Daphne High School’s marching band has always been big. This fall it got bigger in a way it has never been before.
The Sound of the Eastern Shore opened the school year with 98 freshmen, a record for the program. The newcomers make up roughly 40% of a band of about 250 student musicians, and they have arrived alongside 38 seniors, the largest senior class since director of bands Jamar Dumas took over in 2011.
On a recent Thursday afternoon at Faison Field, the band’s practice field, the summer heat had finally eased, but there was no time to enjoy it. Dumas ran rehearsal from atop a tower overlooking the field until an approaching thunderstorm sent students hurrying inside with their instruments. When the storm passed, the band went right back out and used the remaining 45 minutes to work through its show. With football every Friday night and competition season about to begin, every minute counts.
‘It’s All a Big Machine’
Running a band that size takes organization. Josh Harper, the band’s percussion director and a longtime Daphne High math teacher, said the program depends on Dumas’ leadership.
“It’s all a big machine,” said Harper, a 1999 Daphne High graduate. “He is incredible at the stuff he does, how he does it and how organized he is. He’s very good at delegating tasks and it’s one of his strengths. If we didn’t have the head guy pulling the levers and stuff, the machine would not function.”
Dumas and his staff split oversight of the band’s sections. With so many first-year members, he said, the basics of moving a band around take longer than they used to.
“You have to train two to three times more people than you’re used to training,” Dumas said. “And there are growing pains. There are so many students. We have to re-evaluate things. It takes longer to load the school buses. It takes longer to get inside when it’s raining. It takes longer to feed everyone.”
Freshmen Find Their Footing
Freshman clarinet player Vivienne Chhoa, 14, has been with the band since orientation in May, which was followed by long days at summer band camp in July. She said she felt welcome right away.
“It was easy for me to connect with my section and learn what the school is like and feel welcomed,” Chhoa said. “My biggest issue was learning music so fast, but it’s been a very reasonable pace. I understand their expectations to the point where I’m practicing a lot more.”
The seniors have taken on a larger role in helping the newcomers settle in. Senior clarinetist James Paralegas, 17, joked that learning everyone’s names has been the toughest part.
“But in spite of that being hard, it’s about drawing the freshmen closer to our current family and gives us a strong connection to the band,” he said.
‘Imperium’ and a Demanding Competition Season
That family atmosphere helps the band handle long bus rides to competitions in Birmingham, Dothan and beyond. This year’s competition show, “Imperium,” traces the rise and fall of ancient Rome. It features Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” a 1924 orchestral tone poem, along with music from the 2000 film “Gladiator.”
“Our band directors give us hard shows,” said senior trumpet player Kathryn Chakwin, 17. “It’s rough in the beginning, but once we got it, we got it. Our shows are always difficult, but it helps us grow from the freshman year to the senior year.”
The work starting at summer band camp is aimed at October, when competition season heats up. Senior head drum major Makenzie Howell, 17, said many people don’t realize how much the band does beyond halftime.
“We spend so much time and dedicate ourselves to our competition show,” Howell said. “I don’t think people realize that we go to all these competitions. We are more than just a halftime band.”
Dumas said the competitions give students extra motivation in rehearsal.
“We compete with other schools our size throughout the Southeast during October,” Dumas said. “That’s what really motivates our kids. They enjoy Friday nights. We love supporting the Daphne Trojans. But the competitions are what they really work hard toward.”
A Growing City and a Strong Feeder System
When Dumas arrived in 2011, the band had about 110 to 120 members. It has more than doubled since then, growing especially fast after the pandemic. Associate director of bands Chris LeBartard said the program added nearly 100 members in the three years after 2019.
Part of that is simple math. Daphne has grown rapidly since 2010, with new subdivisions and apartment complexes bringing new families to the Eastern Shore. But LeBartard said the city’s middle school band programs deserve much of the credit.
“We also have rock star teachers in the sixth grade and seventh and eighth grades,” he said. “These kids, they just love band.”
The middle school program is led by Ryan Pippin, who also helps with the high school band. Percussion director Tyler Entelisano, known to students as “Mr. E,” said the pipeline runs through Daphne Middle School, W.J. Carroll Intermediate School and sixth-grade band programs at Daphne East Elementary, Daphne Elementary and Belforest Elementary.
“We try to foster that love of music and that education from the beginning all the way up,” Entelisano said. “For me, that is something that is incredible and special, and it’s kind of unique to Daphne. You see a lot of great programs in the state doing similar things. But to see it on this level with this sheer number of kids is remarkable.”
Dumas said participation numbers reflect that pipeline.
“Most people will say around 10 to 12 percent of a student body participating in band is a good number to have,” he said. “I’m at 13 to 14 percent right now … I think we’re above average for our community, which is just a testament to the students and my staff in the middle school with the beginning bands and getting students involved early. That begins in the sixth grade.”
Only Two Directors in 33 Years
The band also benefits from unusual stability at the top. It began in 1989, when Daphne High School opened, with about 40 students under its first director, Jim Harris. Richard Suk led the band from 1990 to 1994 and has spent the past 26 years directing the Ohio University Marching 110.
Since 1993, the program has had just two directors: Richard Faison, who led it until 2010 and for whom the practice field is named, and Dumas, who took over in 2011.
“Rick Faison really built this program … the band practice facility is named Faison Field for a reason,” Harper said. “He retired in 2010, and we were very fortunate to bring in Jamar Dumas. I cannot say enough good things about the way he runs everything, deals with parents and handles emails. There are a lot of behind-the-scenes things he does.”
Dumas is a Lawrence County native who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Jacksonville State University, where he played in the Marching Southerners, the jazz band and other ensembles. He was associate director of bands at Oak Grove High School near Birmingham. After meeting his wife, Shelly, a Mobile native, he moved to south Alabama and directed the band at Satsuma High School from 2008 to 2011 before coming to Daphne.
Support From the City and the County
Dumas credits the Baldwin County Board of Education and the City of Daphne for supporting the program. The city has helped buy 75 band uniforms and has provided money for instruments, and the school system bought two box trucks for hauling equipment.
“Every band in the county got two (box trucks),” Dumas said. “The band directors in our system are not naïve enough to know that is not normal. It’s a huge exception to the rule for a county to support us like that.”
Beyond Marching Season
When marching season wraps up, the program shifts to concert bands, percussion ensembles and two winter guards, indoor groups that combine dance and choreography with flags, rifles and sabers in competitive shows during the winter and spring. Dumas said the school’s nationally competitive winter guard finished last year ranked 48th in the country at a competition in Dayton, Ohio.
The concert bands perform holiday and spring concerts and take part in state music performance assessments, and the band is a regular sight in Mardi Gras and holiday parades.
The program travels, too. Florida, Mississippi and north Alabama are frequent destinations, and past groups have gone to New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Orlando. Next year, the band is headed to Hawaii.
“It gives the students an experience to see Hawaii and possibly perform at Pearl Harbor,” Dumas said. “It’s what band afforded me in high school by going on faraway trips like Washington, D.C., and New York. And we like to give students that kind of opportunity.”
Competing Against a Standard
For now, the focus is on the weeks ahead and the show the band has been building since summer. Dumas said the goal is not to measure the band against other schools so much as against its own expectations.
“I think that is one thing Daphne does is we have a standard we try to meet every year,” Dumas said. “That’s something we’ve been focused on for several years now and not necessarily competing against other groups and schools, but competing against ourselves to that standard.”