The sellout crowd at Memorial Stadium was eager to see the
Golden Bears redeem themselves in the big Labor Day weekend
football game against the Tennessee Volunteers.
The sellout crowd at Memorial Stadium was eager to see the Golden Bears redeem themselves in the big Labor Day weekend football game against the Tennessee Volunteers. Fortunately, the Bears 45-31 win quieted those critics who liked to cite Cal’s 35-18 blowout loss in Knoxville last year as a prime example of what is wrong with Northern California in comparison to the then top-ranked Southeastern Conference.
Helping lead the charge to victory as they pumped up the home team spirit was the Cal Berkeley Marching Band. And leading that infusion of spirit was Gilroy’s own Josh Arribere, who made his official debut as Drum Major on the field at this important game.
“I knew going into Saturday that it was a high profile game,” Arribere said. “That day was the culmination of the past two weeks of work for the 231-member band, and a spring and summer worth of work for my committee (called ‘Stunt’) and me. It felt great to show the band off to 72,516 people as the performance organization that it is, and it’s amazing to think that the band performed in front of almost twice the population of my hometown that day. Cal Band is often called the carrier of the California spirit, and I think that the band truly demonstrated that on Saturday in their actions both on and off the field.”
What was it like to lead the band out onto the field in front of such a huge crowd for the first time? Arribere prefers to describe it in terms of his fellow band members: “I will always remember their look of eagerness and excitement prior to the first game, and their sense of pride afterwards.” Being Drum Major was not always his goal, but his love of band and his three years of marching experience at Gilroy High served him well, and by his second year at Cal, he had risen to Teaching Assistant.
He enjoyed it so much he began writing for the stunt committee within the Cal Band that charts all of the shows.
“After I joined, I attained a behind- the-scenes and in depth understanding of the inner workings of Cal Band, which intensified my love of the student-run organization.”
Becoming Drum Major is much like running for political office. Arribere had to publicly declare his intent to run, then pass an oral exam in front of the whole band. He was grilled on issues of rehearsal, performance standards, one’s legitimacy to run the band, as well as asked what he would do in many different types of situations. All of the applicants were required to give speeches. The Drum Major is determined by an election in which the victor must receive more than 50 percent of the band’s votes.
Josh describes his role of Drum Major as two fold. As head of Stunt, he chooses the members, helps them with the charting software (CalChart, made exclusively for the Cal Band’s style of marching), makes sure shows are charted, runs marching rehearsals, and generally sees to it that the band maintains its status as the pacesetter of college marching bands. The Drum Major is also a member of the executive committee, which is the highest level of student government in Cal Band. The committee makes decisions regarding band performances, cuts from band, and band policy.
While working with the band and attending classes in his dual majors of applied mathematics and cellular biology, he also works at the Berkeley extension of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He was recently published in a scientific journal..
