Current Directory:

Arts > Music > Marching > Drum and Bugle Corps

Directories

Alumni Corps (11)
Equipment@ (78)
Inactive Corps (14)

Junior Corps (58)
Organizations (4)

Senior Corps (43)
World Corps (15)

The Arts/Music/Marching/Drumcorps category contains general and relevant information to the whole drum corps activity. Drumcorps, or more accurately Drum and Bugle Corps (D&BC), is an activity based from the early fife and drum and bugle bands of the late 19th and early 20th century. Members of many of these were grown men. Later the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and other civic organizations created their own auxiliary youth groups or junior corps. Over time, these senior and junior groups changed their venue from marching in parades to performing precision drills for competition. The VFW and American Legion were the de-facto rule makers for this activity. In the early 1970's, faced with stringent rules imposed on the junior corps by the VFW, and an activity that was dying, several top junior D&BC's formed Drum Corps International (DCI) as an alternate sanctioning organization. DCI was almost immediately successful and allowed greater artistic freedom to the activity that has continued to this day and allowed Junior Drum and Bugle Corps to be the most successful form of this activity. Membership in a Junior Corps is restricted to those 21 and under on the last day of the DCI Final competition each year. Senior Drum Corps look to a similar organization, Drum Corps Associates, for guidance. Many members in a Senior Corps are those who "aged-out" of a Junior Corps. Many Senior Corps will allow membership below 21 years. Junior D&BC's should be listed under the Junior Corps category. Senior D&BC's should be listed under the Senior Corps category. "Grab Bag, Trivia, and other Artifacts" contains miscellany about drum corps. Personal diaries for instance. "History and Archives" is for pages devoted to expired corps, information on competition seasons, corps playlists, etc. The Europe and Asia subcats are for the international scene. These corps do not necessarily follow the age distinction that the American Junior and Senior divisions have. For this reason they are not listed under the Junior or Senior Corps cats.