For many years, Grady has fielded a powerhouse football program for the Midtown community. Looking up into the stands at Grady Aug. 17 scrimmage one can see a typical Grady football tableau: boosters, excited fans, alumni, scouts and the more than two dozen musicians that make up the Grady Knights of Sound. Across the field,  Benjamin Mays High School’s band has enough members to fill up five buses.

Brian Cook, Grady’s band director, has developed the program for the past three years and feels he has made significant changes, but says it is a difficult road.

“The students are different; it’s a different environment every year,” Cook said. “You have so many different activities at the school that you kind of have to fix the program to the student needs after school. The largest marching band that we ever had was about four years ago, which was about 70 people.”

Cook said this year he has seen about 15 to 20 students consistently come to practice, but the program is still growing.

Mays has a reputation for a strong music program and large marching band. William Earvin, head band director at Mays for the past seven years, feels lucky to have such a strong feeder program in middle school.

“We work very hard to do things like middle school night, and during our summer band camp, we invite middle-schoolers to come and participate,”  Earvin said.

Unlike Inman and Grady, Earvin said that the middle school students in the Mays band do not participate in the marching band, with the exception of special occasions like The Metro Atlanta Band Jamboree.

“We do not march the middle school students during the year, especially during the football season because we want them to concentrate and get ready to become high school students,” Earvin said. “We do not want to wear them out too early.”

Grady, meanwhile, encourages middle-schoolers to march with the band outside of class. There are seven eighth-graders enrolled in Grady’s program, five of whom performed with the Grady marching band at the Aug. 17 scrimmage against Mays.

In 2012, APS enforced a decade-old policy at Inman mandating that students take health and physical education classes in every year of middle school. The requirement prevented Inman students from taking two year-long electives, effectively making them choose between foreign-language and music. Last year, many students dropped music, an outcome that reversed the effects to build a music program in the Grady cluster beginning at the elementary school level, said Arnessa Woods, Inman’s band director.

“It has damaged the [Inman]music and band program and the feeder program into Grady,” Woods said.

Grady fine arts director John Brandhorst said the marching band is essential to the identity of the school. Brandhorst has seen the program go through many changes during his 14 years teaching at the school.

“It’s part of a whole package. They [the members of the marching band] work very hard to satisfy a very large audience with diverse expectations,” Brandhorst said. “I don’t think people know how much work goes into putting together their performances. It is the extra hours and total commitment to the band that attracts some, and defers others.”

When comparing Grady’s marching band program to other schools, Brandhorst said Grady will always be midsized.

“I think Mr. Cook is paving the way with his dedicated effort to a stronger band program as a whole,” he said.

Students can anticipate seeing many more musicians fill the stands at future games and many interesting surprises that Cook has up his sleeve.

“I have changed the name of the marching band to a pep band so you have a diversity of things that are gonna happen,” Cook said. “I have made it mandatory that everyone in my classes participate in at least three [football] games. I’m going to bring a stage out there for the kids to use, and we are going to try to do something different and see what happens.”