What do they do for the military? Do they fight? Do they get paid? Are they outsourced musicians or are they actually part of the military? Also, why?
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Retired Military Bandsman here,
(Army Active Duty)
1. We perform during ceremonies to help bring a sense of professionalism, history and pride to the units we support.
We also perform for civilians regularly to help bridge the divide between the military and civilian populations— we need the civilian population to have a generally good opinion of the military and a band is far more approachable in general.
2. Every soldier is trained on how to use their weapons effectively, if we are in a position where we are being attacked you damn well better believe we will be shooting back. Yes we do deploy, yes we take our weapons with us.
3. We get paid the same rate as any other soldier of our grade (rank) does. Though we come in at a higher rank (Specialist, E4) because you simply can’t train someone to play an instrument in 6 months—therefore everyone auditions to come in and knows how to perform before hand.
4. No, we are not outsourced musicians we are full time Soldiers (in the active component).
5. Why? Because morale is a thing, traditions are a thing, respect for history and being able to interface effectively with the public both at home and abroad are incredibly important. We are not the only solution to these things, but we all have a role to play—go figure, the military has people for everything.
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