In the first half of the twentieth century in Virginia, the town band was a popular concert venue and sometimes a symbol of community pride. Originally, community bands faced few competitors for entertainment popularity, but the advent of movie theaters in the 1930's, and eventually television in the 1950's, challenged the band's former role. Attendance decreased at band concerts and the community space that bands had occupied was allotted for other uses. Despite this decline, the town band survived. Virginia is home to at least 34 community bands today. This study presents a geographic analysis of present day community bands in Virginia. I visited 25 active bands and administered a twenty-five question, self-designed survey to 900 band members (98% response rate). I also personally interviewed conductors and band presidents. Members reported demographic information and the distances and time that they traveled. I also explored how band members perceive their role in the community based on their participation in the community band. I then examined the variation of responses across the state. Results show that bands in Virginia consist primarily of educated, retired individuals with previous musical experience. While traveling the same distance, band members spend more time traveling in regions with large metropolitan areas than in rural regions. Finally, although band members in rural areas received higher sense of community scores than those in metropolitan areas, the scores for both areas were encouragingly high. The results indicate that although regional variations exist for the variables of travel and sense of community, community music in Virginia has a solid rate of participation, and community bands will continue to serve their respective regions in the state. / Master of Science

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The purpose of this study was to ascertain certain factors which lead adults to participate in community band activity. This study attempted to answer the following questions: 1. What are the factors of rewards for community band participants based on the responses of a selected sample to validated attitude statements? 2. What are the relationships that might exist between certain demographic characteristics of the sample such as age, gender, education, occupation, musical training, geographic region (independent variables) and factors of participation (dependent variables) determined by principal components analysis? 3. What are the relationships that might exist between the findings of this study using member generated attitude statements and the findings of other attitude studies using researcher generated attitude statements? A 179-item survey was developed from an initital pool of 839 attitude statements after two pilot studies and an expert review. A randomly selected, stratified cluster sample of 74 organizational members of the Association of Concert Bands participated in the study. The average number of band members present during the survey process was 35. The average number of surveys returned per band was 23.66 for a return rate of 65.9% One thousand seven hundred twenty five individuals participated in the study. Frequency distributions of responses revealed the 36-50 age group to be the most represented (33%) followed closely by the 51-65 age group (27.8%). Males outnumbered females (57.5% to 42.3%). Over 80% of respondents were married. Almost 75% of respondents were college graduates. Over 60% had performed in college ensembles. Over half (55.4%) of respondents were either employed in the professional trades or white collar occupations. Almost 10% considered themselves professional musicians. Principal components analysis of the 179 items yielded six main factors of participation which were labeled Intrinsic Motivators, Organizational Motivators, Membership Standards, Repertoire/Conductor, Rehearsals/Performances, and Quality. Further analysis of Intrinsic Motivators yielded five second level components which were labeled Self-Growth, Musical Growth, Community Pride, Social Rewards, and Conductor. Second level components extracted from Organizational Motivators were labeled Attendance/Practice, Community Support, and Music Selection. Using t-tests and ANOVA, many significant relationships were found between groups on the six main factors and eight sub-factors (independent variables) with the demographic variables (dependent variables), especially age, gender, occupation, level of ensemble experience, past geographic region, present geographic region, and community size.