Whit Friday is this week!

This is an updated version of a post I made several years ago. Whit Friday this year is 1st June 2012; next year is 24th May 2013.

I'm always quite surprised that many musical people who live in Manchester have never heard of the Whit Friday band contests, so every year I feel the need to tell people about them. Then, if you're intrigued, you can come and watch next time they take place - and you're just in time for this year's!

The whole Whit Friday thing will make a lot more sense if I explain about brass bands first. Brass bands are commonly perceived as being a typically Northern phenomenon, but, although I was born and raised in Manchester, I knew practically nothing about them until I started work in Rochdale. The whole system is so unusual that I find it fascinating.

There are more rules concerning brass bands, I think, than those covering all other areas of music put together. The reason for this is that the brass band world is primarily geared towards competition rather than entertainment. (They even have rankings!) The contests, however (invariably taking place on a Sunday, starting at a ridiculously early hour like 8 a.m. and continuing until the bar closes at midnight or so) are very bitter, hard-fought affairs, with the results being discussed for weeks afterwards.

For the purposes of contests, bands are divided into five sections (Championship, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). There is a fixed number of bands in each section, but I’m not sure what it is these days (it used to be something like 30 in the Championship or “top section” and rather more in the others). At each contest, bands score points according to their placing (so many for a win, 2nd place, etc.) and at the end of the year there are promotions and relegations, just like in football. In addition to the five sections, there is also a Youth Section, which is just as competitive - the only limit is that players must be under 19. (Young players can, of course, play for “section bands” too.)

The actual contests are amazing. (Whit Friday is a special case, and not everything I'm about to say applies on Whit Friday, although most of it does. I'll explain specifically about White Friday afterwards.) I thought someone was pulling my leg when I was told what happens, but I’ve seen it for myself and can assure you that this is all perfectly true! (Note: It's been a while since I was directly involved with any brass bands, so what's described here is how I know it worked over 10 years ago. However, I'd be very surprised if it was any different now.)

The actual admin stuff for the contest starts several weeks earlier, when the band’s secretary checks that each player’s registration card is in order. These cards have (amongst other things) the player’s photograph and signature, and they are amended at Head Office (wherever that is) if a player is transferred between bands. No-one can be registered with more than one band. At the same time, the secretary will get each player to sign the contest registration form, and this will be sent off so that the band is officially entered. The band will have been practising the test piece for weeks - in each section, there is only one test piece, so if there are 20 entries (common) then the audience will hear the same piece 20 times!

The contest day begins very early for youth and lower section bands (the top section usually starts at a much more reasonable hour). The first thing that happens is the draw, which is often at 8 a.m., so a band may have had to set off at 6 a.m. if they have any distance to travel. At the draw, each band’s manager has to be present while a draw is made for the order of play. When this has been done, the band knows whether it has time to rehearse or whether it has to proceed directly to registration. The band drawn first also has to play the National Anthem (or “The Queen”, as they call it), so they will find a few minutes to practise it - they don’t get judged on it, in theory, but most conductors are of the opinion that it’s not a good idea to play it badly!

Even when the draw is known, there is not a fixed time at which the band knows it will be playing - they have to guess what time to tell the players to meet. Eventually, though, it will be their turn to “proceed to registration”. This takes place in a backstage room. The contest controllers sit at a desk. One has all the registration cards (which were handed in at the draw) and the other has the contest registration sheet. The players file past, and each one is compared with his/her photo on the card, and then signs the registration sheet (right next to where they signed it the first time). After this signature has been compared with the first signature, and both have been compared with the one on the card, the player is allowed to play - or not, if there are any discrepancies!

Now you may be thinking “this doesn’t sound much like any music I’ve ever taken part in!” - but bear with me! It gets even stranger! When the band, having passed through registration, finally get on stage, they will be announced simply as “Band number 5” (or whatever) and there will be two notice boards on the stage, saying something like “Draw number 5” and “Programme number 9”. Why? Because the adjudicator is not allowed to know which band is which! Before the contest began, he will have been taken to his “box” (and it usually is just that - a box (with sides but no roof) constructed right in the middle of the hall) by a steward who will have ensured that no-one speaks to him (they might tell him the results of the draw!) The adjudicator stays in this box all day - I believe there is a bucket in there in case he needs to relieve himself. (Seriously.)

The audience, however, know which band is which, because they’ve all bought a programme, in which the bands are listed in alphabetical order, and they’ve all written down the draw, which is posted outside the contest hall as soon as it’s known. In addition, the audience will quite happily sit through 20 or 30 performances of the same piece - some even take a score with them to follow. Most of these test pieces are especially written for this purpose and are fiendishly difficult (more so in higher sections!)

