Lengthy earlier than Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones and Rihanna, there was Freddie Colston.
Colston was only a 20-year-old scholar from tiny Fairbanks, La., when he traveled to Los Angeles in January 1967. He had grown up in a house with out indoor plumbing, however now he was staying in lavish lodging with about 180 different members of the Grambling School marching band.
Quickly they might high-step onto the sector at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to carry out within the halftime present of the very first Tremendous Bowl.
“Once we heard that crowd, it was like a spirit received into us, and we have been strolling on a cloud,” mentioned Colston, 77, who performed the cymbals. “Our step was greater, and the beat was quicker.”
Within the many years earlier than the Nationwide Soccer League recruited stars to carry out on the Tremendous Bowl halftime present — the rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline on Feb. 9 at this yr’s recreation in New Orleans — it incessantly relied on dynamic marching bands from Grambling and different traditionally Black faculties and universities.
Lamar has not mentioned if he’ll function an H.B.C.U. band in his almost 15-minute efficiency whereas the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles are recuperating. However there can be a presence on the Caesars Superdome when Southern College, from Baton Rouge, La., performs earlier than Jon Batiste sings the nationwide anthem.
Every H.B.C.U. marching band has its personal type and look, with vibrant uniforms that usually match the varsity colours. However irrespective of the varsity, spectators have come to anticipate a rollicking present with high-stepping choreography, dancers typically on the entrance, and trumpeters and drummers swaying in rhythm whereas blowing or pounding their devices.
“That exact type of efficiency has all the time had broad enchantment, and marching bands and different musical teams have all the time been cultural ambassadors for Black faculties,” mentioned Steven Lewis, the curator of music and performing arts for the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition in Washington.
Grambling’s band of all-Black college students was invited to Los Angeles on the peak of the civil rights motion, and to a metropolis nonetheless reeling from the flames and mayhem of the Watts riots two years earlier. Some Black leaders implored college directors to reject the invitation.
“There was a sense early on that it was an empty gesture,” Lewis mentioned of the invitation to Grambling, which is now often called Grambling State College. “However that criticism has been occurring for fairly a very long time, and it’s one thing the league nonetheless has to work on.”
After the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick repeatedly knelt in the course of the nationwide anthem in 2016 to protest racial injustice, and a rancorous debate about patriotism and civil rights ensued, some Black stars have been hesitant to carry out on the Tremendous Bowl. In 2019, the N.F.L. started a partnership with Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s leisure and sports activities firm, that led to latest performances by the Weeknd, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and different outstanding Black artists.
Marching bands carry outsize affect and delight at H.B.C.U.s, a lot of which have been based shortly after the Civil Warfare and integrated navy marching of their curriculums.
The bands are student-recruitment instruments, garnering consideration on the Rose Parade and presidential inaugurations, together with Mississippi Valley State College’s efficiency at President Trump’s final month. Some teams compete towards each other at occasions such because the Battle of the Bands, giving energetic aptitude to modern songs.
Additionally they caught the eye of soccer executives trying to infuse leisure in a brand new occasion. When the champions of the Nationwide Soccer League and the American Soccer League met for the primary time, the Tremendous Bowl was not but referred to as the Tremendous Bowl.
“You checked out these bands, and it was the truth that they have been greater than only a marching band,” mentioned Jim Steeg, the N.F.L.’s former vice chairman of particular occasions, who oversaw the Tremendous Bowl for greater than 20 years starting within the mid-Seventies. “They have been simply performing completely different than all people else.”
After Grambling’s longtime president, Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, determined that its band would play within the first Tremendous Bowl halftime present, the musicians practiced by the college’s vacation break. Within the Nineteen Sixties, Colston mentioned, 5 a.m. practices weren’t unusual.
“They mentioned, ‘We don’t flip down no performances,’” Colston mentioned. “‘We’re going to go anyplace.’”
Someday, Colston mentioned, Jones gave a wad of money to a drummer with directions to dole out $2 to every band member for a spending allowance in Los Angeles.
When the musicians flowed onto the soccer area at halftime, Grambling joined the marching band from the College of Arizona, a principally white faculty, to depict a map of the US. The bands performed “This Is My Nation” for the finale as a sea of balloons ascended.
“We needed to conduct ourselves in an expert method as a result of this was a bunch of coloured youngsters in a white society,” Colston mentioned. “We have been representing our colleges, our church buildings, the cities we got here from.”
H.B.C.U. bands have been included within the following three Tremendous Bowl halftimes. After the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the director of the Florida A&M band created a set themed round American delight for Tremendous Bowl III in Miami the next yr.
George Quillet, a clarinetist for Florida A&M, mentioned a lot of his bandmates initially disagreed with the idea for the efficiency however later modified their minds.
“We actually received invigorated as a result of our leaders guided us by the method of what we needed to do,” mentioned Quillet, now 76.
The present included them marching right into a formation formed like a flying eagle. After marching into letters resembling “U.S.A.,” the scholars stood nonetheless as a speaker blared parts of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural tackle and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
This Tremendous Bowl is the eleventh to be held in New Orleans: Southern College took on a Mardi Gras theme at halftime of town’s first Tremendous Bowl, in 1970, and Grambling carried out a tribute to Duke Ellington in 1975. Three years later, Southern performed a 12-minute pregame routine.
Kenny Ricard, a Southern clarinetist who’s now 67, mentioned that earlier than taking the sector in 1978, the band’s members recited the mantra they uttered forward of each efficiency: “Decide up your toes, drive and blow, begin occupied with the present.”
In these many years, marching bands have been keen and reliable leisure choices for the N.F.L., which was involved with the logistics of making a present that might entertain each an in-person and tv viewers.
The starry gates swung open in 1993, when Michael Jackson stood immobile onstage for almost a minute of raucous applause earlier than singing a medley of his beloved hits with the pageantry of pyrotechnics. Steeg mentioned the N.F.L. wanted to bolster the halftime present to maintain followers engaged and away from counterprogramming on different networks.
As A-listers took heart stage — the previous two Tremendous Bowls in New Orleans have been headlined by U2 and Beyoncé — H.B.C.U. bands started taking a extra complementary function. In 2007, Florida A&M supported Prince’s efficiency, supplying background music from beneath an elevated platform.
Shelby Chipman, who was then on the band’s employees and is now its director, mentioned Prince’s agent had referred to as the band, asking it to play. His crew despatched musical info so the band may match the notes he would sing however in any other case gave it inventive liberty for its dance routines and formations.
Prince’s crew visited Florida A&M a couple of weeks earlier than the Tremendous Bowl to see a rehearsal. The band practiced with Prince solely as soon as, lower than 24 hours earlier than the sport.
“Usually with these sorts of performances, they offer us the inexperienced gentle,” Chipman mentioned.
Colston, who has labored in customer support for the N.F.L.’s Washington Commanders, nonetheless attends homecomings at Grambling State and relives reminiscences of the primary Tremendous Bowl. He hopes that the celebrities who now dominate the stage know their historical past.
“We opened the door for them,” he mentioned.
