“We desire to bequeath two things to our children; the first one is roots, the other is wings.” This African proverb opens River City Drumbeat and sets the tone for a film about deep-rooted legacies and the ways communities of belonging can have a lasting impact on young people. By communities of belonging, I mean places where young people feel they can express themselves and be welcomed without judgement. This documentary follows individuals invested in the River City Drum Corps Cultural Arts Institute, a performing arts nonprofit organization in Louisville, Kentucky. Using percussive arts from drumlines to African-based traditions, the leaders of this locally based and Black-led artistic community take pride in teaching life skills to young people from five to eighteen years old.The film follows the organization through a transitional time as the founder passes leadership responsibilities to a former student. In that lies the crux of the documentary: a portrait of a community dedicated to maintaining strong ties to Black roots while actively cultivating a sense of continuity and a refuge for students. Through scenes of rehearsals, performances, and informal conversations with participants, we learn how this organization helps young people gain skills useful in their own personal journeys, while also grounding them to shared musical traditions. The filmmakers use an observational approach to tell the story, avoiding talking heads and instead bringing us into the musical practices and daily lives of the film's protagonists.The film focuses on founder Edward White as he transfers director responsibilities to his former student, Albert Shumake. Throughout the film, we are also introduced to other students, like Imani, who are positioned to become future leaders in the organization. A theme of change threads together many of the story lines in River City Drumbeat: from childhood to adulthood, from church basement to theater, from homemade drums to Pearl drums, between life and loss, and from one passion to the next. In conversations with the filmmakers, White contemplates his relationship with the group as its dedicated founder. After losing his wife and daughter, he imagines returning to his passion for visual art since running a drum corps was never one of his original intentions. In another interview, Shumake discusses striking a balance between service to the drum corps, his growing family, and his passions as a vocalist and deejay. Like Shumake, Imani wants to become an artist. By the end of the film, she graduates high school to study music and join the drumline at Simmons College, the locally based HBCU. As these multifaceted individuals cope with diverse kinds of transitions in their lives, we see how membership in the River City Drum Corps community acts as a powerful pillar of support. Through these stories, we learn that the success of this organization relies on the continuity of Black arts, community, and opportunities for artistic careers.Overall, the film lacks a focus on the music itself. Following the HBCU tradition, River City Drum Corps’ premiere group is their drumline. However, before students can make the drumline, they start by building their own drums, mostly from cow skin stretched over recycled PVC pipes. While the film shows a hurried highlight of young students building drums, it does not offer any analysis about sound beyond a brief mention of African-based rhythmic traditions. It would have been helpful if it included more detail about specific rhythms, and more broadly, the artforms that shape so many of the organization's musical activities. Instead, the narrative implies the African roots of this percussive music-making without addressing it directly.One strength of the film's story line is its focus on how Black men in Louisville, and particularly Black artists, can make money despite the compounding inequities that often limit life pathways for members of this community. What the film lacks in musical analysis, it makes up for with its portrayal of how shared music-making practices can create needed safe spaces for social connection and belonging within Black communities, as well as pathways toward viable artistic careers.River City Drumbeat focuses on drum corps as an artistic refuge and a place to learn. Marching bands are visual and aural spectacles where individuals can hide within the power of uniformity in attire, music, and movement. While it is easy to focus on the spectacle, this film focuses on the music makers. Perhaps that is why there is less portrayal of the music itself and more weight given to the individual protagonists. In the opening scene, for example, we see White and Shumake starting an elementary school drumming workshop. They tell the children that the first sound everyone hears is their mothers’ heartbeat—dum dum, dum dum—and Shumake beats it on one of the recycled pipe drums. The music is not the most important thing here. Rather, it is how they frame music-making as a practice rooted in family and to life itself. River City Drumbeat puts in the spotlight the individuals who bring to life vital community spaces of belonging. The filmmakers provide an avenue for ethnomusicologists to think about how we conduct fieldwork and represent individuals, whether in documentary formats or written ethnographies. They portray White and Shumake beyond their relationship to River City Drum Corps by including scenes that show how their intersecting race, class, and gender identities inform who they are as individuals and as artists.Documentary filmmakers Anne Flatté and Marlon Johnson succeed in compiling compelling imagery, deeply touching personal stories, and a superb soundtrack to tell a story of the good that comes from building an artistic community in a place defined by institutional barriers. It is one of the goals of a Good Docs film, in fact, to use storytelling to inspire students to think critically about a more equitable world. I would suggest it for courses that explore the multiplicity and intersections of identities, continuity and change, and ethnographic representations. The film can teach us to apply ideas about how people use art within a community filled with legacies and encroaching change. River City Drumbeat demonstrates how to move beyond diversity, equity, and inclusion to investigate the intersecting impacts of race, class, and gender on the ability to belong.