Jeremiah Encarnacion
Position: Trombone Player / Major: History Pre-Law Major / Future Aspirations: Professor/Musician
“Everybody needs art in their lives. I truly believe that you don’t have to just feed the mind, you also have to feed the soul. You have to have an outlet for your emotions, for who you are to be expressed. Which is why my favorite thing in music is soloing. I love improvisation. It’s almost like I create my own universal space when I solo. Being in the band with everybody and being a part of something greater than myself, something that we create together, is the best feeling.
Band has truly saved my life. I don’t think I would be alive if it wasn’t for band.
After my mother passed when I was 9, I moved to New York with my aunt and uncle. They did not treat me well. Coming to Hampton was my way of escaping them.
I packed up all of my stuff and put it on the bus and took that 12 hour ride down here from Newark, N.J., and then I carried all of my stuff to campus from the bus station. Thanks to my high school band director and Dr. Jones, I was able to come to Hampton University. Getting scholarships gave me the opportunity to be a part of an HBCU marching band – one of the best.
I joined band my sophomore year of high school on drums and started playing the trombone my junior year. I always loved music. My favorite artist is Michael Jackson. My mom and I always watched him on TV. We would always sing “Mama-Say-Mama-Sah Ma-Ma-Coo-Sa.” I grew to love so many other things about music that I didn’t even know would come from it. Especially with the marching band – the discipline, multi-tasking and artistry. It’s been through music and the band environment that I’ve been able to learn a lot of things I wasn’t able to learn in my home life. It’s why I am the man I am today.
At home I didn’t always get food. I didn’t really learn anything at home. I would get hit, just because. I stayed at school every night as late as I could just to have a safe space to do my homework. My life sucked. Both my mom and dad died of cancer. My older brother had to be my entire family.
At first, I would cry myself to sleep and wake up and start crying again. It was killing me. For the longest time, when bad things happened in my life, I let it kill me. And I realized one day what happens in my life doesn’t define me. It’s what I do that defines who I am.
I realized I didn’t want to get at the end of my life and say I made it. When you say I made it, it’s like you struggled and there was a possibility you weren’t going to make it. I was always going to do great things. I just had to realize one day that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from doing it.
My high school band director taught me everything I know, and after only two years of playing trombone, I got a scholarship to Hampton U.
So going to Rome and the Macy’s Day Parade, shows me where I was and where I am now. When I was a kid living in the Bronx with my mom, the Macy’s Day Parade passed through. Being invited to Rome by the Pope to play and be there when he blesses the world is such an amazing opportunity. I’m living up to the potential everyone who has ever helped and loved me, saw in me.
I’m only one story in the band. Everybody in the band has problems and things they go through and they come to band and put on a show. They put all of that aside to be a part of a family, to do something great, something that they love. We fought so hard to make it here. I think that pursuit of excellence should be rewarded. That pursuit of something greater than ourselves should be funded. We need money to achieve our dreams. We need money so we can go to places like the Macy’s Day Parade and to Rome and do phenomenal things. We are the first HBCU band to go to Rome. Literally, the only thing that can stop us is the money, because we’re not going to let ourselves stop us.”
