With the start of football season fast approaching, Mississippi State’s Famous Maroon Band prepares for a new tradition.
Last football season, as the band performed an inaugural halftime sing-along, Director of Bands Elva Kaye Lance and Associate Directors Craig Aarhus and Cliff Taylor watched as Bulldog students and fans joined in to sing and cheer. A new tradition was born. Building on that success, the band will carry this new custom into this season with the crowd favorites “Sweet Caroline” and “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
“We liked it last year,” Lance said. “We face the east, west and student section. A tradition takes a little while, and it’s hard to birth a new tradition but we’re trying to do that. Our students loved it and it’s important that we have student buy-in if we want to have success.”
With more than 400 members representing nearly 200 high schools from 15 states, the university’s band showcases the inclusiveness of MSU. Students represent every college on campus, with nearly 40 percent declaring engineering as a major. The Famous Maroon Band boasts 35 legacy members who have siblings, parents or grandparents who were previous band members.
“They represent a very diverse group of majors,” Lance said. “We like to think of ourselves as the face of the university. We are a cross section of all the majors. These students are very interesting—their backgrounds and their career aspirations. For many of our students who are not music majors, it’s a good avocation for them and we hope they continue their musical interest.”
During the first football game Aug. 31, fans will hear the Bulldog classics like the fight song and a Latin Jazz vibe with “Malaguena” by Ernesto Lecuona, “Spanish Fantasy” by Chick Corea and “Smooth” by Itaal Shur and Rob Thomas. The season’s music will feature a variety of tunes including music from “How to Train your Dragon” and “The Legend of Zelda” later in the year. Taylor, who prepares the sheet music for the band, loves hearing the students bring those notes to life.
“I spend a lot of my summer putting dots on a page, and it’s neat to see what it becomes—a living organism,” he said.
The band’s excellence extends beyond music, with last year’s members maintaining an overall GPA of 3.34, including nearly 25% achieving a perfect 4.0. Lance expressed pride in the students’ ability to balance their academic and extracurricular commitments.
“We have so many students from so many disciplines. We are proud of the fact they’ve done well academically and managed their time well,” Lance said.
As it prepares for another season, the Bulldog pride is evident in the Famous Maroon Band, a university institution dating back almost 120 years.
