“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'” – C.S. Lewis
All Ben Van Kurin wanted was to create a space where he and his friends — most specifically, his drum corps friends — could communicate and connect.
Early in the calendar year, Van Kurin created a Facebook group called “Drum Corps Friends,” and invited a couple hundred of the cohorts with which he’s become acquainted over six decades in marching music.
Admittedly, the group didn’t stay top-of-mind for long.
“I actually completely forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
A couple of weeks ago is right when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and seemingly everything in the world changed. In the marching music corner of the world, current seasons and plans for upcoming seasons came to a screeching halt.
Little by little, though, as rehearsals and performances were canceled one by one, friendships flourished in Van Kurin’s Facebook group. Invites grew exponentially, and the never-ending digital family tree that is the marching arts community all flocked to the same place.
Suddenly, Van Kurin found himself with 20,000 friends — and counting; there are thousands of open invites to other friends still waiting to be received.
“I really just did it because I thought I’d like to connect with some people that did drum corps,” Van Kurin said. “I think what happened is everybody's got so much time on their hands that they're able to sit around at their computer, and now they're starting to remember the good old days. I think that's why it's so special to a lot of people.”
When you’ve got the chance, take a second and scroll the Facebook group; it’s not hard to find if you have an account, just search “Drum Corps Friends” and it should be the first result.
Sifting through the posts is like standing along the wall at a family reunion or a large networking event, and just looking around. You’ve got circles of alumni reconnecting in the comments, random questions about past summertime experiences, people introducing themselves and finding members of the community with similar interests.
And hey, there are even a few memes mixed in.
But the common denominator is positivity. For the most part, no one’s arguing about who should’ve won or which drum line was better. Maybe there’s a lighthearted debate over what makes the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but that’s always to be expected.
Everyone in this community has been affected by the ripples of COVID-19, even just in terms of their relationship to the marching arts. Either your season as a performer was canceled, or your season to teach as a staff member was canceled, or your chance to experience drum corps performances live was canceled, or whatever the circumstances may be.
Generally speaking, no one is exempt — everyone misses it. And positivity, mixed with a little bit of nostalgia, is the best remedy.
“I think that it's really important right now, with there not being a drum corps season or a winter guard season, and with sports and other activities canceled,” Van Kurin said. “I think that this gives people a chance to go in and see what other people experienced when they were in corps.”
Such positivity, as evidenced by the Drum Corps Friends group, unites. It’s currently uniting people of all backgrounds, talents, demographics, and eras of the activity.
Van Kurin attested that said unity is breeding a shared optimism; it’s a group mentality, an unwavering one among the page’s membership that says the 2021 season of drum corps is going to be the best ever.
“People are feeding off of one another,” he said. “I think there's a great deal of optimism from the group, and we're trying to keep it that way.”
Van Kurin doesn’t necessarily have a specific vision or endgame for the platform that’s fallen into his lap, but if there’s one thing he wants to see come from this group, it’s those memories that can be made in the future.
“I'm hoping to eventually start promoting the page as the springboard for the 2021 season,” he said. “We've got all these people together, we've got all this excitement building, and hopefully what will happen is all these people who maybe were marginally involved or maybe hadn't been involved in years will get involved again to bring back the drum corps activity in 2021.”
But for now, his message to you? Join in the fun; we’re in this together.
“Join Drum Corps Friends,” he said. “Because we're all friends here and we want to keep the activity going.”