Students on the Pulaski High School Red Raider marching band were back in class Wednesday after an exciting performance in the Tournament of Roses Parade in California.
But controversy followed them home, as a blogger interprets one of the songs they played as political. School officials, however, disagree.
Almost 200 Pulaski band members and their chaperones returned Tuesday night in several groups. The last arrived around midnight.
They spent the last week in southern California sightseeing and then marching in the 2012 Rose Parade in Pasadena.
For the young musicians, their performance was one of their proudest moments.
"We just put so much work into it," saxophone player Jake Herning said, "and then when we finally got to it and done with it, it was a really big accomplishment."
"It was really nerve racking. It was just an awesome experience. And I'm glad to be back but I wish I was still in California, because it was just awesome," tuba player Beth Verhuiden said.
But others saw it as a controversial, political statement. A blog post about the message behind the marching band's Rose Parade performance has gone viral.
Blogger Annie Jo, who writes entries for the liberal web site Daily Kos, praised the band in a post Tuesday for playing what she heard as the song "Union Maid" outside the grand stand on the parade route.
It's a pro-union song by folk singer Woody Guthrie. Lyrics include "You can't scare me/ I'm sticking to the union/ I'm sticking to the union till the day I die."
Soon, other partisan bloggers and media outlets picked up on the post.
But Pulaski School Superintendent Mel Lightner says the band was actually playing "Red Wing Polka," a song representative of Pulaski's Polish heritage, and they had no intention of making any kind of statement.
In fact, when word of the blog post got back to Pulaski's superintendent, he was shocked someone would try to make a special moment for the students political.
"It's absolutely false that that happened. Nothing further from the truth," he said.
Lightner adds the song was innocently chosen by the band director because it's his grandmother's favorite polka. The band had no other motives.
"(Band Director Tom) Busch, our fantastic and fabulous director, did not even know there were lyrics added by Woody Guthrie to this melody, apparently in the 1940s," Lightner said.
Annie Jo posted another blog entry Wednesday, saying Tuesday's post was by far her most read, and that the important thing in the whole controversy is the musicians and not the personal interpretations of their music.
"Whatever one brings to one's personal interpretation of the musical selections, Wisconsin is proud of the performance in Pasadena, and in the end that's the important thing," the blogger wrote.
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