Learn The Art of Music At UConn Sporting Events: Insights from UConn Band/Athletics Director 

By: Kevin Baf­four
Jour­nal­ism 3035 Pod­cast­ing
Dec. 10, 2024

(Head­shot of Justin McManus//Photo Cour­tesy of UConn Band Direc­tor Justin McManus 

Social Media Promo:

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Tran­script:

Music: Plays 

Kevin Baf­four: Hel­lo! Every­one, this is UConn Jour­nal­ism Stu­dent Kevin Baf­four and I’m here with him today. 

Justin McManus: My name is Justin McManus, 

Music: Plays 

Kevin Baf­four: Justin McManus, now today every­one knows you’re famil­iar, you’re UConn March­ing Band Direc­tor. Tell me how you start­ed that jour­ney, and you orga­nized every­thing from there 

Music: Ends 

Justin McManus: Um, so yeah! I went to UConn as an under­grad­u­ate from 2006 to 2011, and then I stayed for my mas­ter’s and I always knew I want­ed to be a music teacher, band specif­i­cal­ly. I was always a band kid grow­ing up, and so I went away after I fin­ished my mas­ter’s to Mid­west and taught at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Navy for 9 years and then this job came open and have been from the pro­gram, I know it. A lot of com­po­nents on it, obvi­ous­ly things change for 10 years, so it was fun to come back and see things stay the same, see how things changed. I think a lot of go in the pro­fes­sion because we know how pro­found how music can have on people’s lives, peo­ple mak­ing the music and also peo­ple in the crowd lis­ten­ing to the music 

Kevin Baf­four: Per­fect! And from that, you men­tioned how music was just apart of your life, is there a par­tic­u­lar music that you’re inter­est­ed in and that you teacher your students. 

Justin McManus: So, I think the fun things about march­ing band specif­i­cal­ly is that its a reac­tive com­mu­ni­ty, so a lot of times you’ll hear march­ing bands play­ing pop toons, or rock toons, things that com­mu­ni­ty likes and dif­fer­ent schools, and coun­tries will play­things that are pop­u­lar In those areas. So um, we real­ly spam the Gamit of stuff thats old­er, some funk, some 70s, a lit­tle bit of Ste­vie won­der, tow­er pow­er, Up Thru, we have an arrange­ment of hot to go. So its a lit­tle bit of every­thing, but thats the fun part, it stays fresh, it stays new, if we want we can take some­thing back a lit­tle bit and play some­thing an old­er year for some of our audi­ence who might be fami­lar with that music. But also some­thing that is new and that is reflect­ed of stu­dents today that they wan­na lis­ten too. So thats a fun thing were not tied to any spe­cif­ic thing but we do take feed­back from the com­mu­ni­ty were apart of. 

UConn March­ing Band Post Band show sound: 

Kevin Baf­four: That’s won­der­ful, I love it. Now from every posi­tion there’s always that star play­er that every­one, you know, admires and looks up to. Is there a star-lev­el stu­dent that has been always part of the march­ing band or a stu­dent you’ve been impressed with through­out the years. Do you wan­na give them a quick shout-out or just you know, just say in your exam­ple, yeah ok, they’ve done so much, and you seen them grow through­out the years 

Justin McManus: Thats a real­ly hard one, because I think um so many areas in which peo­ple can excel, so it’s hard to pick just one because if some­one real­ly, excels in one area there’s gonna be some­one who excels equal­ly as much, just in a dif­fer­ent area. I’ll say, there’s an individual’s name who keeps com­ing up who was here before me, its a tes­ta­ment to his lega­cy, I think he grad­u­ate maybe in 2019, but his name was Gar­ret Collins. He was in the band, he was a drum major, he con­duct­ed the band, but he always had a pos­i­tive atti­tude, but an atti­tude that was posti­ive being tox­ic pos­i­tive. It was rainy so you would­n’t say it was sun­ny, but he would say its rain­ing but were going to be in the rain togeth­er. So i think hes often use as an exam­ple of how we get through tough sit­u­a­tions, just like ath­let­ics. Band is one of the few things, where you’re out­side, the ele­ment is cold, its hot, its rain­ing, its snow­ing, um and you just got­ta push threw. Just like a coach would talk to their team, we talk the same way Gar­ret, talk about, “ you know what its tough, were dehy­drat­ed, its hot, we have two more hours to go, heres why we’re doing what we’re doing, were doing this for a mis­sion for a goal. So I think peo­ple like that, there are some in our cur­rent, and their cur­rent stu­dents and I dont wan­na give any names away, but real­ly there all com­plete­ly rock­stars in their own unique ways. 

