RCC Indoor Percussion, established in 2001, has become a prominent ensemble in Southern California’s indoor percussion scene, achieving six WGI World-Championship titles. Initially led by Sean Vega, the program is now directed by Joy Liu and Tony Nuñez. The ensemble has faced challenges and criticism over the years, particularly regarding the perception of indoor percussion versus traditional academic music education. Their upcoming performance at PASIC 2024 is significant, as it highlights the legitimacy and artistry of indoor percussion, aiming to foster greater interest and understanding within the broader percussive community.

---

For decades, RCC Indoor Percussion has provided hundreds of young percussionists in Southern California with the opportunity to display their artistry and technical skills on the international stage. Since its inception in 2001, the ensemble has been awarded six WGI World-Championship titles and firmly established itself as a fixture of the top-five. While it may be difficult for younger readers to imagine RCC Indoor Percussion as anything other than a pillar institution within the marching community, the ensemble began as humbly as any other.

Based out of Riverside Community College (now City College) in Riverside, California as an offshoot of the band program, the ensemble was instituted by the Concord Blue Devils “in an effort to try to have an indoor program to help and train young performers, creating a year-round structure,” recounts long-time Program Director Sean Vega. While the organization’s tie to the Blue Devils afforded it some reputability, the early days of the program were scant in every sense. Originally, “there were just a handful of staff members, and performers were mostly locals within the Southern California area. My mom made the costumes,” reminisces Vega. “I worked with the band director’s son, Paul Locke, who did the staging. We used to make the props in his backyard.” Vega helmed the program for nearly two decades before passing the torch to Joy Liu and Tony Nuñez, RCC’s current logistical and creative heads.

While a billing at PASIC is, undoubtedly, a professional apex for any presenter or performer, RCC Indoor Percussion’s trip to Indianapolis for PASIC 2024 bears broader significance. Apart from appearances by Rhythm X in 2011 and Music City Mystique in 2016, WGI percussion ensembles, in their complete iteration, have been noticeably absent from decades of PASIC showcase rosters. Each year, the WGI World Championships rank at the top of the leaderboard for attendance among all percussion performance events in the United States, drawing tens of thousands of spectators. When further considering the mass of percussive market-share taken on by the cohort of indoor percussion groups from Southern California (including 14 independent ensembles and 150+ high school programs), a representative appearance seems long overdue. Despite the off-season logistical challenges and sheer physical distance from Southern California, the students and educators at RCC and the administrators of their parent organization, Blue Devils Performing Arts, are excited as ever to share their work and mission with the larger percussive community. So, where have they been until now?

The origin story of RCC is quite parallel to that of the whole indoor percussion community within Southern California and the United States. The institution built itself from the ground up using the meager resources it had available. With some exceptions, these ensembles from Southern California are largely furnished by percussion educators bearing no “formal training” apart from their experience within the marching activity. Program Director Joy Liu, who holds a B.M. from Chapman University, remarks that “most of these people don’t have a bachelor’s or master’s in percussion. That’s just not the environment we’ve ever been in. Most of us [educators] came straight out of the indoor scene in high school, and our ‘schooling’ became to do indoor continuously. Your professional extension then became to teach and improve through that.”

This approach, with all of its unorthodox and grassroots tenacity, in tandem with the relentless growth that WGI and RCC continue to experience, has drawn much criticism over the years. It is what Liu speculates may have spurred the prevailing, false dichotomy of “academia versus marching.” She notes that “there is a comparison that happens [between the two experiences]. ‘I went to school for music and I have a degree’ versus ‘I don’t have a degree, but I’ve been here for 20 plus years and I have all of these real life, practical experiences.’ And I think this gap in understanding fed the perception that pursuing indoor at all is somehow the opposite end of the spectrum from the academic route.”

Sean Vega is no stranger to experiences of this flavor either. He distinctly recalls “being a young man in the early aughts going to PASIC and seeing people walk by laughing and spitting on the WGI booth.” In direct response to his 2003 joint PASIC clinic “The Evolving Role of Tenors,” he weathered allegations of “ruining rudimental percussion by working with WGI groups. How dare [he] stand up on stage pretending [he knew] anything about it?”

This history of skepticism towards the indoor marching percussion activity is not merely a trick of the light; a misconception or delusion relegated to the anecdotal experiences of Liu and Vega. It is codified quite clearly in the archives of Percussive Notes. “What’s the Problem with Indoor Percussion?” by Troy C. Wollowage, published in the July 2012 issue, serves as a historical mile-marker of these ideas, detailing the phenomena of general dissent towards the indoor percussion activity. Using his own experiences on an online forum as a framing device for the article, Wollowage recalls the sentiments of “educators who apparently had a real angst, almost hatred, against the world of indoor percussion.”

