SOUNDTRACK OF THIRD WARD
The first brisk fall night in Houston fell on a pep rally over at Texas Southern University, where the drum line was closed in tight and rocking a routine that had them pulsing and gyrating to a rendition of the 1996 DJ Screw classic freestyle, “June 27th.”
The beloved Third Ward marching band Ocean of Soul celebrates 50 years this year, and the pep rally had the energy of the ancestors vibing through it. In fact, the marching band — which performs at the TSU homecoming game on Saturday — took its name in 1969 from an era of the civil rights movement that saw more people adopting the black-and-proud, soul sister and soul brother ethos. A radio DJ’s mention of an ocean of soul washing over Houston was enough to inspire Benjamin Butler II when he had the chance to name his own marching band.
Ocean of Soul and Prairie View A&M University’s Marching Storm are the only two black collegiate marching bands in Texas. While HBCU marching band aficionados might pick PVAMU, only one auditioned and won a spot in 2004 to perform at Super Bowl XXXVIII, where during the halftime show Janet Jackson had the “wardrobe malfunction” heard round the world, just a couple feet away from the band. Despite that slip, the marching band didn’t disappoint at the game — which took place in Houston.
“TSU had the style MTV was looking for. We combined with the University of Houston to make that performance happen” said Richard F. Lee, the band director at that time.
Ocean of Soul possesses the high-knee-stepping style of the other schools in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). One thing that distinguishes them, however, is how their dancers, known as the Motion of the Ocean, come out moving and high-kicking with flavor out of the end zone along with the band. While the top 40 musical selections have defined the band, from the groovy “25 Miles” by Edwin Starr to more subtle R&B hits rendered for popping brass and drum lines, it is the Motion that people must be coming back for every year.
The sound of a neighborhood
Although the band is made up of students from all over the country, its core sound is 100 per-cent Houston. Beyoncé’s sister, Solange Knowles, even used members of the band and dance team for her series of shorts released for her “When I Get Home” album.
The music the band creates inspires so many, especially those who live within a couple square miles of the campus. The music saturates an area that sits roughly around Wheeler Avenue and Ennis Street, where the football team holds it practices.
A lot of people have grown up to the sounds of “June 27th” and other tunes as practiced by Ocean of Soul.
Butler even has a story of finding a small child standing with him on his ladder while conducting one night. The child’s mother said she wanted to bring him to soak up the sounds and see where the music was coming from. To this day, it’s not uncommon to see small children and babies out past bedtime to catch a glimpse of the neighborhood marching band.
“It conjures emotions,” says artist Marc Newsome, who has created a popular Monopoly-style art tackling Third Ward gentrification. “I grew up in Third Ward as a kid and I would always hear the waffling sound of the Ocean of Soul band just on the horizon, even before I understood it was a marching band. It would be ambient.”
Like many people, he doesn’t want the sounds of the marching band — which tuck some kids to sleep at night — to be taken for granted.
He created a musical installation that’s part of a public payphone-based multimedia project funded by a city grant. The pay phone featuring Ocean of Soul’s ambient perfection is installed on Elgin Street outside Crumbville bake shop.
Even though the trumpets stab the air at night and the drum line’s chorus cuts through the windowpane glass, people in Third Ward will never complain. Lee, a trumpet player in the original 1969 incarnation of Ocean of Soul who was director from the ’90s to 2015, said he never heard a complaint about nighttime run-throughs.
Houston-centric songs
The band is steeped in the rhythms of H-town. So it’s no surprise that the band began using music from DJ Screw. .
Ocean of Soul had been experimenting with a version of “June 27th” for a brass band since 1997, says Darryl Singleton, the bands interim director.
He said it was originally created as a piece for a dance routine for a game against Baton Rouge’s Southern University, one of the major bands in the conference. One of the student’s suggested the song, which would have been a staple of neighborhood sound systems during that time.
The student brought him a DJ Screw tape. He didn’t know what to think. “I’m not from Houston, and they told me, ‘Hey, this is what’s hot,’ ” he said.
“I wrote that and we played it