On the eve of the sixty fifth Grammy Awards, Nashville-based Tennessee State College’s Aristocrat of Bands was in Atlanta to compete on the HBCU All-Star Battle of the Bands in opposition to faculties like North Carolina A&T, Alabama State, and Bethune-Cookman. The scholar musicians took the sphere at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for his or her flip and, earlier than their high-stepping efficiency started, they rapidly fashioned into the shape of a Grammy statuette.
It was a mighty flex, however they had been definitely the one band within the constructing who might say they’d a Grammy nomination. By the following night, they’d marched themselves into the historical past books when their 2022 album The City Hymnal received Finest Gospel Roots Album, beating out heavy hitters like Willie Nelson and the Gaither Household Band within the course of. The win made Aristocrat of Bands the primary marching band of any type to earn a Grammy. (They had been additionally a part of a second Grammy win for his or her contributions to J. Ivy’s The Poet Who Sat by the Door within the Finest Spoken Phrase Album class.)
Video of the band members watching the pre-tel awards ceremony is sort of a hit of dopamine. A big group of scholars huddles collectively in entrance of an enormous display screen, nervous with pleasure. Once they hear their identify referred to as because the winner, the room erupts into celebration — leaping, hugging, screaming with pleasure.
“They had been so nervous. Within the weeks coming as much as it, everyone was like, ‘Man, if we don’t win, we nonetheless obtained nominated.’ However now, there’s a fireplace,” says multi-hyphenate artist-songwriter Sir the Baptist, who co-produced the challenge with TSU assistant band director “Prof” Larry Jenkins and R&B mainstay Dallas Austin (TLC, Madonna, Drumline).
Sir and Jenkins had been nonetheless on a wild trip of emotion days after getting back from Los Angeles.
“It appears like I’m nonetheless in a dream, popping out of the second,” Jenkins says, seated beside Sir in his workplace on TSU’s Nashville campus. “You acknowledge instantly the affect of what occurred — culturally, traditionally — all of these stuff you acknowledge proper there on sight. You get up the following day and it’s an everyday day however it’s distant from an everyday day on the identical time.”
“Each morning waking up since then, I get up to the place it appears like my being has been exhausted. It has sprouted,” Sir says. “It appears like each morning I’m in a position to have a look at a sprout.”
The City Hymnal was a labor of affection for Sir and Jenkins. Sir approached Jenkins in 2019 about coming to observe the band carry out in school, and Jenkins subsequently recruited him for an artist-in-residence program. Collectively they hatched plans for an album involving the sizable scholar band and began repurposing outdated spirituals as a historical past lesson in gospel music.
Sir referred to as up associates and collaborators from the Christian music world together with Jekalyn Carr, Fred Hammond, and Kierra Sheard to supply vocal contributions. Together with the band, he estimates a thousand folks had been concerned. Recording the 200-plus member band was no small feat — Sir needed to manually transfer a microphone across the room to seize and spotlight totally different instrumental sections whereas Jenkins performed. College students usually stayed late within the evenings after class and rehearsals to put down their components. Sir purchased cameras and realized edit video to assist with grassroots advertising and marketing efforts. When funding from the varsity ran out, Sir chipped in from his private financial savings.
“It was loads of working collectively after which surviving collectively,” Sir says. “HBCUs are so underfunded. School life is already arduous. To go to an HBCU and to be alone and must determine it out by yourself, each dime, that’s tougher. And to have some folks randomly telling you that you simply’re gonna obtain one thing that doesn’t appear doable, that’s like, ‘No matter!’”
The “Gospel Roots” class doesn’t get on the full sonic vary of The City Hymnal. There are straight forward, full-band renditions of “Jesus Loves Me” and “I’m So Glad” — the melody of which is employed in TSU’s faculty track — but additionally forays into hip-hop and modern R&B with extra intricate instrumental preparations and raps by artists like Dubba-AA. Rhythm sections are underlaid with thumping 808s, tubas are rounded out with electrical bass, and synths add new texture to the brass preparations. Refrains of gospel chestnuts drift via, as with the ecstatic rave-up “Dance Revival,” which ends with an interpolation of “Wade within the Water.” It’s uplifting, contemplative music that connects previous and current.
“We had been in a position to someway dig ourselves into the roots of gospel and discover Negro spirituals that survived from era to era,” Sir says. “It not grew to become a faith factor, it grew to become a historic factor.”
Larry Jenkins, Sir the Baptist, and Aaron “Dubba-AA” Lockhart have fun their Grammy-winning work on the Tennessee State College Aristocrat of Bands’ ‘The City Hymnal’ on the sixty fifth Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
Leon Bennett/Getty Photographs
“We’re speaking about cultural issues necessary to the fiber of who you’re,” Jenkins provides. “With the intention to make them, ‘related’ is a humorous phrase…” “To revive,” Sir suggests. “To ‘restore,’ I like that phrase. With the intention to do this, we actually bridged the hole between there and the current day.”
Jenkins views their Grammy win as monumental on a number of ranges.
“That is one thing that can go era to era to era and all the time have cultural relevancy and affect. This is among the largest — if not the largest — wins I’ve ever seen,” he says, stating Aristocrat of Bands’ previous experiences enjoying for President Obama and on the Rose Bowl. “To be acknowledged on the highest degree musically by your friends, simply actually units it aside from all the pieces. Down the street [at Fisk University], Fisk Jubilee Singers received a Grammy [Best Roots Gospel Album for Celebrating Fisk!] a pair years in the past.
“If you consider the historical past of [Nashville’s] Jefferson Road, Jefferson Road is the place Jimi Hendrix used to dwell. Jefferson Road is the place James Brown carried out and all the jazz greats,” he continues. “If you consider the magic that occurs on this mile or couple miles on Jefferson Road, two Grammys at two HBCUs, the one two HBCUs on the planet to take action — the explanation we’re referred to as ‘Music Metropolis’ is due to the Fisk Jubilee Singers. For this to occur on what we’ve dubbed ‘the Grammy Mile,’ it’s culturally, traditionally, one of many largest moments ever for TSU, for HBCUs, for marching-band tradition, interval. It’s a paradigm shift.”
To that finish, a part of the proceeds from The City Hymnal profit TSU’s marching band basis, so the album will proceed to supply for Aristocrat of Bands within the years forward. Sir additionally made the purpose about HBCU funding throughout his acceptance speech in Los Angeles and hopes this Grammy win can bolster TSU (and different HBCUs) for upgraded band amenities, musical gear, and uniforms. HBCU marching bands, although extremely particular person in character, are sometimes essentially the most seen elements of their faculties. “There’s a phrase we use right here, we name it ‘the window to the college,’” Jenkins says.
Each Jenkins and Sir are struck by the magnitude of the achievement, together with their battle to get it throughout the end line and hold its many particular person items transferring ahead in concord. They’ll’t assist however really feel prefer it was touched by one thing divine.
“My mother was like, ‘You bought up there and also you didn’t thank God,’” Sir says. “I stated, ‘Properly mother, God is aware of, as a result of he obtained us there.’”