Errm… well… in the interests of the strictest adherence to the credo of The Straight Dope, I feel compelled to admit that around here we do have something sort of similar… er… similarish. (Oh dear)
In an effort to dilute the shame a little, I’ll try to give you some historical background, before we come to the full horror:
Probably the true analogue of the American High School marching band, in terms of local pride, involvement etc, would be the brass bands that at one time were a feature (at least in the North of England) of so many collieries, steel works, and other similar places of mass employment. They would march with pride in local parades, though in comparison to a modern American High School band, their emphasis was more on solid musicianship than crowd-pleasing showmanship. There was intense rivalry between the bands, and national competitions were (and indeed to a lesser extent still are) hotly contested. Sadly, with the closure of so many traditional industries in the 80s, many of these bands are no more, or at least greatly reduced – though some survive, there isn’t the fierce local pride that was associated with them in their heyday. To get some idea, see if you can track down a copy of Brassed Off (which is worth seeing anyway).
So popular were these bands at their height (around the beginning of the 20th Century), that people who didn’t work at a factory that sponsored one still wanted a band of their own to play and march in. Bands were formed by villages, districts, or even just a street, and because they had no money for expensive brass instruments, they would play whatever they already had or could scrape together (remember this was a time before radio or TV, when “making your own entertainment” was the norm, and almost everyone could play an instrument to some standard). The typical “Jazz Band” (as they came to be called) was an ad hoc mixture of a few trumpets, clarinets and so on, and a good many cheaper instruments like harmonicas or guitars. Those who couldn’t afford (or couldn’t play) anything else would have (and here we come to it) kazoos.
Now, the jazz bands pretty much died out with the wars, but what survived (unfortunately) was the “Juvenile Jazz Band,” usually organised by a local church or social club, and these continue to the present day. They consist of feckless and gawky pubescent kids with a few drums, half a dozen baton-twirlers, and far too many bloody kazoos. They style themselves (more or less) after High School bands, but in a rather cheap and tatty crepe-paper-and-tinsel fashion. Compared to a real American marching band, they generally look like some kind of strange cargo-cult parody – and the noise! I assume that you’ve never had your Sunday morning disturbed by the theme to The Great Escape being played off-key by two hundred kazoos and three bass drums (each one beating a different time) – and I envy you.
