Date of Award

12-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

School

Humanities

Committee Chair

Dr. Heather Stur

Committee Chair School

Humanities

Committee Member 2

Dr. Kevin Greene

Committee Member 2 School

Humanities

Committee Member 3

Dr. Andrew Wiest

Committee Member 3 School

Humanities

Committee Member 4

Dr. Rebecca Tuuri

Committee Member 4 School

Humanities

Committee Member 5

Dr. Kyle Zelner

Committee Member 5 School

Humanities

Abstract

Military marching cadences have long served as a core feature of basic combat training, reinforcing cohesion, discipline, and esprit de corps. Tradition attributes their origin to a Black soldier, Private Willie Duckworth, who lifted the spirits of his unit with an improvised chant during a 1944 forced march. The chant soon gained national attention and was formally adopted into Army training through the efforts of Colonel Bernard Lentz—Duckworth’s commanding officer and the author of the Army’s close order drill manual. Their relationship, framed by military hierarchy and racial inequality, reflects broader American patterns where Black cultural forms gain institutional legitimacy only when filtered through white authority.

This origin story sets the pretext for a broader inquiry into the function of cadences within the institutional framework of the U.S. military. Though often regarded as functional tools for synchronization and morale during basic training, cadences carry embedded cultural meanings that reflect and reinforce the values, hierarchies, and ideologies of military life. During the Vietnam War, soldiers transformed cadence into a vehicle for a wide range of emotions, from nostalgia to aggression. Lyrics frequently invoked racism, misogyny, and fantasies of violence—tacitly endorsed through official policy and through everyday practice among enlisted troops and officer candidates. Despite their unofficial status, cadences remained widely tolerated by Army leadership, revealing a tension between the Army’s sanitized public identity and the dark realities of military life.

This dissertation argues that cadences serve as a window into the internal logic of military training. They encode the soldier’s ideal—masculine, heterosexual, and aggressive. This ideological framework operates not only through the affirmation of these traits, but also through the deliberate construction of an “other” i.e. weak, feminine, queer, or otherwise incompatible with the norms of military service. Soldiers often recognized these cultural boundaries and responded by using cadences as a medium for subversion. Through parody, improvisation, and dark humor, they repurposed cadences to critique military authority. By analyzing cadences as both cultural artifacts and instruments of discipline, this study interrogates the mechanisms through which the military reproduces identity, power, and ideology.

Drawing on sources from archival collections, oral histories, digital media, and military publications, this project traces the evolution of cadences from World War II to the Global War on Terror. It combines historical, musicological, and cultural methodologies to reveal how cadence performance reflects and shapes the values of the U.S. Army—and how soldiers themselves have negotiated, subverted, and sustained this most enduring military tradition.

ORCID ID

0009-0000-4248-1218

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