Watch Movie Trailer Here
*Childcare provided
Includes:
Documentary Film Screening: Thunder Soul. 7:30PM to 9:00PM
(Approx. 83 minutes)
KRSB Performance Show: Approx. 30 - 45 min following the film.
Q&A: 15 minutes
Presented by Jamie Foxx, THUNDER SOUL follows the extraordinary
alumni from Houston’s storied Kashmere High School Stage Band, who
return home after 35 years to play a tribute concert for the 92-year-old
“Prof,” their beloved band leader who broke the color barrier and
transformed the school’s struggling jazz band into a world-class funk
powerhouse in the early 1970s.
Kashmere Alumni Stage Band
In
Houston, Texas in the late 1960s, musician and composer Conrad O.
Johnson, widely known as “Prof”, took a job as Music Director at the
predominantly black Kashmere High School where he would go on to
transform the school’s struggling jazz band into a full-fledged funk
powerhouse. The Kashmere High School Stage Band and their dynamic leader
would soon become legendary and world-renowned.
In the early 1970s,
national High School Stage Band competitions were fiercely competitive,
strictly conservative, and almost entirely white. Not only did Prof
break the color barrier and get his kids into these competitions, he
flipped the status quo by rearranging all of his band’s music into
elaborate funk arrangements. He changed the band’s look, encouraging
them to embrace their own inimitable style. He then introduced the
element of showmanship, with each section choreographing slick moves
with their instruments—unprecedented at the time. Finally, he unleashed
his band on the competition scene, where, against tremendous odds, they
would go on to triumph again and again.
From 1968 to 1977, the
Kashmere Stage Band won a record number of titles around the nation and
was invited to perform in Europe and Japan. Prof and the band made
history when they won Most Outstanding Stage Band in the Nation at the
highly prestigious All-American High School Stage Band Festival in
Mobile, Alabama, in 1972 – the very same year that state’s
segregationist Governor George Wallace would announce a run for the
presidency.
The band’s success reverberated throughout
Kashmere High School resulting in unprecedented student achievement in
the arts, athletics and all academic disciplines. Prof and the band’s
accomplishments also helped to uplift and unite the community. As former
student Gaila Mitchell put it: The Kashmere Stage Band was the best
thing that ever happened to our community. Even in a time when there was
so much racial bias, everybody in the community came together to help
the Kashmere Stage Band do whatever they needed to do.
What is
truly extraordinary is that in February 2008, 30 former Stage Band
members, now all in their fifties, reunited for the first time in 35
years to play a tribute concert for their former teacher, mentor, and
beloved bandleader, Prof, who was 92 years old. They would rehearse in
the very same band room where they used to practice as kids. And then
they would go on to perform before the current student body at the very
school where they made history decades earlier. It was unreal. Some of
these men and women hadn’t picked up their instruments in 34 years!
What happens next would prove historic.
THE KASHMERE ALUMNI STAGE BAND MEMBERS
Musical Director
Craig Baldwin (1974-76)
Reunion Coordinators
Craig Baldwin
Reginald “Rollo” Rollins (1974-77)
Saxophone Section
Marcus Britton (1989-93)
Grady Gaines Jr. (1969-72)
Arthur Harrison (1971-74)
Anthony Jackson (1981-83)
Bruce Middleton (1971-73)
Richard Nickerson*
Reginald “Rollo” Rollins
Timothy Thompson (1972)
Trumpet Section
Willie Britton (1984-86)
Melvin Dismuke (1957-63)
Greg Garlow (1963-69)
Barry Lee Hall*
Mingo Walton (1974-77)
Howard Ware (1974-76)
Trombone Section
Reginald Berry (1976-78)
Gerry Demars (1974-77)
Gwen Walker (1971-74)
Jimmie Walker (1972-74)
French Horn
Martha Samson (1971-74)
Flute
Gaila Mitchell (1975-78)
Keyboards
Samuella Barnum (1973-75)
Reginald Nelson (1973-75)
Ronnie Davis (1972-74)
Guitar
John Broussard (1957-63)
L.D. Harrington (1971-73)
Earl Spiller (1971-73)
Bass
Gerald Calhoun (1971-73)
Clifford Johnson (1974-76)
Claude Robinson (1971-73)
Drums
Russell Alexander (1974-76)
Craig Green (1972-73)
Congas
Donald Compton (1971-73)
Percussion
Melvin Cooks (1973-76)