Playing for Political Change Makes This Rude Troupe Anything but Mechanical

How many other marching bands include in their repertoire “Crazy in Love,” “Push It,” “Deceptacon,” and a song called “El Pueblo,” based off the common protest mantra “El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido?” Furthermore, how many marching bands have rewritten the lyrics to “Deceptacon” to include the chorus “Here’s to the man with his bombs, here’s to the man with his motherfucking war games”?

The Rude Mechanical Orchestra is no ordinary marching band. Taking a stage or joining a march in a whirl of green and black stripes, the activist band and dance troupe turns a protest into a party, blaring pop songs and protest chants with a hint of humor and performance art. Casey Llewellyn, GS, a saxophonist for the band, said the RMO is “an arts organization that also does political work. Because it’s a solidarity group, you can support so many different causes. It’s really up to the people in the band as to what we support. You can do active political work and do it through art.”

Splintering from the Hungry March Band, another New York-based marching band, the RMO is a solidarity group for different organizations around New York City. According to their mission statement, they “strive to support people and communities working for social justice ... play protests, demonstrations, direct actions, picket lines, marches, benefits and events for good causes ... function as a democratic collective through consensus-based decision-making and ... do not discriminate on the basis of musical ability.” Llewellyn maintains that the band lives up to its lofty mission statement. They have a “process meeting” once every month dealing with issues such as “politics within the band.”

“For example, we’ve done anti-oppression training. We’re constantly grappling with how people who are not given so much of a voice in society, how they can have a voice in the band,” said Llewellyn.

The organizations the band supports include Times Up!, a bike co-op, More Gardens!, a community garden preservation organization, and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. In addition, the RMO has recently made a few cameos on the Columbia campus, supporting the hunger strikers last semester and performing at the Vagina Monologues.

While there are many positives to this radical marching band, they are constantly grappling with larger political questions. “We’re a political group, and because we’re so broad, people have very different political views. It’s difficult, but that’s also what’s great about it,” Llewellyn said. “There’s a unity among people who have a lot of different views. We have a culture as a band that’s very prevalent, like, people who feel comfortable in our scene, which is in a mostly white, half queer scene, with people who dress a certain way.” Llewellyn said that band members are in different places with political anti-oppression issues, but in the long run, they are constantly striving to improve their openness to diversity and inclusion. “How does a mostly white band play out with the people we’re supporting?” Llewellyn said. “How can we be better allies? Because that’s really what we are.”

Perhaps what is so refreshing about the Rude Mechanical Orchestra is that they combine art with activism in such a creative way. Every October, they attend the Honk! festival in Boston, joining with other bands, activist and not, who take a revolutionary approach to a typical brass ensemble. Llewellyn—who said that artistically her favorite part of the RMO is Team Awesome, the energetic and talented dance troupe—believes that there is a need for art and humor in activism. “Art done in a political context can add a lot of energy to movements and remind people of what we are fighting for. It can be really hard to keep going when you are doing really hard political work,” she said. “There don’t seem to be a lot of things going your way. Art brings another side to that. It insists it doesn’t exist in a vacuum and that there are people experiencing things together, which preserves community, which I think is the basis of political movements. It can make people feel happier doing what they’re doing.”

The Rude Mechanical Orchestra’s enthusiasm shines through both in the street and on the stage. This August, they are going on tour in a bio-diesel bus created by the Automotive High School in Brooklyn and performing several times in the next month, both at Time’s Up! and the Automotive High School, among other locations.
A sort of protest pep band, the RMO is both subversive and symbolic, with an easily translatable message supporting good work and good fun. Their theme song asserts, repeatedly, “We! Are! The Rude Mechanical!”—and they always play it as they clear the dance floor for activists to shake off the hard stuff and get their bodies swinging for a new kind of movement.