Meet Pulse and POW Percussion

As mentioned in my last post, I went to Dayton, Ohio with Ayala's drumline, or percussion ensemble, and won the world championships. Our victory was for the division, PSW or Percussion Scholastic World. There was another division above ours and that would be PIW, or Percussion Independent World. The winner of that division was Pulse Percussion with an unbelievable score of 98.0. Their show this year was entitled Brother. Watching their show gave me an indescribable feeling. That sensation made me want to research their organization.

As said on their website, "Pulse Percussion is a youth-arts organization dedicated to providing students the highest level of performance and development opportunities through multiple musical channels including competitive indoor percussion ensembles, educational clinics and other outreach activities nationwide." Pulse Percussion was founded in 2004, under the organization called Impulse Youth Arts Association, which was run by Caleb Rothe, Ike Jackson and Ken McGrath. In 2010, they became an independent ensemble known as Pulse Percussion, Inc. Since then, they have been under the direction of Mark Kveton, Chris Henderson, Justin Boordbalash, and Jessica DuBose. Pulse Percussion  also created a open class drumline called POW Percussion. They started out as “Pulse Open” in 2011, and earned the bronze medal in the independent Open class. In the second year of the ensemble, they were promoted to the highest level and were a World Class finalist in 2012, thus having the name “Pulse Open World,” POW. POW has remained in the world class division since then.

Pulse Percussion's website, http://pulsepercussion.org/org/, is an extremely reliable source. I know this because the domain of the website was a .org which means it is a nonprofit organization. I also know that is reliable because the website provides a contact info with the mailing address. With an organized website, with specific tabs labeled, I was able to easily navigate through the webpage and find information about the two ensembles. Even though the information about Pulse's and POW's history was limited, I was still able to learn a lot about the two drumlines. The website also provided a list of their medals or placements in each season. After researching about the organization, I know understand how they became world champions this year. The time, money, and dedication that the founders put it finally paid off. Since Pulse Percussion is part of the southern California region, just like Ayala High School, I was even more content about how much I learned and felt more connected to the Southern California region I learned that Pulse Percussion had a long history to reach where they are today and I feel that Pulse and POW will be successful for years to come.

Pulse Percussion. "The Organization." Pulse Percussion. Pulse Percussion, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.