The Ottoman palace and aristocracy patronized European musical culture since the late 18th century, particularly with the reform of military music under Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839) – from the longtime Ottoman mehter to mızıka, a European-style brass band. Typically studied as an upper echelon phenomenon trickling into Ottoman civic life through official parades and ceremonials, brass bands in fact enjoyed a far-reaching amateur musical life through the curriculum of Islahhaneler (reformatories), state and missionary schools, and non-Muslim music societies – a life best understood within a global brass band movement radiating from British orphanages and factories to European colonies, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. Seeking to rally citizenry in peace time and war, European and Ottoman bands also aimed to provide discipline and ‘moral uplift’ to an underclass of laborers and ‘dangerous children’ (orphans and refugees), even as European-style music in Ottoman schools remained hotly contested as either a culturally harmful ‘Western’ import or the cornerstone of a well-rounded progressive education. Over time brass bands reflected the growing ties between concepts of children and nation, education and music, capital and provinces in late Ottoman intellectual and political life. This paper investigates the increasing politicization of amateur brass bands and choruses particularly after the Constitutional Revolution (1908-9) and the Committee for Union and Progress one-party rule (1913-1918), when the Ministry of Education developed an empire-wide curriculum of patriotic music; compositions often featured CUP member-poets’ lyrics; and voluntary associations like the Navy League sponsored permanent bands featured at demonstrations on the eve of WWI. Untapped primary sources, including student memoirs, newspaper announcements, contemporary Turkist journals, and archival recordings texture our understanding of the spectrum of individuals – unpaid child laborers, student-patriots-in-the-making, band conductors, and CUP politicians -- participating in an overarching militarization of an amateur music phenomenon. The study aims to contribute to the nascent but growing effort to investigate auditory art forms (music, theatre, poetry) in the context of larger socio-political developments, particularly Middle Eastern nationalisms, by foregrounding their role in collaboration with and beyond print media through high-decibel entertainment, musical training of youth, literacy-defying accessibility, and the fertile artistic and political space shared by poet-intellectuals, composers, performers, and their citizen-listeners.