Honk if you play tuba.

Japan's 1930s war tubas. Click image to enlarge.

_I've been mesmerized lately by a peculiar phenomenon that's been plaguing Los Angeles: Tuba thefts.

For what? Steal 'em for spare parts like a Cadillac Escalade? Hold 'em for ransom? Maybe even make music on 'em?

It appears that something called "banda," a type of polka-style brass band music from Mexico might have something to do with it.

Look at an example of banda music on YouTube.


According to a Los Angeles Times article, an abnormal amount of these sometimes mind-numbingly expensive instruments (worth as much as $5000 each) have been the removed from local schools during after-hours breakins.

Stolen by whom? Aspiring banda bandits, one might assume. I can imagine, if this theft trend continues, that in a matter of months one could assume that if he saw two banda groups in a given period of time, one of them would be serenading you with a stolen Los Angeles School District tuba.

But why would someone want to be in a banda group in the first place?

To pick up chicks, of course. What draws women like a tuba? (I once saw a didgeridoo player fail to pick up two girls on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. He failed because he wasn't playing a tuba.)

Curiously... on the other side of the world, a similar brass music phenomenon (minus the tuba thefts) has been sighted. It's in a town called Gucha in Serbia where, every year, the Gucha brass band festival and competition is held.

What's a Gucha band sound like? It sounds like a banda band. Click to listen.

(Hey, that tuba looks familiar.)

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