that she visited and fell in love with. She plans to examine architecture and test her skill in marching band at the first opportunity.
“This is our town,” she said while sitting in the music room at one of the band’s best after-school rehearsals. “While I play I let my anxieties pass, the feeling of the drums is helping me and it is like the heartbeat of the band. I don’t know, it just gives us a feeling of power.
In three years, Jauregui’s students, who were once shy freshmen, have become leaders and mentor those who followed them. People come out of their homes to inspire them.
“It creates such power that it can’t be reflected,” Collins said. “It’s hard to describe. You have to see it: it’s anything you say to someone, it’s anything you feel.
In January, the organization took first place in the Kingdom Day Parade celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, beating out 20 schools. The judges said they liked the organization’s dance and power routines.
The school’s top band played at Dodger Stadium, and next year the band members, many of whom have never been on a plane, will fly to Washington, D. C. , to perform at the National American Independence Day Parade on Constitution Avenue. The school is raising the $250,000 needed to cover transportation, hotel and food.
“It’s exciting to go to the White House. These who, you know, were treated like garbage or who thought they were never worth anything. . . they can pass and they can walk and they can be on a national platform throughout the United States. “It’s huge for us,” Jauregui said. We desperately want him in this school. . . These young people are worth fighting for. “
Subscribe to accessSite Map
follow us
MORE FROM L. A. TIMES