The evolution of Russian military music culture is marked by continuous modification, reflecting socioeconomic, social and political mainstreams of the country. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the growing level of national military music has made foreign colleagues pay special attention to it. This article describes the circumstances under which the parade-concert genre was formed at the end of the 1980s, the further development of which brought the military music art into a wide sociocultural context through inextricable bond with the mass performance genre. This is illustrated by the progressive development of the international military music festival movement. With the introduction and current development of technologies and additional artistic devices, parade-concert programmes are being transformed, while performances become standalone shows. The author of this article suggests that the spread of parade-concerts in Europe was due to the orchestral of the military conductor faculty students of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory at the 1989 military band festival in Mons (Belgium). Needless to mention that at such events, European military music art was represented solely by demonstration defiles of marching military bands. Moreover, at the stage of emergence of parade-concerts, miscommunication of the terms “defile” and “parade-concert” appeared, which has not been solved yet. Nowadays researchers define these terms differently and use them without proper understanding of their initial meaning. Researchers of the parade-concert genre, who are few in number, have mixed opinions on its structure. The practice of structural modifications in the traditional programme of a parade-concert shows that its structure is inconsistent and depends on various technical, artistic and semantic factors as well as authors’ imagination and professionalism. In view of the above, the author deems it appropriate to move beyond the existing disintegration of the structure of a parade-concert and define its most common elements such as a march-parade and a concert section.