Biography
The Rude Mechanical Orchestra is a 30-odd-piece New York City radical marching band and dance troupe. Through our music and performance, we strive to support people and communities working for social justice. We play protests, demonstrations, direct actions, picket lines, marches, benefits and events for good causes. We function as a democratic collective through consensus-based decision-making and we do not discriminate on the basis of musical ability. We formed in the spring of 2004 for the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. and solidified to support people protesting the Republican National Convention in New York. We were a motley mix of rusty players that hadn’t picked up a horn since high school and longtime street bandistas on leave from Hungry March Band or the Infernal Noise Brigade, blowing sour notes at the invading greedheads and serenading the rabble. Since then, we’ve tripled our numbers and made strides in our sound, but we remain a band of mostly amateurs rediscovering and reinterpreting the music we played as pimply adolescent band geeks. (Our dance troupe, Team Awesome, is another story. They’re professionals.) Over nearly four years, we have, regrettably, played more antiwar marches than we can count. We’ve played protesting union-busters and tip-garnishers, gentrifiers and privatizers, xenophobes, homophobes, and a host of other big uglies. We’ve worked with groups like Time’s Up, the Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the War Resisters League. We’ve played community events around town and beyond, like the Queens Pride Parade, the Mermaid Parade, the East Village Roving Garden Party, Philadelphia’s Spiral Q Peoplehood Parade, and Boston’s Honk Festival. Our repertoire includes a mix of folk songs from cultures spanning the globe, as well as some more contemporary numbers and a bunch of originals.
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