The One Fingered Salute

The Salvation Army’s refusal to allow woodwind instruments to play in Army bands may be about to be rescinded.

The Salute recently reported on the Army’s official position. The allowed instrumentation for Salvation Army bands is governed by Positional Statements, published by individual territories and approved by International Headquarters. Many feel that the official position is unnecessarily restrictive.

Our report, which was followed by an editorial piece calling on the Army to relax the instrumentation requirements for Army bands, appears to have given the movement some much needed momentum. After much agitation on social media and some rather public and condemnatory blog posts amongst the wider woodwind community, the Positional Statement has been removed from territorial web pages.

On some territorial web sites the content of the page has been replaced with the words, ‘Under review.’ In other cases the page and links to the page have simply been removed.

It is unclear what this might mean. It is possible that the Army is considering changing the rules about woodwind instruments. Whilst Positional Statements are issued by individual territories, they are generally written to agree with one another. It may be that there is disagreement between the territories about the substance of the statements.

It might also be that the Army is trying to quietly relax the rules without making statements that would upset traditional musicians.

However, the most likely explanation is that the Army is trying to hide a policy that has caused embarrassment outside the Army world without actually changing anything.

Our local THQ is yet to return our calls on the matter.

The Salute hopes this will all be resolved shortly.