Brass Bands
January 20, 2026 at 01:36AMFor the London Review of Books, Rachel Armitage visited Royal Albert Hall to witness the National Brass Band Championships, a blind competition featuring 19 bands comprised of amateurs competing for the title of best band in Great Britain. Armitage, who plays trumpet and cornet, was once a member of a band. She gives us a fascinating glimpse into a subculture of music where the performance—depending on the competition calendar—can be part sound, part spectacle, and where enthusiasts take preparation and competition very, very seriously.
The other candidate for most famous band comes even closer to the archetype. Grimethorpe Colliery Band’s story of victory in the face of personal and communal struggle during the closure of the village’s pit in the early 1990s inspired the film Brassed Off (1996), which uses renditions of ‘Danny Boy’ and the William Tell Overture, recorded by the Grimethorpe band, to push all the right sentimental buttons, and cemented the image of brass band players as heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking working men from the industrial North, defeating despair and the loss of their livelihoods through competitive banding.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/01/19/brass-bands/
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