A Journalist’s Observations Through a Summer of Band Camp

By Asha Swann, Bandology staff

I was never a camp kid, but I was a band kid. In grade seven, a friend and I both picked music class over drama. Even though we had joined the class together, I still didn’t want to tell her that I begged my parents for an instrument of my own. Two days after we each decided to play clarinet, we both agreed to join the school band. Not that we actually wanted to (that would be lame with a capital L), but because of a rumoured field trip at the end of the year to Niagara Falls.

We pretended not to like it, but I knew we both loved spending hours after school practicing. School band took over our middle and high school years. When other kids were chatting about Friday night plans, the band kids were waiting for 3:30 to roll around so that we could take over the music room. Though I would soon swap my clarinet for a bass guitar, I couldn’t help but love being in an ensemble from the moment I stepped into the rehearsal room.

Long gone are the days of thinking that band camp is a bunch of geeks playing classical music all summer. Okay, so maybe some of us embrace the nerdy labels, but band camp isn’t something that people shamefully sign up for, hoping that their friends never know. Being passionate about music is cool; whether you’re leading the melody on clarinet or commanding the room with a bass drum.

Band camp is where kids became best friends after only five days, promising to return at the same time next summer. Bandology’s Band Camp was a place where I saw siblings sign up together, a loving rivalry that only family can create. It’s probably the only place where someone can play a saxophone solo and instead of being called a show-off, the bravery of standing out in an ensemble is praised.

The introverts shine brightest at Band Camp. It’s the quiet kids who smile the brightest when they realize they are among friends. Though I try to be impartial as a journalism student, I couldn’t help but think about what it must mean to these kids to be in an environment where talent in the arts is not only valued, but encouraged at every level.

For the youngest kids attending Band Camp Junior, they learned percussion basics on bucket drums, scales on colourful boomwhackers and simple chords on ukuleles. It was different from the ensemble that the older kids formed, but it was more similar than people realize: kids learned rhythm and notation without it feeling like a formal lesson.

There was no teasing when one kid took a little longer to learn, no laughing when someone accidentally played the wrong notes. Band Camp was a success if only because all of us were ready to pour out our hearts to teach the campers that music is always valuable.

But a summer camp is only as good as the people working at it, and Bandology had the best. There was Sandy, someone who values music just as much as the culture of community that it creates. Then there was Juliette; the marketing department was made up of just us and our exceptionally similar tastes in music; there’s no one else’s opinion I valued more when it comes to curating a party playlist. If you could put sunshine in a bottle, you would get Kathryn, our lone oboist happy to stand out in a sea of clarinets. I can’t imagine how Kirsten manages to play seven instruments, but she does it so well. When it comes to Ryan and Lucas, I was constantly in awe at how two percussionists managed to be so in sync and yet still be incredibly unique in their instruments. By the end of Band Camp, Olivia and I could basically read each other’s minds just by a glance from across the room. The person most likely to surprise us at the end of each day was always Jasmin, who secretly has the biggest wild side. I can’t help but have a huge amount of respect for Tamara, who rediscovered her love for playing music after not touching her bass clarinet for a few years. And as for Julianna, well, we are all fond of the way that sarcasm is basically her love language.

We regularly talked about how lucky it was that we all got to work together this summer. Staff meetings would often go into long tangents about memes or whatever random thoughts popped into our heads. It’s rare to have a staff where everyone gets along, but it’s even rarer for the same staff to work just as hard as they goof off. Staff meetings turned into late nights, talking until we got eaten alive by mosquitos.

Band Camp was a way for staff to be their most creative selves while giving that same energy to our campers. Music is art and poetry and all things endlessly creative in one. Even though I never went to band camp as a camper, I’m more than happy to have been a part of this incredible team working towards an amazing goal: advocating for more music for more kids.