Thursday, December 15, 2011

Tuba Thefts In Los Angeles Linked To L.A. Banda Bands

As Southern California awoke to the wreckage from a recent massive windstorm, music teacher Ruben Gonzalez Jr. was assessing a different sort of devastation in his band room at South Gate High School.

Thieves had pried open a door and torn the room apart while hunting for a specific instrument. "All they took were tubas," Gonzalez said. Losses included an upright concert tuba and a silver sousaphone — or marching-band tuba — worth a combined $13,000.

[snip]

Those are just the latest in what police and music instructors are describing as a rash of unsolved tuba thefts at high schools in southeast Los Angeles County. The thefts, according to band leaders, were probably spurred by Southern California's banda music craze, as well as the high prices the brass instruments fetch on the black market. A high-quality tuba can cost well more than $5,000, but even an old, dented tuba can sell for as much as $2,000, music teachers say.

How many of us have been there?


Los Tigres Del Note

[Note - Tubas not on video, but, duh, anyone that can HEAR, hears the tubas in the video!]

Just examples of the "la banda" scenario, where the damn tubas are prominent. Educate and learn da music. Por que? BECAUSE.

5 comments:

Arno said...

I'll never be able to (or want to) shake latino music out of my ears, after growing up hearing the border blaster stations on me little AM and shortwave radios. Good stuff.

Carrie said...

My friends give me shit because I actually like banda music. I love explaining to them that the tuba part came from the Germans that emigrated to Texas to work in the space program building rockets and bringing their polka music which includes the umpah tuba sound, that was meshed into nortena music from northern Mexico bordering southern Texas.

I have a large collection of banda music that I play sometimes just to embarrass my daughter! LOL!

Bob said...

That guy in the baggy white pants in the first vid had a little too much to drink.

Carrie said...

Could be why the word "drunk" is in the title of the video!

Bob said...

On the other hand, he looks like he's dancing the way he wants to dance.