There is a way I used to act when I played tuba in the University of Montana marching band from 1997 to 2000 and the song “Cotton-Eyed Joe” came over the stadium speakers. The number of people who remember has dwindled and that’s probably good, for me.
I would slap my hands over my ears and scream. Letting my legs fall limp, I would crash down to my knees (you can do this and still walk the next day when you’re young). Eyes bulging, throat hoarse, I would flail onto my back in the bleachers and thrash hideously until the noise ended and, finally, I lay still.
My intent was to act out being tortured to death by the awful sounds.
Overdramatic? Sure. But this week’s news of a musical brawl between University of Montana Athletics and the Grizzly Marching Band makes my reaction seem prescient.
At 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 18 (about five hours before the 125 UM marching band members would begin assembling to perform at the Brawl of the Wild football game) the athletic department sent an email to band director Kevin Griggs. He was told to make the band play less. As per a statement from the athletic director, Kent Haslam, this was in order to “allow marketing to play music.”
An angered Griggs wrote an email to his disappointed band later that day specifying that the music that marketing wanted to play was “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”
Why a song with no connection to Montana? Certainly not like the marching band’s “Up With Montana,” for example. “Cotton-Eyed Joe” is an antebellum folk song appropriated in 1994 by Swedish producers who created a fake band called “Rednex” and thought they could make money mocking American hillbillies. A turn to Google for answers about the song’s popularity shows at the top of the “People Also Ask” list: “What is the racist background of the Cotton Eyed Joe?“
As much as the athletic department would surely love answering that, the answer it gives as to why it plays “Cotton-Eyed Joe” is that it gets Griz fans excited.
That it does. But so does “Up With Montana.”
The university’s preference for more “Cotton-Eyed Joe” came out after news broke earlier last week that Montana State University’s Spirit of the West marching band would not come to Missoula with the Bobcats for the Brawl of the Wild. This ended a Montana tradition. The UM and MSU athletic directors had together decided to, instead, each sell the opposing side’s marching bands’ seats—for an estimated profit of at least $50,000.
It should be noted that UM spokesperson Dave Kuntz clarified that the Grizzly Marching Band was silenced not to play more “Cotton-Eyed Joe” but instead for Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony.” It’s a distinction without a difference. When you’re a marching band musician, excited to play, on display in front of your community, and you’re told to shut up and make way for pre-recorded music, whatever crap comes out of the loudspeakers is “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” It’s code for disrespect and humiliation.
Marching band takes a lot of love and work. Long weekday practices stretch from cold afternoons into dark evenings. There are plenty of blue fingers, stiff joints, numb feet, sore backs, and heavy, frozen instruments. Entire Saturdays are given to games. All this earns a musician is a single school credit. But it’s the gig we proud band nerds dedicate ourselves to in good spirit. We know our role in UM’s athletic experience is to provide music from Montanans for Montanans. Often about emphatically loving M-O-N-T-A-N-A. After a quarter-century I still count as friends musicians I played with in the UM Marching Band. Hopefully, they still count me as theirs.
“Cotton-Eyed Joe” kills this—even when he comes as “Mony Mony.” He overtakes us. He replaces us. For around a half-century, beginning in the early 1970s, University of Montana musicians and Grizzly athletes grew in symbiosis. As UM Athletics became bigger, more popular and more successful, the marching band and the pep band provided more live music at more events, for both the Griz and Lady Griz. As this musical commitment grew, so did musicians’ innovations to meet the demands of sports environments—choices in instrumentation, ensemble sizes, schedules, rehearsals, songs. The musicians proved so hardworking and excellent that UM punched above its weight and was selected to host the prestigious Athletic Band Symposium in 2024, a first for a university of its size.
That symbiosis fractured last weekend when both Montana’s colleges decided to grow the Brawl of the Wild at the expense of—rather than with—their marching bands. An away Brawl without your marching band is a musical injury. But your marching band usurped at home by “Cotton-Eyed Joe” is a musical insult. Ironically, only five days earlier UM President Seth Bodnar published a fine opinion column in The Washington Post about his school becoming a national leader in teaching students skills to overcome the disruptions of artificial intelligence. What about the marching band being replaced by automated music?
This is all easy to hate. A tone-deaf, arrogant, bureaucracy promoting an insipid recording over the dedication, commitment, and teamwork of musicians. The press, rightly, brought it to public attention. “Montana Marching Band Told to Play Less at Football Games” announced a headline on KPAX.com. “Marching Band Changes at Cat-Griz Game Trigger Backlash,“ stated Montana Free Press. “University of Montana cuts the time limit its marching band can play during games,” confirmed Montana Public Radio. “UM Marching Band playing time snubbed for pre-recorded tunes,” proclaimed a headline in the Montana Kaimin. A Change.org petition launched on November 19 titled “Stand with University of Montana’s Marching Band.” As of November 22, it had surpassed its initial goal of 5,000 signees and neared 6,000.
Even from a distance it’s clear the reason why. These days I watch the Brawl of the Wild in a New York City bar near my apartment. Really, I go just to be around other Montanans. I study the big TVs closely but—at the risk of blasphemy—not for the game. I look for glimpses of home, Mount Sentinel cloaked in fog, riffles on the Clark Fork, maybe a commercial with the Mission Mountains or a cutthroat trout. The reason this silly marching band story has resonated so broadly and deeply is because it is about something as bone-deep as music and home. It’s about who we are. What we value. What we keep and what we throw away. How Montanans treat each other. What Montana is and what Montana is becoming. Is our shared future more “Up With Montana,” or more “Cotton-Eyed Joe?”