After all the bands have played, there will be a long, tense wait until the adjudicator blows his whistle for the last time. He will already have used it to let each band know he’s ready for them to start - now he uses it to say he’s ready to be let out of his box. He goes on stage and delivers some general comments, but nothing specific. Then there are lots more speeches in which everyone thanks everyone else. Eventually the contest controller reads out the results - usually only the top 3 or 4 places, and always in reverse order. Often the bands are only separated by one point - I’m not sure how the adjudicators fiddle it to be so cloands of pounds (e.g. area champions, for best average ranking over any 6 contests). A band that does well on Whit Friday can easily earn enough prize money to fund their activities for the whole of the rest of the year. Look at last year's prizes in the Saddleworth contests and the Tameside contests and you'll see what I mean.

The contests start at about 4.30 p.m. and run till 10 or 11 p.m. The bands play on a “first come, first served” basis - sections are irrelevant at this stage. They arrive on coaches, and as each coach arrives, the band’s “runner” (usually the band manager) leaps off while the coach is still moving and races to the registration point. The order of play is determined solely by the order of registration, regardless of where the coach is in the queue - this can make the traffic policeman’s job interesting! It is to the band’s advantage to play as soon as possible, because the sooner they play, the sooner they can leave to go somewhere elsone for the entertainment. At the end the marks from both sections are added together (usually the music is given marks out of 200 and the entertainment out of 100, or a similar ratio). The music adjudicator sits in a box and operates just as he would at a traditional contest. The entertainment adjudicator watches, however. But each band’s compère has strict instructions not to mention the name of the band, or indeed to say anything that could give a clue to which band is playing.

The instrumentation, by the way, is very specific. A standard brass band is only allowed to have 25 players plus drummers (although there may be more in concerts, particularly for youth bands). These will be: 1 soprano cornet, 9 cornets, 1 flugel horn, 3 tenor horns, 2 baritones, 2 euphoniums, 3 trombones, 4 tubas. There are no trumpets or French horns in a brass band, you may be surprised to learn.

Anyway, I’ll finish by telling you about Whit Friday. It’s the Friday after Whit Sunday each year (this year that means it's this Friday: 1st June 2012). On this day each year, bands from all over the country (and elsewhere too) converge on the Saddleworth area of Oldham, just to the east of Manchester. More than 100 bands take part, and each of the 20 or so villages involved basically stops work for the day (except the pubs!) Each village runs its own contest, and the prize money is not to be sniffed at - up to £1000 for the winner of each contest, plus many extra prizes worth hundreds of pounds each (e.g. 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place, best cornet solo, best bass section, best deportment, best youth band, best local band) and several overall prizes worth thousands of pounds (e.g. area champions, for best average ranking over any 6 contests). A band that does well on Whit Friday can easily earn enough prize money to fund their activities for the whole of the rest of the year. Look at last year's prizes in the Saddleworth contests and the Tameside contests and you'll see what I mean.

The contests start at about 4.30 p.m. and run till 10 or 11 p.m. The bands play on a “first come, first served” basis - sections are irrelevant at this stage. They arrive on coaches, and as each coach arrives, the band’s “runner” (usually the band manager) leaps off while the coach is still moving and races to the registration point. The order of play is determined solely by the order of registration, regardless of where the coach is in the queue - this can make the traffic policeman’s job interesting! It is to the band’s advantage to play as soon as possible, because the sooner they play, the sooner they can leave to go somewhere else and enter another contest. Anyway, depending on how busy the contest is, the players may well have a 30-40 minute wait before they play, which they will usually spend in the pub. (Here's a video someone took last year, of coaches queuing for the Greenfield contest. The queues aren't always that long, but it's not uncommon!)

When it’s their turn to play, the band will get ready to march. Usually trombones are at the front (they need more room) and cornets at the back, with the bass drummer and one or two side drummers in the middle. Some bands also have a mace-bearer at the front. At a signal from the steward, the conductor (or band manager) will tell the band to “take the street”. At this point they line up in perfect order. In theory no-one speaks or moves, because from this moment on they are being judged on their “deportment” - uniform, discipline, straight lines etc. The youth bands are much better at this than the section bands, in my experience - the top bands don’t take it too seriously, because they know that the real money for them is in the music prizes.

