Oh my how time flies. I remember our director, Chris Bartley, drilling us hard on learning our cadences. An all female drum corp made up of girls with little to no experience on how to play a beat. But with patience we, 15+ learned how to make beats. 4 cymbals, 5 snares, 4 tenors, 3 bass, and 1 quad is all we had to work with. So many girls wanted to be in our drum corp we had auditions one year. Here's our history:
Fall 2002 at an Andrews basketball event a group of guys playing on drums perform at halftime. There was no girls in their group. So a couple of my newly made friends asked if we could join the drum corp. We didn't stand a chance, the guys immediately said NO!!! Although, one person told us he would teach us how to play and then we could start our own group. It took no time for word of mouth to spread and by the time we had our first meeting there was 10 girls ready to learn from the master, Ronneil Harewood. Within a month, we debut at our first performance during halftime at a BSCF (Black Student Christian Forum) Basketball game.
The crowd loved us, BSCF sponsored us, and the students supported us. We just needed a name.......what should we be called? We battled for a few weeks on what we should name ourselves (a group of girls playing drums) until we figured it out......Queen Beats. It suited who we were and what we were doing. How we started.....
White T-Shirts and Dark Blue jeans
Cow Bell: Chaely
Cymbals: Berenice, Monique and Lauren
Snare: Nadia, Amy, and Leilani
Tenors: Candice, Amber, Rachel, Katiana, and Berdene
Quads: Cherise and Roberta
Bass: Famose and Deidre
But like anything else, things change. Years pass, members graduated, the group grew larger, and drums break down. This did not stop us....not at all. We made new members try out, we learned beats, we traveled to perform, we changed positions and we got a uniform. Along with changes, after three years of supporting us we also lost our director. But they say when one door closes another opens and we were introduced to Christopher Bartley, our new director. Mr. Bartley focused on our precision and using his networking connections exposed us to performing at larger events. One that included and invitation by Dr. Joseph Warren a professor from Andrews. We prepared for this event for months in 2005 and we walked into the Howard Performing Arts Center (HPAC) all blew everyone away.
Check out our performance by clicking on this link http://youtu.be/StmrX_Fs-bY. This was never done before nor has it happened again. We became legends........
From Queen B to all of my Queen Beats. Miss you all!!!!
Practice outtake videos:
http://youtu.be/qohuASop-5k
http://youtu.be/-X-MW8cAe0c
The crowd loved us, BSCF sponsored us, and the students supported us. We just needed a name.......what should we be called? We battled for a few weeks on what we should name ourselves (a group of girls playing drums) until we figured it out......Queen Beats. It suited who we were and what we were doing. How we started.....White T-Shirts and Dark Blue jeans
Cow Bell: Chaely
Cymbals: Berenice, Monique and Lauren
Snare: Nadia, Amy, and Leilani
Tenors: Candice, Amber, Rachel, Katiana, and Berdene
Quads: Cherise and Roberta
Bass: Famose and Deidre
But like anything else, things change. Years pass, members graduated, the group grew larger, and drums break down. This did not stop us....not at all. We made new members try out, we learned beats, we traveled to perform, we changed positions and we got a uniform. Along with changes, after three years of supporting us we also lost our director. But they say when one door closes another opens and we were introduced to Christopher Bartley, our new director. Mr. Bartley focused on our precision and using his networking connections exposed us to performing at larger events. One that included and invitation by Dr. Joseph Warren a professor from Andrews. We prepared for this event for months in 2005 and we walked into the Howard Performing Arts Center (HPAC) all blew everyone away.
Check out our performance by clicking on this link http://youtu.be/StmrX_Fs-bY. This was never done before nor has it happened again. We became legends........From Queen B to all of my Queen Beats. Miss you all!!!!
Practice outtake videos:
http://youtu.be/qohuASop-5k
http://youtu.be/-X-MW8cAe0c
