Midsouth Marching Festival, Gadsden's biggest one-day event, set for Saturday
For nearly three generations, the Midsouth Marching Festival has been “the” date on the calendar for high school bands and their fans in Gadsden and across the Southeast.
The 59th renewal is Saturday at host Gadsden City High School’s Titan Stadium and has drawn 31 entries, its largest field since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to GCHS Band Director Chris Benedetti. (The festival was canceled for only the second time in 2020; the other cancellation was weather related.)
“We had to close registration early, we had so much interest,” Benedetti said, up from “18 or 19” in 2021, his first year as director, and 24 last year. “And this is the first time in a few years that we’ve had as many large performing ensembles.”
The first band takes the field at 10 a.m.; the last scored performance will be at 8:20 p.m. The host Titan Band and Jacksonville State University’s Marching Southerners will follow with exhibition performances. The awards ceremony will start about 9:30 p.m.
Admission is $10 and concessions and vendors will be available onsite.
South 11th Street between Pierce Avenue and Polk Avenue will be closed at 10 a.m. to accommodate the logistics of the festival, which is the largest single-day event held in Gadsden each year.
“We’ll easily have 10,000 people in and out of the stadium throughout the day,” Benedetti said.
That will include about 3,900 performers, he said, including his band and Jacksonville State University’s Marching Southerners, who’ll close the event with exhibition performances.
And in addition to spectators and their vehicles, there’ll be 99 buses of various types, 54 trucks, 31 trailers and four semi-trucks. “That’s all before the Southerners get here,” Benedetti said, “so it’s going to be a very busy day for us.”
Twenty-five of the entries are from Alabama, five from Georgia and one from Tennessee. “They used to come from Mississippi, they used to come from all over (for the festival),” Benedetti said. “But that was back when they had a parade, and it was an overnight thing.”
The festival, which originated in 1964 as a collaboration between the Emma Sansom High School and Gadsden High School band programs, also used to include a beauty pageant and drew as many as 50 entries at its peak.
“We’re really looking forward to it,” Benedetti said of this year's festival. “I’m excited about it for the community, to be back out in full swing. And you’ll see some new faces and old faces.”
For example, Steve Reagan, Benedetti’s predecessor as GCHS band director and son of Rip Reagan, one of the event’s founders, will assist with the festival throughout the day and help distribute awards at the end. And Russ Waits, GCHS’ first band director, will return as principal of Jacksonville High School, one of the entries.
Benedetti said his band also is back in full swing, growing by 48 members to 221 in marching band this fall, after dipping below 200 there in recent years. There are about 250 students involved in the overall band program, including many who cross programs.
“We’ve got volleyball players, we’ve got cheerleaders, kids in JROTC, athletes on almost every sports team we’ve got here outside football,” he said. “And we’ve even had football players in the band in the past; they just didn’t do halftime.”
The middle school programs which feed the Titan Band also are showing increases. “Band is growing back,” Benedetti said, in an era where there are so many things for kids to do.
“You’ve got a lot of different clubs, things like robotics, and that’s great for kids,” he said. “It’s just a different era. Every school’s goal is for 10% (of the student body) to be in band ... and we’re well over that and growing.”
Benedetti said a lot of band programs suffered during the pandemic, as e-learning kept students out of classrooms and left them frustrated trying to learn their instruments on their own without personal interaction with a teacher. It also has left directors having to reteach the social skills needed to have a cohesive band unit.
“There’s more to it than music,” he said. “We’re teaching them how to interact with each other once again. They’ve been hiding behind their phones, and we’re getting them out from behind their phones where they have to speak to each other and interact.”
Benedetti said plans are already “in the works” for next year’s 60th festival, adding, “It’s going to be a really eventful year for us.”
The festival schedule, by classification:
Class A
10 a.m. — Dadeville; 10:15 a.m. — White Plains; 10:30 a.m. — Clements; 10.45 a.m. — Hokes Bluff, 11 a.m. — Cherokee County; 11:15 a.m. — Ohatchee; 11:30 a.m. — Etowah; 11:45 a.m. — Piedmont; Noon — Coahulla Creek (Dalton, Georgia); 12:15 p.m. — Guntersville
Class AA
1 p.m. — Sardis; 1:15 p.m. — Coosa (Rome, Georgia); 1:30 p.m. — Scottsboro; 1:45 p.m. — B.B. Comer; 2 p.m. — Jacksonville
Class AAA
2:30 p.m. — LFO (Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia); 2:45 p.m. — Alexandria; 3 p.m. — Elmore County; 3:15 p.m. — Hayden
Class AAAA
3:40 p.m. — Arab; 4 p.m. — Calera; 4:20 p.m. — Fort Payne; 4:40 p.m. — Southside; 5 p.m. — Oxford; 5:20 p.m. — Weaver
Class AAAAA
6:40 p.m. — Ringgold, Georgia; 7 p.m. — Smiths Station; 7:20 p.m. — Tullahoma, Tennessee; 7:40 p.m. — Chelsea; 8 p.m. — Rome, Georgia; 8:20 p.m. — Thompson
Exhibitions
8:40 p.m. — Gadsden City; 9 p.m. — Jacksonville State Marching Southerners
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Gadsden hosting 59th annual Midsouth Marching Festival this weekend
