When one is walking on the UAPB campus or even when tucked deep inside one of the buildings, it’s a rare afternoon that a tuba can’t be heard — or five or six of them — in one part of the quad and then some drums in another spot, those big resounding bass ones. And then there are the scads of trumpets piercing any chance of silence, with the players of all of those musical instruments bobbing and weaving in unison. You get the picture – or rather the audio file.
Those are the bits and pieces of the Marching Musical Machine of the Mid-South, also known as the M4 band. One has to assume that those dedicated musicians isolate themselves so they can fine tune their own parts. But when they gather up and put all of those bits and pieces together and take the field to perform, look out.
Whereas the prowess of the football team may or may not be sufficient to light up the scoreboard, M4 is always rocking the house. Even when the Razorbacks ran up the score in Little Rock a few weeks ago against the Golden Lions, M4 got a standing ovation for its halftime performance.
Consequently, people notice — and sometimes it’s people who want the band’s precision fun at their events.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
One of those was Cody Rhodes. He noticed M4 on social media where he heard them play his theme song. He’s a World Wrestling Entertainment star, and now he’s invited many of the M4 band members to State Farm Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks, in early October to play at a pay-per-view wrestling event. Eat your hearts out, linebackers and tailbacks!
That trip is on top of one scheduled for Feb. 1 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers and Rams. UAPB’s M4 is one of six HBCU bands to take part in the Honda Battle for the Bands event.
The invitations are nothing new for these standout musicians as they have strutted their stuff in a variety of locations across the years.
Best wishes to them as they spread UAPB’s goodwill and good sounds across the country. And even if football isn’t your thing, but stand-up-and-bounce music is, well, you know there’s a band just for that.