Community Corner

Pleasanton's Fife and Drum Corps Teaches Structure, History and Music

Now a year old, the Bay Area's only youth fife and drum parade band replicates 1776 battle scene music.

The sounds of 1776 battle scenes waft through one Pleasanton neighborhood on any given Friday afternoon — the toot toot of the flutey "fife" instrument, mixed with the military stoccato of drums that signify an approaching army.

It's the music one hears in educational films about General George Washington, and not something expected in suburban Pleasanton in 2011.

What's more, these sounds are coming from children — grade-school-aged kids playing instruments inside accountant Jason Giaimo's Pleasanton home, where he has taught historic music lessons every week for the past year.

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"It's OK, it took me awhile to catch on too," one more advanced student said to a new student on Friday. The boy struggled to get a sound out of his fife.

"Once you get it, you'll pick it up fast."

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While Giaimo teaches fife in the dining room, Anna Kremenliev teaches drums in the garage.

After warming up for a few minutes, the kids file out into the cul de sac, ready to march and play.

The group, called the Young American Patriots Fife & Drum Band, is the only organization of its kind in the Bay Area, Giaimo said.

The kids have participated in parades and events all throughout the Bay Area — at Six Flags, Fourth of July parades, and others. Next, they will be playing at the upcoming on August 27 from 2-3 p.m., and from 4-5:15 p.m.

That's why Friday's practice was so important — they needed to get ready.

"Fall in," Giaimo instructed.

The kids got into the correct formation, then marched down Giaimo's street three by three, then to a neighborhood park.

"Left, left, left," Giaimo said to keep them in rhythm.

Once there, they competed as three teams to see who could march the best.

"That's not marching, that's jumping up and down," one boy said. "They're soooo out of step," he murmered.

"Ah, we smoked them!" yelled the boys on Team 2, after beating out Teams 1 and 3. The kids like the competition and structure, Giaimo says.

"But not too much," he said. "It should be fun, too."

When they do events, they dress in hand-made replica uniforms of George Washington's Continental Army of 1776. The kids, whose parents pay an average of $6.33 per class, don't have to buy the uniforms — they earn them.

If they're well-behaved during lessons and improve on their instruments from week to week, they move up in rank, the same way one would move up in the military. When they join the group, they start as a Private, then move to Private First Class, all the way up to Master Sergeant. 

Giaimo says the group is like a musical Boy Scouts of sorts.

He teaches the kids about history while peppering in lessons about good character and even throws in a weekly "cheesy joke" segment, where the kids get to pitch their favorite funnies. They whisper their favorites in Giaimo's ear, and then he says the best one aloud. There is much pride among those whose jokes are chosen.

Giaimo himself played in a fife and drum band as a boy in New Jersey, and kept with it until high school where he competed nationally and won for his solo fifing three times.

He decided to start the local band when he and his wife, Hetal, were looking for inexpensive music lessons for their children, Jainam and Ashni, and couldn't find any for less than $40 per lesson.

Giaimo doesn't make much money on this endeavor, and yet is a natural teacher. The kids write him letters, now in a scrapbook, about how they were scared to do something so different at first but ended up loving it.

Giaimo says that fife and drum corps were used in the military as a means of communicating during battle.

The drum beats, heard as far as two miles away, would signal soldiers to flank left, flank right, retreat or execute a battle plan. The U.S. stole the technique from the British, who stole it from others before them. The Swiss mercenaries were the first to use it back in the 1400s.

He said many times, the enemy would try to kill band members first, thus silencing all communication. That meant band members became increasingly younger and younger — as young as eight years old during the Revolutionary War.

Armies also trained drummers and fifers to signal the time of days for the troops, or even play popular music to boost morale.

To read more about the Young American Patriots Fife & Drum Band, or YAP, go to www.YoungAmericanPatriots.com. There is information there about signing up for lessons, as well as upcoming events.


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