Eventually the steward tells the band to march. The mace-bearer, if present, will do a complicated set of actions at this point. Then the bass drum does a two-bar rhythm, after which he is joined by the side drummers for two bars, and the band raise their instruments for the next two bars. Then they start to play, and after a fixed length of time (the first phrase, usually), they all start to march - left foot first. They march along the street, following someone (often a child) with a sign with the name of the band chalked on it. (Usually this will also have the title of the contest march the band will be playing on the bandstand.) He/she leads them to the bandstand or contest field or wherever. As soon as they are reasonably near to it they are given a signal, at which the bass drummer will do a “double tap”, and the band stops playing at the end of the phrase in which this occurs. (If they finish the piece before this signal, they start again at the beginning.) They continue to march until the side drummers do a two-beat roll to stop them. When they are told to leave the street, they are no longer being judged on deportment - they walk to the bandstand and play their contest march (this will be much more difficult than the street march). There are separate adjudicators for deportment and music, and the music adjudicator will be told nothing about the band; he will be somewhere from where he can hear them but not see them (often in a caravan, or an upstairs room of a nearby pub, with the window open but the curtains shut).

After the band has played its contest march, the players race back to the coach and set off for the next village. Ten contests during the course of the night is a reasonable average - many do more, many do fewer. The results of the contests are available the same night if you wait around till the end, or online or in the local newspaper over the next couple of days.

If you have never experienced Whit Friday, I feel that your life will be incomplete until you have - so do try to make it one year! There are only two good ways to “do” Whit Friday - either arrange to be on a coach with a band, or pick one spot and stay there all evening. Following a coach in a car doesn’t work very well, because the parking is horrendous and the roads frequently close while a band marches down them. But, assuming you don’t know any bands who’ll let you join them, a good first visit is to go to Greenfield or Uppermill and sit in front of one of the pubs on the High Street. Last year 65 bands went through Greenfield, including most of the top section bands. This page gives you an idea of the scale of the thing (and it only includes half the contests). (If you want somewhere a bit quieter than Uppermill, try Friezland (just down the hill from Greenfield station) - the top section bands don't go there because it's restricted to youth bands and lower sections, so it's a bit more laid back, and there are slightly fewer drunken people due to there not being an actual pub there. There is a beer stall, though - and a great barbecue!)

A couple of years I went to Delph with my family - I hadn't been there for quite some time (well, I had, but not on Whit Friday), but we fancied a change from Friezland. We saw some great bands - not all the top bands were out last year, but we did see Brighouse & Rastrick in their distinctive purple tunics, and Boobs and Brass (the all-female brass band in their pink uniforms, who marched to Here Come The Girls). The crowd's favourite, though, was the St Etienne Band, who dressed as England football fans and marched to Three Lions. Sadly we had to leave early and didn't see any of the Wardle bands, but helpfully there are loads of videos on YouTube of Whit Friday performances, so I can illustrate the event by using the bands from Wardle High School (where I teach part-time - they have five brass bands!) as examples.

Here's the Wardle Junior Band marching to a tune called Slaidburn (which you will hear a LOT on Whit Friday). These kids are all between 12 and 14 years old, and this was the first time they would have done Whit Friday. They do something here called countermarching, which isn't often done as it's so difficult! It's when the band turns and marches back through its own ranks. As you can see, they almost manage it perfectly, but by the time they've turned twice they're not quite so neat horizontally! They will have got points just for trying, though.

Here's the Wardle Youth Band marching to the same tune. These kids are between 15 and 18 years old and will have done this for several years. They try something even more difficult - countermarching with a twist - and it almost works! (What usually causes problems with countermarching is when the street is narrower than expected, often because spectators have spilled out into the road.) You can tell these kids are more experienced, though, from how much better they recover.

And here's the same band, at the same venue, playing their contest march (which is called O.R.B.) a few minutes later, on the bandstand.

A non-Wardle band, but from the same venue as the last couple of clips: this band is (I think) from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (at least, I saw a band tonight that was definitely from there, dressed very similarly) but they are a good example of the fact that many bands do Whit Friday just for the fun rather than the prize money. There are quite a few that wear silly outfits :-)

Another non-Wardle band: this is Brighouse & Rastrick, included so you can compare the other clips with a top-section band, both marching and on the bandstand. This band is ranked 7th in the world at the time of writing.

And another: Boobs and Brass, mentioned above, marching to Here Come the Girls.

And, finally, Wardle Anderson Brass marching to 76 Trombones. This band is for ex-Wardle pupils of ages 19 and upwards, although there's one very small girl in this clip who doesn't fit that rule! I assume she's someone's daughter. There's no countermarching in this clip, but I wanted to include it because the mace-bearer is brilliant. She twirls that thing with such ease, and at the end you can just see her throw it in the air and catch it - I love it when they do that!

If I've whetted your appetite, put a ring round 1st June 2012 on your calendar, and come and see the spectacle :-)