American Scene: The Deep River Ancient Muster

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"The noise shook green apples off the trees, moved a frog onto the railroad track, jolted nails out of the shingles in the roofs, and the hens in the poultry yards along the route laid premature eggs in fright." With slight Yankee exaggeration, a newspaper in 1885 described the first field day of the Connecticut Drummers Association in Walling ford, Conn. The fifes and drums echo anew each July along the Connecticut River, where sleepy New England villages like Chester, Deep River and Moodus quietly proclaim a heritage as old as the Republic itself. The occasion is the annual Deep River Ancient Muster, the gathering ground for fife-and-drum corps, which this year attracted over 10,000 spectators and musicians. TIME Correspondent Richard Ostling, who is the son of a drummer, attended the muster and sent back this report:

YOU could easily hear the rumble of the drums at Deep River three miles up the river in Chester. The groups had come from all over: the Ancient Mariners from Guilford, Lancraft Fife and Drum from New Haven, the Chester and Moodus corps, the New York Regimentals, and the all-black Charles W. Dickerson Field Music from New Rochelle. Their dress was as colorful as their music was loud. Deep River's own corps led the parade, proudly arrayed in tricornered hats and scarlet colonial coats. The Ancient Mariners wore the motley collection of striped jerseys and white pants used by enlistees before the U.S. Navy settled on a common uniform. The silver cup awarded for the most authentic uniforms—the only contest at the muster—went to the variety of hand-sewn Confederate uniforms worn by the 32nd Virginia Field Music, a group from Williamsburg.

Though its origin was British, "ancient" fife-and-drum music has been best preserved in America, and especially in Connecticut, where it is a folk tradition passed down from generation to generation. The earliest American corps on record was founded in Annapolis in 1717. During the Revolutionary War, General George Washington issued an order stating: "Hours are to be assigned for all the drums and fifes of each regiment, and they are to attend them and practice; nothing is more agreeable, and ornamental, than good music." Because soldiers might have confused rehearsals with actual calls to arms, the Continental Army set practice hours of 5 to 6 a.m. and 4 to 5 p.m. The participants at Deep River observed no such regimen. -

The festivities began a day ahead of time as early arrivals gathered in the Deep River Inn, a bar on Main Street, to shout greetings, swap tales and compare instruments above the din of indoor fifing. Drummers, however, are usually kind enough not to play their instruments indoors; instead they rattle their sticks on the Formica tabletops. Unlike contemporary bands, fifers and drummers shun all modern innovations. Calfskin heads are used on drums instead of plastic ones, and a system of rope and leather ears is utilized to keep the heads taut, rather than metal rods. The fife must be the genuine article: a primitive piccolo consisting simply of a tube (usually wooden) with six finger holes plus a hole to blow across.