page_title: Canadian military bands
section_title: Corps of drums
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian military bands / History / Corps of drums
caption_attribution_description: English: RCASC Band Calgary (From Past and present People, places and events in Calgary)
context_page_description: Canadian military bands are a group of personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces that performs musical duties for military functions. Military bands form a part of the Music Branch of the CAF, composed of six full-time professional Regular Force bands, 15 Regular Force voluntary bands, and 53 part-time reserve force bands. Bands of the Music Branch are often badged with the unit or Canadian Forces base insignia that they support.
  Regular Force musicians are selected nationally by competitive audition prior to enlisting. Members of these bands often come from prestigious conservatories and schools of music. Reserve force musicians are hired and trained at the discretion of the local unit to which they apply. Prior to 1994, the Canadian Forces School of Music trained all recruits, regardless of musical level, to performance standard with Regular Force bands, but this practice was halted due to defense budget cuts.
context_section_description: The earliest example of a Canadian corps of drums are found through the Fort Henry Guard and the Fort York Guard, historical group who both sport corps of drums that include fifes and are led by a Drum Major and a Drum Sergeant. During WWII, many regiments maintained small corps of drums that were stationed at all major bases. Whle most of them were staffed by active duty troops, others were volunteer band, staffed by reservists and professional civilian percussionists. Corps of drums have been historically been based on the front-rank tradition of the Royal Marines Band Service. In the late 1940s, the Naval Band Service of the Royal Canadian Navy and the HMCS Naden School of Music, alongside bands from several line infantry regiments of the Primary Reserve, continued this tradition. With the unification of the CAF in 1968, corps of drums in both the RCN and the regular army withered away as various bands were merged. While the navy recovered from this particularly in the mid 1980s within naval reserve bands, most of the army bands never recovered. 
  The sole corps of drums in service today within the Canadian Army is assigned to Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and is modeled on the Corps of Drums of the British Army Royal Logistics Corps. Members are not professionally trained nor educated in music and are instead active soldiers who have chosen to participate in the corps. In July 2013, a five-person corps of drums in the Naden Band made a return to the public at the Victoria Day Parade.
caption: A Royal Canadian Army Service Corps Band in Calgary, 1934.
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