Members recently traveled to the nation's capital to be honored along with other National Heritage Fellowship recipients.
Maria Rosario Jackson, center, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, greets members of the Excelsior Band during a Washington, D.C., ceremony at the Library of Congress honoring recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship. From left are Bradley Cooper, Hosea London, Luquen Cannon and Herbert Nelson III.have marched in heat, cold, rain and whatever else came their way. Recently a few members marched onto a stage in Washington, D.C.
For the seven members of the band who traveled to Washington, D.C., for the event, the weight of it is still sinking in. They’re among the many who’ve paid their dues, keeping a musical tradition alive while marching in Mobile’s Mardi Gras parades. But they’re among the few to receive this once-in-a-lifetime honor.
“She had a farm. So she grew her own plants and then from those plants, she made her own wreaths and it smelled so good,” London said. “She gave it to me. I said, ‘I sure would like to have that,’ she took it off and gave it to me. I was like, ‘This ain’t the kind I got when I got off the plane. That must have been a fake one.’”
“Well, I lived in D.C. during the Bicentennial celebration,” he said, describing activites that included work with a theater company, a radio drama produced by Howard University and even occasional street busking. “So, I lived there and I played in most places, the Kennedy Center for the performing Arts, Gallaudet’s School for the Deaf, the Senate building on Capitol Hill, the Washington Monument, all the universities, Georgetown, George Washington, libraries, embassies on Embassy Row.
“I was born here,” he said. “I made a 360, which I never knew would happen. I never would think that I would be in this band. I saw this band when I was, God, 10-11 years old, in the early ‘60s on Davis Avenue. So I’m in the band now.”
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