Festival of the Bands

This year marked the 28th year that Sioux Falls has hosted the regional Festival of the Bands. The all day event was held on the first Saturday of October, and started off with a fun parade. 

Along with all the very talented marching bands there were a number of fun parade entries, like the mini replica of the USS South Dakota and of course a few mascots joined in as well.

I was rather sad that I messed up the focus on the above photo, but I do like the way it turned out when converted to more of a sketch. These Minutemen led what turned out to be one of my favorite bands. I was very impressed with their fantastic performance.

They were the most creative with their formations, which they changed up at least three times as they marched past us.

They even captured my youngest granddaughters attention, which none of the other bands seemed to be able to do. Click here to see what captured her attention.

As this next band approached I learned my granddaughter's cousin on her mother's side was marching in this band. I did manage to get a nice shot of him and a couple of his band mates.

Next came my oldest granddaughter with her flute.

 

This group of dancers lead their marching dancing band with so much joy and enthusiasm that it was contagious. I was so amazed when I saw that the band was dancing the same dance, dipping and twirling as they played their instruments that I forgot to get a picture of them.

I do have to say that I was a little bit disappointed by the hosting school's performance. Lincoln High School is well know for it's marching band and has repeatedly been invited to march in NY at the Macy's Day Parade and from what I understand has been invited this year to march in Hollywood, Ca. They were good but the song they did was not very original and after seeing some really amazing marching formations by proceeding bands their formation was boring.

Sorry Lincoln but your stiff regimented procession combined with a rather dull song was good but not great.

All and all for a chilly October morning we had a great time.