Forthcoming book to address band culture in Oklahoma from 1880-1940

Apr. 11—Two Norman residents are looking for help from the community to find historical items about town bands in Oklahoma.

Scott Barger, a real estate appraiser, local historian and musician, and Casey Gerber, associate professor of music at the University of Oklahoma, have teamed up to author an upcoming book on town bands in Oklahoma from the 1880s to the 1940s.

Throughout Oklahoma, brass, woodwind and percussion sounds filled the streets as local bands played in public performances.

Barger said the tradition gained momentum following the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, which introduced the U.S. to the Ferris wheel, commercial electricity, and phonographs.

"The 1893 World's Fair set off a modernization race to the top for communities," Barger said. "For the first time on a large scale, John Philip Sousa's first band was introduced and played for the entire world. This launched a lot of brass bands that would be seen in community projects."

He said he started this project about a year ago after he watched the University of Oklahoma New Horizons, a community band which brings together musicians for different walks of life.

"I thought, I wonder what that was really like, and then has anybody written anything about community town bands? So I started looking into that, and nobody had written really anything for Oklahoma history of the town bands and there was a lot of information out there," Barger said.

After having done research, he had realized that a book needed to be written about community band culture in Oklahoma.

Casey agreed to work with Barger, as it aligned with his research interests.

"Before school bands and school music really became established, in the early 20th century, these town bands were pretty much the only way for people to hear this kind of music," Gerber said.

He said most Americans no longer participate in community band culture because school bands, including at the college level, assume that role.

Currently, the authors have information on 35 bands throughout the State of Oklahoma, but they want to look at more bands for this book.

"If anyone has a family member or knew of any of their acquaintances that had participated in a town or community band in Oklahoma during this time period, we'd love to know about that hear about that," Gerber said. "But the real gold would be is if they have music, uniforms, or programs, or some sort of artifact. We'd love to see real tangible things that we could see or study or read that would add to the story."

Barger said Norman, like Oklahoma City and Tulsa, was special because interest was great enough that the community fielded multiple.

He said the flip side is that bands were segregated by race and sex, so that could also be a reason why larger towns had more bands that smaller ones.

The authors have information on bands in cities that either don't exist anymore, or have reduced in numbers, like Byars, which hailed 466 residents in the 1940 Census, but now has fewer than 200 people.

"A lot of these communities are gone," Barger said. "Byars had a massive and a big wagon during their performances."

Brian King covers education and politics for The Transcript. Reach him at bking@normantranscript.com.