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Bob Principe Marches to His Own Beat By
Karen Hart
 Each
fall, as part of Holy Cross' Homecoming football game,
marching band alumni of all generations return to Fitton
Field to join the current purple and white 'Sader band in
song and formation. It's a tradition kept alive by a spirit
that continues long after the last play of the game is made,
long after many college friendships have ended.
That's
because the Band is, according to Director Robert A. Principe, "much
more than just playing an instrument. It's a family thing.
. . . [On] alumni day when they come back and perform with
us, I get folks from back in the '30s, '40s, all the way
to recent graduates."
Principe has been the director of the 60-member Holy
Cross Crusader Goodtime Marching Band, Color Guard and Pep Band since 1981; he
came to Holy Cross from
Waterbury, Conn., where he had been music director at Holy Cross High School.
The idea of a musical family has been part of Principe's life since he was
a boy growing up in Queens, N.Y., part of an Italian family that gathered together
on Sunday afternoons for food and music.
Principe began playing the saxophone at six-years-old and joined the family
circle of musicians from then on. Before going to college at Ithaca's School
of Music in New York, Principe added clarinet and flute to his repertoire.
But his musicianship is not limited to instruments. Principe also sang in Ithaca's
College Choir and, for much of the 1980s and '90s, fronted The Robert A. Band,
singing and playing rock, rhythm and blues in many major Boston clubs.
His children have all also begun performing. His younger
son Anthony, 13, is a guitarist; Christopher, 18, is a bass player, and his daughter
Alecia, 20,
is majoring in theater at New York University.
Principe's musical influences are as varied as the range of emotions that dominated
the times in which he came of age. Principe, 45, said that hearing black performers
celebrating in song on the radio was a sharp contrast to the race riots going
on in Harlem and Newark, N.J., when he was young. Those contrasts served to
form the basis of Principe's own musical philosophy.
"It fed into my own joy of music," he said, "and it gives me a particular bent
to my musical celebration. My musical heritage is a sharing piece and that's
the core of my musical philosophy. Plus an ear to appreciate and hear and find
the joy in difference."
Principe said the combined different sounds of The Rolling
Stones, Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, The Four Seasons and The Temptations gave
him an added appreciation
for music that goes beyond the actual sounds of voices and instruments.
"I like people to make music on that line of what you bring and what you make," he
said. "That is a heritage of that time, in the fact that there were people who
were encouraged to take risks. It created a space where people could come together
and create on levels that they might not otherwise."
That appreciation is key in Principe's directorship of the Marching Band, Color
Guard and Pep Band, as well as in his own life.
In the Band, Principe easily defined three core values important to and required
by the group: commitment, hard work and respect. He also added in gratitude,
for the members of the board that coordinate band trips and the parents of
current band members who provide meals and hospitality on those trips. These
values are "the reasons I think people are willing to put the time into it,
without any academic credit, without any financial scholarships or anything," Principe
said.
In his life, and at the College, Principe has recently been working on a diversity
model with Lisa M. Gray, coordinator of multicultural programming. Principe
and Gray hope to publish a workbook for dealing with diversity in institutions,
the workplace and in the community. The book is "based on the musical chapters
of our lives," Principe said, and focuses on individuals "taking ownership
of their identities to enhance the dialogue" between different groups.
The Marching Band plays at all Holy Cross home football games and travels in
the Northeast for tournament competition. The Pep Band, a splinter group of
Marching Band members, plays at all home men's and women's varsity basketball
games, men's varsity hockey games and at tournament play. In its travels the
band has played across the Northeast, at West Point, North Carolina, Virginia,
Ireland, Bermuda and has performed in full uniformed formation at Faneuil Hall
in Boston.
The bottom line for the Band, Principe said, is enjoyment,
something that is not all that easy when weather conditions often cloud performances.
"Last year was the worst season for weather for home performance in my 17 years
here," he said. "There was one that was so bad, it was just pouring, and we finished
the warm-up and I broke into "I'm Singing in the Rain," and then all the kids
broke into it and it was a classic, classic moment, where you remember performances
when it was a horrible day to perform and we had a fun time anyway."
Karen Hart is a freelance journalist from
West Boylston, Mass.
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