In an article by Jeff Moore from the same issue, “How Does Indoor Marching Percussion Fit in a Student’s Total Music Education Experience?”, the pedagogical merits of an indoor percussion experience are weighed by “percussion professionals (including collegiate teachers) [who] have a right (some may say obligation) to offer their thoughts because they are supplying ‘expert opinion’ on the situation.” While Moore cautions marching advocates not to read these musings as “overly critical and see their concerns as ‘attacks’ on the indoor marching activity,” the parting questions he leaves for the readers to mull over in pursuit of their own opinion of the indoor activity do include: “Does selecting legitimate concert music for the field justify the time spent on one ten-minute marching band show?” and “Do percussion students have different music education goals and outcomes than other musicians? Are there enough teaching opportunities provided in the competitive indoor marching activity to adequately address the required music competencies? Are percussionists exempted from learning certain skills?” Overly critical or not, the tone of this article serves as a time capsule for the temperature of 2012, when indoor percussion and its worth were fair game to be decided upon by the “folks who knew better.”

In the years since these articles were published (and even moreso in those since PASIC 2003), broader percussive sentiments towards WGI have certainly tempered. Amends have been made and new alliances formed. Of the RCC staff roster, Front Ensemble Caption Head Brian Dinkel and Creative Director Tony Nuñez have sat on PAS Marching Committee panel discussions prior to their appearance this year, and RCC follows in the footsteps of Rhythm X and Music City Mystique, as previously mentioned. But, to understand where the indoor percussion activity has come from is to understand why it is so notable when one of its ensembles takes the stage at PASIC. The echoes of those early sentiments are still felt by today’s crop of percussion students. Lauren Rooke, RCC Front Ensemble member, collegiate percussionist, and music education major, feels the WGI medium is “sometimes disregarded in the concert community. But, the fact that [RCC] was invited [to perform at PASIC] helps to show that what we are doing is just as legitimate as other forms of performance.” RCC bass drummer Reid Shimabukuro regards his attendance as “fulfilling a dream I never thought I could consider in the first place. When our invitation was announced it was one of the most pleasant surprises of my career as a performer!”

All of these are facts not lost on Liu, who sees that being at PASIC “has so much value in that way of us just taking up space.” She hopes to embolden Southern California and WGI ensembles alike, “because somebody else did it, not only do we not have to question it as much, but we have confidence because now there’s a precedent set.” Dinkel also feels this juncture provides an “invaluable opportunity to leverage the relationships between organizations, to begin building something that’s going to benefit both communities in different ways,” an effort that will commence with RCC’s session.

Creative Director Tony Nuñez is well aware of the long-established traditions of PASIC’s large-scale marching sessions. “Historically, with a drum corps, you go through your warm-ups, you go through your book, and you talk about it a little bit, and I think that’s what everybody is expecting.” However, what Nuñez and his staff aim to recreate “is what a weekend looks like at RCC, which is a really good snapshot of what it’s like to audition for RCC, which is also a really good snapshot of what it’s like to be a participant at WGI.” Nuñez goes on to elaborate that the session will take the “opportunity to highlight several years of music, experimentation, and ideas that we developed into what became the 2022 show, the 2023 show, the 2024 show. We only have 50 minutes to capture all of this intense experience, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to honor and showcase.”

Brian Dinkel hopes that this approach further provides “a sense of what it’s like to be a part of an ensemble like RCC. There are a lot of facsimiles and versions of this around the country, this will be a look into the way we do WGI.” Dinkel touts the cultivation of an experience that will reach farther “than what the audience might experience just seeing us in context at WGI finals, for example. There is a certain level of intimacy to the indoor percussion activity that is probably not perceived that way from the greater non-marching audience. I think the indoor percussion idiom is a lot more intimate and a lot more sensitive and a lot more detailed as a result of the connection the audience can get with the performers in the settings that we do this in.” Dinkel hopes that this understanding will disrupt the view of indoor percussion “as just an extension of marching band and drum corps, which is perceived at the distance of a football field, with planes flying over and helicopters and sirens and whatever background ambiance there is.”

Nuñez also hints that there will be a surprise for those in the audience. “We’re going to let them know what that is once we’re there.”

Above all else, Joy Liu hopes those in attendance walk away with “a newly-developed interest for the indoor scene or activity; for more curiosity.” She also hopes that percussion students, in particular, feel enabled to pursue “as many things as possible. If the WGI experience is one of them, then that’s value added, right? In my opinion, that’s what is so exciting about RCC being a group that represents this. Here’s a whole other spectrum of percussion experience that somebody can have.”

Tony Nuñez intends for RCC’s billing to stir new dialogues. “We do percussion too, and so do you. Let’s just embrace that and not get territorial about it. Let’s just learn from each other and let’s see where this can go. I think this can be a massive step forward.” He hopes the session can serve as a catalyst for audiences “to feel inspired, to feel like something creatively is ignited within them, and that they would want to come back, maybe even participate in WGI one day. I hope that they see this activity as a great outlet for students, for parents, for school programs.”

Sean Vega closes with the reminder that “We’re talking about music, we’re talking about percussion, and how its application differences shouldn’t necessarily matter. Unilaterally, everyone has the capacity to decide, ‘Hey, let’s all be involved in this, because we’re really talking about the same thing.’”