American Scene: The Deep River Ancient Muster

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By midevening the inn was jammed. Outside in the parking lot, the overflow of fifers and drummers set up their own jam sessions. One of those basking in the deafening music was Raymond Hill, fire chief of the City of Los Angeles. In Washington for a firemen's seminar, he had come to Deep River to attend his fifth muster. "Anybody who can hear an ancient corps and not have the hair raise on the back of his neck, why something's wrong with him," he said.

Muster Day was a montage of sound and color as the 63 participating corps, resplendent in their scarlets, blues, grays and whites, drummed and fifed their way through the streets of Deep River to a ball field on the outskirts of town. There, each group performed a medley of its favorite tunes in a five-hour fife-and-drum fest that left many of the uninitiated benumbed. The tunes ranged from Yankee Doodle and other Revolutionary War melodies like Road to Boston and The World Turned Upside Down, to such Civil War favorites as Marching Through Georgia and The Battle Cry of Freedom (Rally Round the Flag).

After the last performance, a jam session was decreed and there ensued a gigantic version of Friday night's scene at the inn parking lot. Hundreds of fifers and drummers, now in such states of unattire as T shirts atop colonial knee breeches, gathered in informal groups to pump out their traditional favorites. Despite the mixing of corps personnel, the precision achieved was impressive. But from across the field, the combined effect was a cacophony of sounds, a good-humored musical nightmare that for some lasted late into Saturday night, evoking all the ghosts of '76.