How did we get here?

This year, Travis Scott was set to return to Coachella as the headliner for the first time since 2017. Being a fan of his music for years, it was super sick to finally see him back on the stage. However, this year, things were a little bit different.

Quick backstory: Back in Feburary, I saw this tweet from Travis Scott:

For an artist of Travis's stature to be looking for a band to perform alongside him at Coachella was a bit of a surprise. Let alone an HBCU band at that. I knew that live ensembles were becoming a bit more mainstream, but this was a bit unexpected.

To make matters even more interesting, a few months ago, I ALSO saw a leak on the r/drumcorps subreddit.

I embedded the reddit post above, but it revealed that Travis Scott saw the viral dropping the hammer video of the Carolina Crown recorded back in 2017 and would be interested in having them perform alongside him at Coachella.

The Performance

Taking the stage late Saturday night, he opened with HYAENA from Utopia, wasting no time to absolutely kill it.

But, who did he bring out?

• 8 Carolina Crown Corps members
• ~30 members of The Marching 100 (Florida A&M University's marching band)
• ~30 members of The Sonic Boom of the South (Jackson State University's marching band)

To open the performance, they performed an original arrangement of Travis's song "4X4" which features a sample from Tennessee State University and the Aristocat of Bands, and features The Marching Storm from Prairie View A&M University.

To preface, I'd like to say that I did music at the highest level for nearly 8 years of my life. I've performed in Carnegie Hall, was an All-State musician, and was a member of both the Seattle Cascades and Cavaliers drum and bugle corps.

However, this performance was god awful.

—BEFORE GETTING MAD. Listen for yourself:

First, I want to acknowledge that regardless of the circumstances, shout out to my high school band director, Monica Leimer, for staying up until 4am to watch her son perform in this.

From what I've heard from sources within the band, they only had a single day to rehearse before the big show. That's an incredibly tight timeline for any ensemble, especially one bringing together musicians from different groups.

The setting itself presented major obstacles too. Performing in the middle of the desert at Coachella isn't exactly ideal for musical acoustics. The band was positioned about 100 yards from the main stage, making it difficult for sound to project properly.

Even with Matt Harloff conducting - who is truly a respected figure in the music world - you could visibly see how separated he was from the rest of the band. In environments like this, similar to drum corps, musicians need to "listen down" to stay in time with each other, which becomes nearly impossible with such physical distance.

Intonation issues were also apparent. In professional settings like drum corps, tuning is fundamental - it's a skill developed over years of practice. Before performances, musicians typically tune their instruments carefully to match the ensemble. Given the circumstances, I suspect there simply wasn't adequate time for proper tuning.

Looking at the thumbnail of this blog post, you can see each musician had a microphone attached to their instrument. While this seems like a good solution, it actually complicated things for this particular group. The tubas came through too strongly and out of tune, the mellophones were barely audible, and the trumpets appeared to be about a count ahead of everyone else.

What's particularly unfortunate is that these are all incredibly talented musicians. Carolina Crown has a stellar reputation, and both the Marching 100 and Sonic Boom of the South are renowned for their excellence. The circumstances just didn't allow them to showcase their true abilities.

I think there were production decisions that could have better supported these musicians. That said, I understand the immense honor of being invited to perform at Coachella alongside Travis Scott. It's an opportunity few would decline.

So while the performance had its issues, I appreciate what Travis was trying to create, bringing these talented musicians to such a massive stage. It was certainly a memorable night, even if not for the reasons everyone hoped.