Well, the people listening to them, they'd follow wherever 
they marched along playing, and finally they'd just win out. It 
was always the public who decided. You was always being 
judged. It would make you tremble when one of those bands, it
came into sight. Say you was somebody standing there, a spectator --
you'd be hearing two bands maybe advertising for different 
theatres or a dance or just being out there. One of them it 
would come up in front of the other and face it, and you'd 
hear both of them. There'd be the two. And then you'd start 
noticing onliest the one. Somehow you'd just hear it better. 
Maybe it was clearer, maybe it was just giving you a lot more 
feeling. That band, it would be so gay and fine -- the men in it, 
there was nothing they was depending on but themselves. 
They didn't have to play after some arrangement. Almost it 
was like they was playing ahead of themselves. And so they'd 
have more confidence and there would be a richness to what 
they were doing. And so you'd want to hear it closer and 
you'd get up nearer. And then, it seemed it was all you was 
hearing. It was the only one that came through. And the 
other band, it would get away farther and farther until 
finally you just didn't hear it at all.

There was another kind of bucking contest too. There'd be 
those parades of different clubs and often times it would 
happen that two or three clubs, they would be parading the 
same day and they'd have engaged these different brass 
bands. Allen's Brass Band, it was one that was very well 
known. The Onward, that used to be another. The Excelsior, 
that was one. And those bands, the men in them, waiting for 
that parade to start, they'd all have that excited feeling, knowing 
they could play good, that they was going to please the 
people who would be about there that day. They had no fears. 
But the musicianers from other bands, bands that had just 
been gotten up for that day -- they were just a bunch of men 
who was going to play, and that was a difference; they 
wouldn't have that sure feeling inside. Bands like the ones I 
named, they were organized and they had the preference at 
these club parades. 

[...]

That Marshal, he'd lead his club's band up to the 
other one, and the leader, he'd go through with him. Manuel 
Perez, for example, he had his Onward Band -- other bands, 
they'd tremble to face him. A brass band, it was twenty pieces, 
you know. And the leader, he'd take his band right in amongst 
the other, and he'd stop. You'd be standing there on Claiborne 
Avenue and the bands, they'd come closer to each other, keep 
coming closer, and you'd be hearing the two of them, first one 
in a way, then the next. And then they'd get closer and you 
couldn't make them out any more. And then they'd be right 
in together, one line between another, and then it was just 
noise, just everything all at once. They'd be forty instruments 
all bucking at one another. And then you'd have to catch 
your breath: they'd be separating themselves. 

Then came the beauty of it. That was the part really 
took something right out of you. You'd hear mostly one band, 
so clear, so good, making you happier, sadder, whatever way 
it wanted you to feel. It would come out of the bucking and it 
would still be playing all together. None of the musicianers 
would be confused, none of them would have mixed up the 
music, they would all be in time.

[...]

And being able to play in that kind of band, it was more 
than a learning kind of thing. You know, when you learn 
something, you can go just as far. When you've finished that, 
there's not much else you can do unless you know how to get 
hold of something inside you that isn't learned. It has to be 
there inside you without any need of learning. The band that 
played what it knew, it didn't have enough. In the end it 
would get confused; it was finished. And the people, they 
could tell. 

But how it was they could tell -- that was the music too. It 
was what they had of the music inside themselves. There 
wasn't any personality attraction thing to it. The music, it was 
the onliest thing that counted. The music, it was having a time 
for itself. It was moving. It was being free and natural.