Strike down the band

In his statement about the state Legislature’s bonding bill, Gov. Tim Pawlenty slammed a proposed $400,000 for the Chatfield Brass Band Music Library with vituperative bombast (“I find it inconceivable … “) as loud as a cymbal crash. “Out of literally hundreds of projects,” the Rochester Post-Bulletin’s Political Party blog notes, “a proposal to build a brass band music lending library has suddenly taken on symbolic status in the debate between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and [the] DFL-led Legislature over the state’s spending priorities.” The Gov measured the library’s value not as a treasured repository for rare sheet music but as a political scapegoat.

Using an obscure cultural institution as a public punching bag may seem a shrewd move (will the governor next take aim at Chatfield’s international bow hunting museum?). But for a guy who hears brass bands play at many of the ceremonies he attends, Pawlenty appears oddly tone-deaf to the wide appreciation such music enjoys across the state. Minnesota is rich in community bands and lays claim to the country’s only state band. Many of these groups rely on the Chatfield library for hard-to-find, out-of-print sheet music, which they perform at venues like the Edgewater Park bandshell in Albert Lea, one of the towns Pawlenty visited Wednesday to celebrate local bonding projects he spared from line-item vetoes (Albert Lea’s bandshell park will get a pollution cleanup). George Linkert, associate director of the metro-based Seward Concert Band, told the Minnesota Monitor his group has made extensive use of the Chatfield lending library over the years, with band leaders making pilgrimages to Chatfield, where he said the vast archives fill “file cabinets on top of file cabinets,” with still more to be sorted and cataloged.

Who among the governor’s top brass could correct his anti-brass band stance? Start with B. William Ekstrum, his appointee to the Tenth Judicial District trial court bench, who plays B-flat cornet in the Lake Wobegon Brass Band. But don’t discount the influence of at least two members of Pawlenty’s extended family who also happen to be members of the Minnesota Brass Drum and Bugle Corps. If the governor gets a smaller-than-hoped-for helping of baked beans at the next Pawlenty family reunion, he’ll know why.