Josh Imhof | features editor

Two years ago, Caspian Bara, a sophomore music education student, lined up with the rest of the Kenmore East High School band for his final Mardi Gras parade.

For two months, the band had been rehearsing at the beginning of classes to march through hallways and classrooms while playing traditional Mardi Gras songs such as “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Little Liza Jane.”

On Tuesday, Bara brought this tradition to Duquesne when he led Mary Pappert music students and faculty down Academic Walk as they played the same tunes.

“It felt less like teaching and more like making music,” he said. “I’ve participated in it so it’s a whole new perspective leading it.”

The parade was held by Duquesne’s National Association for Music Educators (NAfME) chapter and lasted about 20 minutes.

Bystanders gathered alongside the marchers, and on the top floor of the student union as music students passed out beads and blasted their horns across campus.

Abby Drezewski, a junior music education student and president of Duquesne’s NAfME chapter, said it was important to expose people to different cultures and their music.

“Our intention was just to spread joy and spread music,” Drezewski said. “I think that worked.”

The annual parade at East Kenmore began after Bara’s band teacher, Phil Aguglia, watched the events of Hurricane Katrina unfold on TV in 2005.

“I had never been to New Orleans, but I was heartbroken by what I saw,” Aguglia said.

The event decimated much of the city and closed local music venues, like Preservation Hall, a popular jazz club. Despite its closure, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band continued to tour, leading Aguglia to attend one of their shows and see the full magnitude of the hurricane.

“They told the audience they had been playing on borrowed instruments and borrowed clothes,” Aguglia said.

From then on, Aguglia said he felt an obligation to assist the devastated city in rebuilding.

The music teacher collected $20,000 worth of instrument donations and brought his students on the 27-hour bus ride to New Orleans to help rebuild houses. That year, he began having his students parade at East Kenmore.

New Orleans remained a core priority for Aguglia the following years, especially after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He and several of his students traveled down once again to replant trees and learn about the environmental impacts of the spill.

During another visit, he and his band students played through the city’s French Quarter, where Aguglia said street musicians joined in.

Bara said the parades at his high school had a similar feeling.

“People would come out of their classrooms and high five us … and the teachers were always really excited to see us,” he said. “It was always just a fun parade wandering around.”

To learn their parts, Bara taught students the songs using solfège, a mnemonic device that assigns each note with a different syllable. The method has been featured in popular songs, like “Do Re Mi” from “The Sound of Music.”

The band would then say the syllable at the correct pitch, meaning they had to learn their parts by ear.

“Since we’re all music educators, we picked this up pretty quickly,” Drezewski said.

In addition to this, students like Drezewski and Bara challenged themselves by playing their secondary instruments. While Drezewski is primarily a vocalist, she played the snare drum in the parade.

Bara played the trombone.

Despite their excitement, Drezewski and Skye Lanham, sophomore music education student and treasurer of NAfME, said they were apprehensive to perform because of critical comments both in-person and online.

However, their love for the craft and confidence in themselves pushed them through.

“Everybody likes music. Everybody out there listens to music. It’s just a different way to appreciate it,” Lanham said.

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu