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Top Secret Drum Corps Basel Suisse

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Top Secret is a military drum parade band that combines creativity and European tradition with breathtaking virtuosity (juggling (with sticks and flags), choreography (theater, costumes), alternated playing between musicians (including several bass drums melodically tuned and played with two mallets) passages on neighbors drums, funky compositions, Brazilian, etc.). The Swiss are known for their use of the drum in the army (to pace the “march” (“walk” in French) of battalions of pikemen and halberdiers), since the fifteenth century, the first in Europe. Following the battle of Marignan (1515) Swiss battalions with their drums, were integrated into the French army, which later developed specific rudiments and compositions (called "the French school of drum," each country having its own, to distinguish them by ear on the battlefield, keep the ordering codes secret and perhaps also by competitive spirit), which the peak coincides with the time of the "Grande Armée" (“Great army”) of Napoleon Bonaparte ("Batteries du premier Empire": “First Empire military drumming compositions”). Consisting of an army of commoners mercenaries (or "soldiers") which served almost all European countries, the Swiss inspired as well rapidly German mercenaries (the "Landsknechte" ("peasants servants"), "lansquenets" in French). The drum also optimised the use of the single shot rifle by the order then resulting. Even for the suit (not so far from that of the “mousquetaires du Roi” ("musketeers of the King")), this use prefigured modern armies (from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century), professional, and the return of the infantry on the front of the military scene, while the middle ages was marked by the supremacy of the horsemen in armor of the aristocracy (the "Chivalry"), superseded by firearms (volley of bullets paced in rows, piercing the armors). With "Top Secret", the military drumming shows it has not said its last word and exhausted its creative potential, while drawing from the oldest tradition.

Marc De Douvan, publication in French: November 22, 2006 (for the translation in English: July 12, 2015)

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