
- Published: Feb. 03, 2025, 5:11 p.m.

The AAMU Marching Maroon & White Band performs at halftime of the 2017 Magic City Classic at Legion Field, Saturday, October 28, 2017. (Tamika Moore/tmoore@al.com) AL.COMAL.COM
At a nationwide “Battle of the Bands” event Feb. 1, two Alabama bands showed off their talents.
Alabama State University’s Mighty Marching Hornets and Alabama A&M’s Marching Maroon and White participated in the Honda National Battle of the Bands exhibition along with five other historically Black colleges and universities at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
Prior to the event, Alabama A&M displayed their band pride in billboards along Inglewood’s Manchester Boulevard telling folks to “explore Alabama’s largest HBCU.”
“It is an absolutely awesome feeling that Honda has once again selected our Mighty Marching Hornets student-musicians to perform in what many consider to be the stellar HBCU’s marching band event in the nation,” said ASU’s band director James Oliver in a release.
“This Honda event benefits our students in so many ways such as in the accolade of being able to state that they performed in it, as well as lifting up our students who may not have ever flown on a jet before, been to California or never have visited anywhere more than 300 miles away from their home,” Oliver said. “This is great for our university and for its students in every way possible.”
The other participating schools were Hampton University (Virginia), North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The event featured a performance by Grammy-nominated hip-hop musician GloRilla and was hosted by actor Nick Cannon, who starred in the popular 2002 movie Drumline, which focused on a marching band at a fictional HBCU.
The bands were among 52 eligible to participate in the event. Honda selected North Carolina A&T University and Southern University in July 2024. Later that month, these two schools challenged the Alabama schools. Public voting determined who would get the remaining spots. Each school received a $50,000 grant from Honda.
SoFi Stadium is 20 miles southeast of the area affected by the wildfires. Honda donated $1 million to the Red Cross to support relief efforts.
This is the first time the competition was held on the West Coast. The annual event was hosted in Montgomery in 2023.
You can watch the full A&M and ASU’s performances below:
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