Why the Tears?
Last week I received a text message from a band director friend following his band’s finals performance at a Bands of America Regional. He said, “Holy cow, I’ve never seen my band so emotional. Sobbing. Ugly crying.”
His text elicited a flood of memories. I can’t begin to count the number of times I saw my own students in tears during my time at Davis High! But without context I could only guess what brought the tears to his students’ eyes at that moment, because there were a multitude of possible reasons. Let me share just a few of those possibilities, using the words of my own students.
“Music has such power, it’s hard to imagine it not making an impact. It is one of the only things I know of that can penetrate human emotion to such a level that it can bring an entire audience to tears.”
“Marching band is the most important experience I have ever had in my life and I will take it with me no matter which direction I go. The friends I’ve made, the trials I’ve gone through, the physical struggles, the many tears of both joy and sadness.”
“Band is a constant environment around us as we learn and grow, make friends and lose friends, cheer and cry and everything in between, push ourselves to go beyond what we believed we could do.”
“I love it when everyone is so connected that the music is written in our hearts and we are just allowing the music to move through us. After the last cut off, before we put our horns down, we all get emotional knowing we just created a masterpiece.”
“Band is never being alone because there is always someone right there beside you, in step with you through whatever you are struggling with.”
“Band has become my family, my home, my safe place.”
“Band has taught me the most valuable lesson that I could ever learn. It isn’t about me—it’s about what I can do for others.”
The tears shed following the final performance of a long season represent a crazy mixture of emotions. Happiness because you just shared your completed masterpiece with an appreciative audience. Joy because you did it with a group of people that are more like family than friends. Love and gratitude for those who helped you along the way. Sadness because you know that the journey has come to an end. And in some unfortunate cases, disappointment because the performance didn’t match the expectation. Over my career i shared every one of these emotions with my students, and almost every year I wept with them.
Back to the text message…why were the kids crying? I asked, and he responded, “They had their best run. It was all happy.” But I know there was a whole lot more to those tears than happiness. Each tear represented a wonderful life lesson learned from the marching band experience.
