Brass Bands
Although the most of the instruments used by British brass bands had existed and had been used together for some time, they only became a mass activity in the 1840s and 1850s out of village, church and military bands. Brass bands were a response to the process of industrialisation, which produced a large working class population, technological advancements, including more efficient piston valve instruments, which were easier to play and more accurate, and mass production that could quickly produce and distribute the instruments. Arguably, brass bands were an expression of the local solidarity and aspirations of newly formed or rapidly growing communities. This was particularly expressed in the rapid growth and organisation of bands, clearly seen in the creation of brass band competitions by the late 1850s. Brass bands probably reached their peak of popularity in the early decades of the twentieth century, when, it has been estimated, there were over 20,000 brass band instrumentalists in the country.
Read more about this topic: Early British Popular Music
Famous quotes containing the words brass and/or bands:
“Thee for my recitative,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day
declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat
convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 2:6,7.