Con­nor Duhamuel (UConn Under­grad­u­ate, Senior, March­ing Band Mem­ber, Per­son­al take):  One of the best parts of being in band is prob­a­bly the com­mu­ni­ty active of it, I would def­i­nite­ly say that the major­i­ty of the friends I made in col­lege have been through march­ing band and fre­quent­ly, there’s no com­mu­ni­ty that’s like it, in terms of the gen­er­al close­ness. Sure, even if were a band of over, I think 330 peo­ple, it still feels as though there still is a sense of togeth­er­ness, it feels like every­one, knows every­body, even if you don’t know that per­son name, you still kind of know who they are, from the fact that you’re going through the same activ­i­ty as them and just all the hard work that we put in, makes it feels as though, there is a sense of like com­mu­ni­ty pur­pose. I think that very few orga­ni­za­tions, can rival with, um like were there prac­tic­ing for three days a week and most of our week­ends are tak­en up by events whether those are foot­ball games or exhi­bi­tion’s. Where you would be doing band from 6 or 5 in the morn­ing, all the way until­ba­si­cal­lyy mid­night because, you are con­stant­ly prac­tic­ing, con­stant­ly doing some­thing, that leads to a bet­ter pur­pose of rep­re­sent­ing the school and gen­er­al­ly improv­ing the expe­ri­ence, whether that’s at foot­ball games or the places where they do exhi­bi­tions. Whether that’s in Mass­a­chu­setts or Local Con­necti­cut colleges. 

Kevin Baf­four: Per­fect! Hon­est­ly, now Before we end off with a close, is there any­thing you want to men­tion to peo­ple that want to join the march­ing band that they should be aware of, is there any­thing in par­tic­u­lar, ok this is the sched­ule, this is the cri­te­ria, any­thing you want to leave off to the fans that want to be in the march­ing band 

Justin McManus: We rehearsal our sched­ule dur­ing the fall, is Tues­day, Thurs­day, Fri­day in the evening. So we um, Tues­day and Thurs­day its 4pm to 6pm, Fri­days its 3:35 to 6pm, just with the wanky sched­ule on fri­days. We obvi­ous­ly have the game days and every­thing, a lot of stu­dents are also in the pep band, they do the bas­ket­ball, hock­ey and every­thing. They get to go to the cham­pi­onship run, theirs kids who are in school in the hall­way right now, in phoenix for the final four in the nation­al cham­pi­onship game, so you get to go with the team on the plane with Dan Hur­ley and everything. 

Kevin Baf­four: Oh wow! 

Justin McManus: Yeah, Exact­ly Exact­ly!, but you know some of those kids are fresh­men, exact­ly, and they were, they havent been in school long than a year and now they’re in phoenix ari­zona at the nation­al cham­pi­onships game at nation­al TV. So I would say, going back to before, if you just learned how to play a instru­ment, or havent played an instru­ment yet or have been play­ing for a long time, theres a place for every­body  in the pro­gram. I was some­body who did­nt march com­petiviely I called the band direc­tor here when I was incom­ing as a fresh­men and said what do you need cause I wan­na learn some­thing new and said the tuba, and I got to band camp and I just learned the tuba and I’ve nev­er played it before. I spent three years learn­ing the tuba and then became a drum major and a gradute stu­dent and 10 years lat­er im a direc­tor.  It worked out! 

Kevin Baf­four: Per­fect! All right there 

Justin McManus: Exact­ly, so theres a place for every­body, music should be some­thing that your, if its a pas­sion of yours, you’re able to fol­low for the rest of your life. 

Kevin Baf­four: Now I did say we were gonna leave off but now im kind of curi­ous. I want these two ques­tions answered, you know im a big fan so.  I wan­na know whose your favorite artist of all time and what do you hope to dif­fer­ent­ly or have done for the year of 2025. 

Justin McManus: Great ques­tion, were always asked who our favorite musi­cans are and who are favorite ari­tists and we always say “oh we love everything” 

Kevin Baf­four: Lets see 

Justin McManus: Yeah! II’l be hon­est dur­ing the sum­mer I would switch on to my EDM hat a lit­tle bit, the ari­tist alum­ni who does a lot of EDP, you might not know who that is but they played a lot fo elec­tri­on­ic music fes­ti­vals and every­thing. For us, its kind of a chance for us to take our music teacher kept off and just go get lost in the crowd some­where, so you’ll find a lot of peo­ple who grew up in clas­si­cal music say I dont wan­na lis­ten to that in my spare time I want some­thing dif­fer­ent because its my job. Um… so “ILLENIUM” the artisst title, and then sec­ond question. 

Kevin Baf­four: Sec­ond ques­tion was what do you wan­na do dif­fer­ent­ly or hope to have put on for the year of 2025 

Justin McManus: Yeah! I say we’re kind of in a recon­struc­tion mode right now, it’s a nation­al tran­si­tion, we go from one direc­tor to anoth­er. But I think if we seek feed­back from the stu­dents on what they want their band to be. When I was asked in my inter­view ques­tion for the job of what my vision was, “oh I don’t real­ly know”, it’s not my vision to have its the stu­dents vision, it’s the school’s vision, t’s what the state needs, so I think as it stops being a tran­si­tion and starts just being the band, um I just want to hear more and more from the stu­dents. Now that the dust has set­tled, what is your thought of vari­ants of where you want this band to go and how high you want that seal­ing to be, so just a lot of listening. 

Kevin Baf­four: We can all lis­ten, with the march­ing band, Just the games, soon to be, soon to hap­pen. Thank you, this is UConn Jour­nal­ism stu­dent Kevin Baf­four, I had a great time talk­ing to the band direc­tor, and I hope you guys enjoyed it thank you. 

Music Out­ro: plays 

Time­stamp: 13:12