UC San Diego

The sounds of college marching bands embellish the atmosphere of university rituals as disparate as formal university convocations, fundraiser benefits, and sporting events. University officials, band members, alumni, and other affiliates often frame these contributions through mythologies of tradition and in turn task the band with bearing the identity of the collegiate institution as a whole and stewarding its legacy through performances of tradition. I argue that sounding institutional memories in this way reveals linkages between college bands, their military predecessors, and the formation of the modern neoliberal university. The affective tenor of archival and ethnographic sources simultaneously obscures and mythologizes this relationship in the institutions’ memories, this thesis explores the interpersonal negotiations and structural underpinnings of institutional memories as they manifest within and around the University of California Marching Band (Cal Band), founded in 1891 to serve the flagship Berkeley campus. This research draws from oral histories, material artifacts, social media commentary, and embodied memories that evoke, verify, and dispute institutional memory. I hold this case study of institutional memory alongside theories of nostalgia, hauntology, critical university studies, and disability studies to ground the sonic and affective intangibles in discourses that take seriously the tangible effects of memory on the structures and individuals that govern and discipline students in college bands today.