To ask why I felt emotional from brass band outside supermarket?

[brassmonkeybrassband]

Brass band playing outside the supermarket invoked a lump in my throat and feeling a bit emotional.

Why?

Anyone else?

Yes, every time! And choirs, or children singing, or seeing an elderly couple holding hands, or someone alone - basically anything makes me cry at this time of year especially!

same here - brass bands always get me crying.
It's fine when it's a gentle, soul-tapping Christmas Carol. However, I live in a brass band heavy area, and am equally likely to fall apart if they're playing something upbeat at a summer fete.

I am fine with a regular choir, and 11yo DD2's choir is pretty good. The tears only come for infant school aged children getting half the words and most of the tune wrong.

@LetHimHaveIt

Blimey. I'll cry at anything, from Jenny Agutter's "Daddy, my Daddy!", to Steve Redgrave bringing home a fifth consecutive gold, so I always thought I was pretty emotional. But brass bands? Lord, no. I mean - they reduce me nearly to tears, too, but for radically different reasons. Can't stick 'em.

Thank goodness! I absolutely loathe brass bands. Horrible pomp pomping noise !

Oh, it gets me every time to hear a brass band. Also, children singing (my 7 year old GD was in a school play recently and I had to keep biting my lip to control myself).

I can’t listen to a brass band without welling up. Brassed off is a snot fest! Even in the summer on the harbour in porthleven, drunk Friday night at Paddington (go and see the gwr band-amazing), Salvation Army at Christmas-I weep at all of them.

Always cry at a brass band. As does my mum, MIL, basically most women I know!

Always.

Will also cry to any rendition of Silent Night

I always have to steel myself as I come through the barriers at London Bridge when the Sally Army are playing at Christmas on the concourse because the tears come on so involuntarily that I fear I look like a loon.
Love a brass band. And yes, as a PP said I also cry at flash mobs. It's the sense of tapping into something greater than yourself I think. It's transcendent.

When I was quite heavily pregnant we went to our friends wedding and they had a brass band playing pop songs (who were bloody brilliant) and it sent DD crazy so when I hear one now I always think of that and it makes me a bit emotional.

Brass band music is very stirring emotionally - reminds me of my beloved Dad who loved brass band music, going to miner's galas when we were kids, and the Sally army at Christmas.

I have a very happy memory of Ddad and I standing in a snowy city square a few days before Christmas sometime in the late seventies, arms linked, listening to the Salvation army band. Then Ddad slipped on a patch of ice, we both fell over and couldn't get back up because we were laughing so hard.

I play in a brass band and this thread has made me cry!

We played carols last night and due to Covid that might be the last time we play for a while. It's lovely to know it means something to so many people.

Makes me smile when I hear the SA band and singers.
I had an old aunt who was a salvationist and sang with the band.
She loved singing carols in the high street at Christmas.
Saturday nights she was in the pub having a drink, a fag and a game of darts.
She was hilarious.
Such fond memories.

Always make me cry. But also smile because of this and how truly amazing Victoria Wood was.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=FIbM6c7DW_U

Yep. Also Little Donkey.

Especially in little piping KS1 voices.

Childhood memories of them playing in the town square on the Saturday before Xmas.

Our primary school had a brass band in the 1980s and I played several instruments over the years so come all ye faithful on a trombone takes me right back there!

N”ot one of them with an ounce of bloody hope left." is the line that gets me because over 25 years later there's still too many people for whom that is true, thanks to the decisions of those who won't be affected by the consequences.

Nothing changes

I have a recently retired colleague who was a mine surveyor (father was a mine electrician, grandfather was a miner etc) who says the Tara Fitzgerald character was based on him, which is why she plays the cornet. Whether or not he is, or isn’t, “Glorious Tits” I don’t know. But he was a mine surveyor in Doncaster/Sheffield and grew up in a out village (in fact where I am today). He is absolutely genuinely, authentically fascinating. He worked through the Miners’ strike to keep the pits open and broken picket lines to do so. The S Yorks miners he’d green up with welcomed him, Tory knew what he was doing. The flying pickets were terrifying he says. He wrote reports of economically feasible mine that were closed anyway.

Last seen playing the Last Post on Remembrance Sunday.

I'd strongly advise any of the empaths here to not visit the Sistine Chapel then.

I'd say the reason is because for the past 2 years we've been restricted to watching bands play and not actually hearing them live. There is such a difference in hearing live music being played and hearing a recording of live music. It just gets into your bones and you can feel the music. Also a good brass band is something to behold.
I never grew up in a mining town but it would evoke thoughts of mining families and collieries. Have you seen the movie "Brassed Off"?

Can’t beat a brass band! Always makes me very nostalgic for childhood Christmases in Yorkshire with my Grandparents.

Oh gosh, me too. I'm a such a sap at Christmas. Things that set me off:

Salvation Army playing Silent Night
Small children singing Little Donkey
Bing Crosby singing White Christmas
Handmade kiddy Christmas decorations (toilet roll Santas, stars made out of silver paper and tinsel etc.)

@LetHimHaveIt

Oh Christ, I'd forgot about Jenny Agutter! Lost my Dad many years ago and haven't been able to sit through the end of the Railway Children since....

Think it's the timbre of the brass, very moving.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre

Brass bands make me cry too. We have two very active bands locally (salvation army and town band - we're in the north, so they're not uncommon).

And don't get me started on Brassed Off. I cry like baby when the film is on. I tear up just thinking about the bit when the band are on the top deck of bus playing Land of Hope and Glory as they drive past the Houses of Parliament...think it's as much about the connection to the past as the music for me.

This thread just taking about it is making me cry.