Gravely's Greetings: What Does an Army Bandsman Do?

I’m going to take this time to explain what it is that I do in the Army. Those that know me know I play clarinet and am an Army Musician. We get people all the time, Soldier’s too, who don’t think we’re real Soldiers. The fact of the matter is, my job is one of the most important ones here in Afghanistan! My job- troop morale. Don’t believe me? Well let me ask you a question- let’s say you have to clean the house but you just don’t have the energy. What do you do? You grab a cup of coffee, or an energy drink, or put on some music to get you going, right? Well, that’s what we do. We go play for all the troops at their respective bases. We bring them a little bit of home, and give them a brief respite from the everyday crap they go through fighting the war. So far, the response is always great! They love hearing live music once in awhile, no matter what kind it is.

Army bands are broken up into what we call MPT’s, or Music Performance Teams. Each group gets a letter identifier that lets us know which group it is. Here is a list of what we deployed with:

MPT-A: Command team- Always the Commander and Senior Enlisted, they are the A-Team. (I’ll bet they love it when a plan comes together!)

MPT-B: Ceremonial group- This group performs basic ceremonies from Change of Commands to ceremonies honoring our fallen comrades.

MPT-C: Rock Band- This is probably our most popular group (for obvious reasons). They play any kind of rock.

MPT-D: Dixieland Band- This is a band that plays New Orleans-style jazz music. This is my group. This is who I play my clarinet with, and I LOVE IT!

MPT-E: Brass Quintet- If you have to ask how many Soldiers are in this band, then you probably should go retake basic math! LOL This group can do a wide range of musical styles from classical to popular to jazz. They can do ceremonies as well.

MPT-F: R&B/Pop Music- This is our newest group, and they are still learning to gel together, but they basically play all the other styles the Rock Band doesn’t play.

Along with playing our instruments, we also are a self-sufficient unit. What this means, is that we run our own shops. The shops we have:

Admin: We do all of our own administrative paperwork. From re-enlistments to pay to basic Soldier issues, we do it all.

Training: From musical training to military training, they are in charge of pt and our schedule.

Operations: They set up our own gigs. If they don’t know about it, we don’t play it.

Supply: Any gear that we have, either musically or militarily, these guys are in charge of. If we need it, they’ll get it for us. Plain and simple.

Security/IMO: IMO is Information Management Officer, and that is our computer person. If we have computer problems we just call our very own Geek Squad and they’ll either fix it themselves or call the next higher level people to do just that.

Library: While you won’t find any copies of Jane Austin or The Scarlet Letter here, what you will find is a crap ton of music written by the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Sousa, etc. All of the types of music that we play are kept here, and we are responsible for its management and upkeep.

So, you see, we do more than just play music. We have multiple jobs to do. We’re great at multi-tasking (Well, some of us are! LOL). Hopefully y’all now have a better understanding of what it is I do for a living. Enjoy these pictures of our last trip, when we went to RC-North (Regional Command) and traveled and played for the troops.

Until next time…