Thunder Soul: Creating a love for music and performing

The role of a band teacher is to pass on the joy of playing music to students by giving them opportunities to play and express themselves. Music director of the Kashmere high school stage band, Conrad “Prof” Johnson gave his students just that. In the movie Thunder Soul we are given the backstory of this amazing high school band from Texas in the 70s that played funk music on a professional level.

Prof created love for music in his band program by tailoring the music selections to the group; playing funk tunes instead of old fashioned jazz. The Kashmere stage band started out playing the typical repertoire of high school bands at that time which consisted of jazz standards and ballads like “Summertime.” Prof noticed that his students were becoming bored with the tune selection of the group and would watch them start to jam on funk grooves after rehearsals ended. The popular music artists during this time period were James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, Parliament Funkadelic, and Sly and the Family Stone. Prof intuitively changed the band's’ repertoire to all funk tunes that he either wrote or arranged himself. Once the high schoolers had music that they could connect to, they became self motivated and evolved into a professional level ensemble.

Not only was this band program a music learning vehicle, but Prof also taught his students how to become hard working men and women. The impression that this man had on his students was so strong that thirty years later they reassembled the band to put on a show in his honor.

Thunder Soul is an inspiring movie for all audiences, but especially music teachers. Prof created a successful band out of 16 year olds by making the music that they performed relevant to them and the audience. Instead of picking the usual jazz selections for stage bands, Prof gave his band something that they could latch onto and make their own. Playing funk was used to educate the students in playing as an ensemble, being good showmen, and working hard towards a goal. This film motivates me as a music teacher to one day build a strong band program by picking the music that the kids really want to play. I hope that i can create an inspirational learning environment in my classroom that resembles that of the Kashmere high school band room.