SU band has stronger female presence

For the first time in nearly forty years, the Southern University Marching Band, affectionately known as “the Human Jukebox”, is experiencing an influx in the number of females stepping into formation this semester.
It’s a move Dr. Lawrence Jackson, SU band director, said is due to the band wanting to build up its woodwind section.
This semester, there are a total of 24 females: 11 clarinet players, six piccolo players, three trumpet players, two saxophone players, one tuba player and one symbol player.
Although the band is experiencing a new phenomenon of female membership, Lawrence said females were never prohibited from joining the band in the past.
“That would have been unlawful,” Jackson said.
The prohibition may not have been a written rule, but may have been assumed since the band appeared to be exclusively male, said Jamie McMeller, a junior elementary education major from Gonzales, and piccolo player.
“It was two years ago at the 2006 ‘Parade of Champions’, held downtown for both Southern and LSU, when I saw that girls were in the band and I said ‘I want to do it,” McMeller said.
Since the early sixties, the SU Marching Band has been an all male band. It was not until the middle 1980s that Angela Boudoin, affectionately referred to as “Rosa Parks,” broke that tradition.
Boudion played the clarinet and marched for four years.
Her landmark accomplishment was followed by brass player Ancheryl Davis, who became the second female member of the “the jukebox” in the early 90s.
“She was better than most trumpet players at that particular time,” Jackson said. “Of course, females have to be, not as good as, but better than, especially in an organization oriented in males for a number of decades.”
The band got its first female tuba player in the late 90s when Erica Davis, who was rated top five out of 16 other tuba players during her audition for entry into the band.
In 2005, another female made history in the band by becoming the first female to make the “Funk Fac-tory” drum section.
Her name was Dion Faire.
“It was a monumental achievement for a female,” Jackson said. “Some guys stay on reserve for three years.”
Jackson said another reason for the lack of female participation includes the band’s marching style and the practicing regiment.
“It is all so vigorous,” Jackson said, reminiscing on his days as a former member of the “Human Jukebox.”
Tempora Fisher, a junior animal science major from Opelousas, and alto saxophone player, said she first became attracted to the band during the mid-1980s when she would come on campus with her mother.
Fisher prepared herself by participating in the high school band camp for Southern University prior to college.
“It is a band head haven,” Fisher said. “‘Band head haven’ means you must live and breathe band.”