Brassed Off Trivia Quiz

Answer: Turkey

Tuba is a common girls' name in Turkey and means 'blessedness'. Following the 1998 victory of Israel's Dana International, Eurovision's first transgender winner, the 1999 contest was hosted in Jerusalem. Turkey's entry was 'Dön Artık' ('Come Back Now') by Tuba (also spelled Tuğba) Önal and Grup Mistik, but it sadly only came 16th. Önal released her only album, 'Onun Adı Aşk' ('Its Name is Love'), the same year.

After Eurovision, she did film and voice acting work.

Answer: Swan

The trumpeter swan is North America's largest and heaviest waterfowl species, and the most common species of swan there. Unlike the mute swan, the trumpeter has an entirely black beak. It gets its name from its honking cry. Although populations in the wild had dropped to below 70 in 1933, a population of trumpeters was found around the Copper River in Alaska in the 1950s, and reintroduction and breeding programmes have helped to increase wild populations greatly.

There is a large population around the Great Lakes, although they are forced to compete for territory with mute swans.

In winter, they have migrated as far south as North Carolina.

Answer: Zinc

Brass has been used since prehistoric times. The proportions of copper and zinc vary, and can create different hardnesses, colours and so on, but copper usually predominates. It is used to make wind instruments because it has high corrosion resistance (handy when spit gets into them), is malleable and easy to shape, and amplifies sound well. Brass is also used to make doorknobs, locks, hinges and plugs, due to its low friction, and in the past, it was used to make statues in Europe and Africa, coins in the Roman Empire and objects such as fonts and candlesticks in the Low Countries.

It also has antimicrobial properties.

Answer: 76

'The Music Man' is a musical about Harold Hill, a conman who travels to a midwestern town in Iowa on the pretext of starting a boys' marching band and selling uniforms and instruments, before skipping town with the money. However, he falls in love with Marian Paroo, the town's librarian, and ends up leading a band for real. 'Seventy-Six Trombones' is Hill's pitch for the marching band, in which he claims to have seen a parade with an exaggerated number of instruments, and even fifty-odd cannons! Several real-life marching bands have added it to their repertoire and in Mason City, Iowa, writer Meredith Willson's home town, one room in the Music Man Square building has 76 donated trombones hanging from the ceiling.

'Family Guy' fans might remember Peter Griffin celebrating a touchdown by getting cheerleaders, players and referees to join in with a rendition of 'Shipoopi', another song from the musical, in 'Patriot Games'.

Answer: Melanie Sykes

Melanie Sykes got her big break when she appeared in adverts for Boddington's Bitter, a Manchester-based bitter. She started out as a reporter on 'The Big Breakfast', an early morning light entertainment show, before moving on to presenting 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!', and 'Today with Des and Mel' with Des O'Connor.

As a child, she played the baritone horn in a brass band along with her parents and sisters; she demonstrated her baritone skills as a guest on 'TFI Friday'. She still plays occasionally, according to an interview with Brass Bands England, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, while in lockdown, she started practising the baritone again. (Davina McCall mimes playing a tuba in McFly's 'It's All About You', but that's as far as it goes.)

Answer: The Netherlands

Well, it does sound a bit like 'horn'! Hoorn is a Dutch city, in the province of Nord-Holland, and the capital of the West Friesland region. During the Dutch Golden Age, when the Dutch ruled the seas, Hoorn was a thriving port city and was one of the bases of the Dutch East India Company. Explorer Willem Schouten named Cape Horn ('Kap Hoorn') after his home city. With the introduction of railways in the 19th century, Hoorn became a useful transport hub, thanks to its proximity to Amsterdam. Following World War Two, it was used as an overflow area to house residents of the Randstad region.

Answer: Buccina

If you've read the 'Asterix' books, you might remember seeing the odd Roman legionary playing a strange brass instrument worn over the shoulder, similar to a modern-day sousaphone. This instrument was the buccina, and it was a curved, C-shaped metal tube with a cone-shaped mouthpiece.

The curve was reinforced with a metal bar. Buccinas were one of the instruments wielded by aeneatores, the Roman equivalent of trumpets; they also had the tuba (which weren't actual tubas, but straight trumpets), the cornu (similar to a buccina) and the lituus (a trumpet with a curve at the end).

A buccina sounder was known as a buccinator, and some units gave them 'immunis' status, meaning that they were protected from doing more mundane tasks like digging ditches.

Answer: Revelation

In the Book of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, a scroll is sealed with seven seals. Jesus, in the form of a lamb, opens each seal one by one and when the seventh seal is opened, the seven angels appear in Chapters 8 to 11. Each time an angel blows their trumpet, a disaster happens. (Note: I am using the New King James version for this quiz.)

At the sounding of the first trumpet, hail, fire and blood fall from the sky and burn a third of the Earth's vegetation. At the sounding of the second trumpet, a great fiery mountain falls into the sea and a third of the sea turns to blood, killing a third of the sea life population. The third trumpet heralds the falling of a star called Wormwood, which poisons a third of the world's rivers, and the fourth trumpet is accompanied by a third of the sun, moon and stars turning dark. The fifth trumpet is accompanied by the opening of a bottomless pit, with monstrous locusts coming out, and at the sixth trumpet, four angels are released from the Euphrates to slaughter a third of humanity. Finally, the seventh trumpet is blown and the Temple of G-d opens in Heaven.

Answer: Hibike! Euphonium

'Hibike! Euphonium' ('Sound! Euphonium') is an anime about a school concert band, with heroine Kumiko Oumae playing the title instrument. Along with her friends Hazuki Katou (who plays the tuba) and Sapphire Kawashima (who plays the double bass), she joins her high school concert band. Originally, she doesn't want to play the euphonium, but she is roped into picking it up by Asuka Tanaka, the section leader of the low brass section. Another band member, the aloof trumpet prodigy Reina Kousaka, is a former friend of Kumiko from junior high, and the two fell out after the band failed to make the nationals and Kumiko asked her if she really thought they could have done it.

'Liz and the Blue Bird' is a spin-off of 'Hibike! Euphonium' featuring two woodwind players from the band, flautist Nozomi Kasaki and oboist Mizore Yoroizuka.

Answer: Ewan McGregor

'Brassed Off' was inspired by the story of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band; the film was mainly shot in Grimethorpe, a mining town in South Yorkshire, and the actual Grimethorpe Colliery Band played on the soundtrack. It is set in 1993, nearly ten years after the miners' strikes and leading up to the privatisation of British Coal. Tara Fitzgerald plays Gloria Mullin, who works for British Coal and plays the flugelhorn; she has been sent to Grimley (the fictional version of Grimethorpe) to assess the profitability of the pit, and joins the band, but cannot reveal her real reason for being there. Andy Barrow is a tenor horn player and a childhood friend of Gloria, and the two start a relationship; however, other members of the band distrust her.

(McGregor, incidentally, is an actual brass player - he played the French horn as a teenager and appeared on Scottish TV playing it in 1987. He did play some of the parts in 'Brassed Off', but mimed the solos.)