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MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2017
the
Football
issue
T
ens of thousands of students, alumni and other fans converge
on the Mercedes-Benz Superdome eachThanksgiving week
for the Bayou Classic, one of the Southeast’s great annual
college football games.And the gridiron battle between the longtime
rivals — the Southern University Jaguars and the Grambling State
University Tigers — is only part of the show. For many, the school’s
marching bands, Grambling’s Tiger Marching Band and Southern’s
Human Jukebox, are at least as mighty as the teams that have been
meeting on the field each November since 1932.
LawrenceRawlins, a 1994Southern graduate
and the band director for McDonogh 35
High School in New Orleans, comes from
a band family. His older brother, Wilbert
Rawlins Jr., who also attended Southern and
marched with the Human Jukebox, directs
the marching band at L.B. Landry-O. Perry
Walker College and Career Preparatory
High School; sometimes the brothers will
lead their separate bands down St. Charles
Avenue in the same Mardi Gras parade.
Their love of marching bands comes partly
from their musical home — their father,
Wilbert Rawlins Sr., played drums for soul
singer Irma Thomas for 27 years — and
partly from time marching in their own
middle-school and high school bands, said
Lawrence Rawlins, who played mellophone
and French horn.
“When you’re real, real small, you think
maybe you’ll be a police officer, an
astronaut,” he said. “But by the time I was
in junior high I realized I wanted to be a
band director.”
That dedication and drive was focused even
more by his time in the Human Jukebox
band, and the lessons he learned there still
help him in his classroom today. “It’s the
discipline,” he said. “One of our mottoes
was ‘Be in the right place at the right time
with the right equipment, ready to work.’
And ‘If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re
on time, you’re late.’ And the culture. We
had some brilliant, brilliant instructors and
upperclassmen keeping it in line. It’s like a
fraternity.”
By the time classes start for normal Southern
students, band members will already have
been on campus for two weeks of “grueling,
all-day rehearsals,” said Nathan Haymer,
today’s Southern University band director.
“That’s how we get in shape,” he said. It
doesn’t end with band camp; members must
also attend practice for about three-and-a-
half hours daily, he said, while maintaining
at least a 2.0 GPA with a full course load and
also being available to travel on the band’s
busy schedule. That’s not just for college ballgames; the Human
Jukebox regularly gets invited to appear at NFL games and other
special events, including three presidential inaugurations, five Super
Bowls and in two Spike Lee films over the years, plus international
appearances like a 2011 trip to Morocco and Nigeria.
The Human Jukebox’s rigorous work ethic and vibrant culture have
made it one of the most celebrated university marching bands in the
world. At the beginning of 2014, the National Collegiate Athletic
The
Human
Jukebox
by
Alison Fensterstock
+ photo courtesy of
SUMarching Band