Reclaiming the Beat: The Sweet Subversive Sounds of HBCU Marching Bands

This article conducts a critical analysis of the documentary When the Beat Drops (2018), which explores the southern underground Black queer dance scene known as bucking. Specifically, this study considers how marching band music and sound at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) constitute a counterculture production and play a significant role in the formation of bucking as a Black femme and queer praxis—an element that is overlooked by the documentary in its lack of attention to marching band music. Therefore, "Reclaiming the Beat" acts as a critical intervention to reposition HBCU marching band music in a new light and project its subversive potential in ways that haven't previously been considered—as a queer of color transformative agent.