Lawrence has long been noted for its music scene, but one thing it doesn’t have is the sound of a fife and drum corps.

Jim Krause wants to do something about that.

“It’s soul-stirring music, and that’s what I like and that’s what I like to play,” said Krause, instructor at Americana Music Academy, 1419 Mass.

Krause is trying to organize the Kaw Valley Fife and Drum Corps. The group would play popular tunes from the 18th and 19th centuries on traditional six-hole fifes, which are a type of flute, and rope-tension drums. He thinks the group would be a popular attraction at community events such as parades, museums and historical re-enactments.

“It has become kind of a folk music,” said Krause, who became interested in forming a local fife and drum corps after attending a fife and drum corps muster last summer in Connecticut. Such groups are numerous in that region of the country, he said. The music stems from military marches, and it is often associated with the music popular during the Revolutionary War.

Jim Krause, Lawrence, plays his rosewood Peeler fife, made in Moodus, Conn., on Wednesday. Krause took up the fife five years ago and now wants to form a fife and drum corps in Lawrence. Krause

“I thought Lawrence would be the perfect place to have one because of its New England heritage,” Krause said.

New Englanders flocked to the Lawrence area before the Civil War in an attempt to keep Kansas territory from becoming a slave state.

Krause doesn’t know of any other fife and drum corps in this area, and such groups are rare throughout the state, he said.

Krause hopes there will be enough community interest in a fife and drum corps that businesses and individuals will be willing to offer donations or grants to purchase instruments and uniforms. Initially those who enroll in the fife section will be given a student model to learn on and keep. Drummers will need to provide their own sticks, and the academy will advise on what types of sticks are preferred.

This Drum Corps of the 8th New York State Militia is shown in Arlington, Va., in June 1861, a time when the martial music was popular.

At first glance a fife looks like a flute or piccolo. They are all members of the same woodwind musical instrument family known as “simple-system flutes,” Krause said. “They all have six open holes, and you blow across another hole much like you would a pop bottle.”

The fife might be hard to play at first because certain muscles around the mouth need to be conditioned.

“You have to develop the muscles around your mouth just so, and project the air stream in a certain manner across the blow hole,” Krause said.

• Americana Music Academy

The music academy is a private music school with a mission of promoting traditional American music.