Battle of the Bands celebrates 10 years of promoting HBCUs and music education

When Derek Webber was a child, his father took him to Memorial Stadium in Charlotte, NC to watch a football game. But not any football game — a college football game.

It’s an important detail. As fun as professional football games are, college football games, especially at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), have one additional thing: a marching band.

“I was just amazed by the bands that performed at halftime,” Webber said.

It was experiences like that that sparked Webber’s love for bands and inspired him to attend Hampton University. After graduation, he worked on marketing for the 2002 film “ Drumline ,” which pulled him back into the world of bands.

Shortly after, he became a founder and developer on the Honda Battle of the Bands, which took place in Atlanta for years and featured marching bands from HBCUs competing. The intent was to highlight an area of college football and music in general that is typically overlooked and underfunded, especially at HBCUs.

“The core foundation of what we’re doing is supporting music, arts and education,” Webber said. “And as we all know, over a number of years, the music and arts has definitely been one of those areas that budgets have been cut back from. And so to be able to provide a platform of this magnitude with corporate partners like PepsiCo, who’s our title sponsor, who create opportunities and amplify these opportunities to generate scholarships, it’s just a win.”

Bands are often neglected despite being an integral part of college football games at HBCUs. For Webber, those bands made his college experience and have shaped much of his professional life, including starting his own marketing agency to promote his next works: Queen City Battle of the Bands in Charlotte and the national Pepsi Battle of the Bands , now held annually in Houston. The latter event has brought immense awareness to HBCUs and their bands over the past decade through both the event as well as through the 2022 documentary, “ National Battle of the Bands: A Salute to the Battle .”

“We wanted to focus on an area that didn’t always get highlighted, but which was one of the main core areas of an HBCU experience,” Webber said. “You can’t imagine having a football game without a halftime performance like you can’t imagine having a parade without a band marching. So we wanted to highlight an area that wasn’t particularly highlighted and that’s what fueled it. Now you see a lot of Battle of the Bands that pop up across the country. But we’re honored to say that we are the largest and the biggest and the baddest and and hopefully continue to be the most impactful.”

The Pepsi Battle of the Bands is undoubtedly the king of band battles. The event has brought an estimated $20 million in economic benefits to Houston and Harris County as well as over $200,000 in new business revenue for Black and brown-owned businesses. Webber has also brought in large corporate sponsors like Google and Walmart and continued partnerships with J.P. Morgan and Pepsi. Bringing in those sponsors has raised the amount of money each band receives from $5,000 to $50,000. The event has grown along with the sponsors, growing from about 7,000 attendees to over 50,000.

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And as the event continues to grow, Webber is looking for new ways to innovate. One big idea? Bringing in primarily white institutions (PWIs) to the Battle, growing it exponentially. It’s one of Webber’s favorite plans for the future.

“You see me light up, right?” Webber laughed. “After this tenth year, we do have a plan where we want to do, like a Battle of the Bands, where you got HBCUs, we got PWIs. We think that would be awesome to have like a University of Texas and then a Prairie View, or Ohio State and the Southern University … And the goal is to have a combination of great bands to perform for the masses.”

Other plans for expansion include the band camp for youth in Houston, now in its second year, and a symphonic Battle of the Bands, which will be held at the Kennedy Center in 2025. Goals for expansion are all about bringing more awareness to the arts at HBCUs and fostering a love of music for young kids, especially children of color.

Webber said he feels incredibly lucky that Battle of the Bands has been embraced so widely.

“It’s huge just to do it for one year, right?” Webber said.  “But to be around for 10 years, and for that commitment and to have that support from fans and from corporate partners, it’s just a real pinch you moment, type of feeling, and it’s a great feeling. It’s a blessed feeling. And we’re just happy to be able to continue to do what we do.”

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