Pipe Bands of the World: Canada, New Zealand and Bagpipe-Making Sialkot

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Lists of championship winners are maintained by the RSPBA. Claims about the share of world bagpipe production made in Sialkot vary, and quality ranges widely, so this card avoids precise figures.

From the army

established Pipers had long served in Highland regiments. In the nineteenth century the army combined pipers and drummers into bands, and civilian bands, often linked to police forces, works, towns and churches, followed. Pipe bands spread wherever the British Army and Scottish emigrants went.

The Worlds

established The Scottish Pipe Band Association, now the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association, was founded in 1930. The World Pipe Band Championships began in 1947 and since 1986 have been held on Glasgow Green each August, attracting more than 200 bands. Grade 1 is the top level.

Breaking the Scottish monopoly

established For forty years Scottish bands won the Grade 1 title. In 1987 the 78th Fraser Highlanders from Ontario won, the first band from outside Scotland, and from outside the United Kingdom, to do so. Simon Fraser University Pipe Band from British Columbia has won several times since 1995. Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band from Northern Ireland first won in 1992 and has won repeatedly since, and in 2010 St Laurence O'Toole became the first band from the Republic of Ireland to win.

Around the world

established Pipe bands flourish in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, which hold their own championships. Bands are also found in countries such as Oman, Jordan and Pakistan, where the instrument was adopted through military links with Britain, and in Brittany, which has its own piping tradition.

Pipes and emigrant identity

established Before the age of competition bands, the pipes were already a badge of Scottish identity overseas. The historian Marjory Harper, in Adventurers and Exiles (2003), describes how in 1873 some 700 north-east Scots bound for New Brunswick's "Scotch Colony" were piped ashore at Saint John by the local St Andrew's Society, and how pipers marched at the unveiling of a statue of William Wallace in Baltimore on St Andrew's Day 1893, before 12,000 spectators. Piping associations, like Burns clubs, were usually purely social.

shared Harper argues that in Canada the bagpipe, with plaids and society banners, became an icon of a carefully constructed Highland identity that stressed military loyalty. Pipes could also signal belonging to a new country. When Scottish Mormons formed Utah's first pipe band in 1939, they insisted it was not meant to stir national feeling, "because first, last, and all the time we are AMERICANS", as quoted by Harper.

established In Victorian Canada the pipes were tied closely to the army and the empire. The historian Michael Vance, in his chapter on organised Scottishness in Canada in Transatlantic Scots (2005), notes that the 48th Highlanders of the Canadian Militia were formed in Toronto in 1891 after coordinated lobbying by the city's Scottish societies, and that a pipe band was one of the first things the regiment created. Society members made up most of its rank and file. Vance argues that in the late nineteenth century the piping competition was the strongest link between Highland games and Victorian militarism.

shared Piping in the diaspora also took local forms. The anthropologist Jonathan Dembling, in the same book, counts pipe bands among the formal, Scottish-based "neo-traditions" that English-speaking Scots brought to Nova Scotia, while an older Gaelic style of piping survived in Cape Breton and has enjoyed a modest revival. In the American South, the folklorist Margaret Bennett, drawing on Celeste Ray's research, notes that pipe bands at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in North Carolina may play "Lochaber No More" and "Dixie" in the same set.

Sialkot

established Sialkot, in Punjab, Pakistan, has a long tradition of crafting musical and sports equipment. Bagpipe making there began under British rule in the late nineteenth century, and Sialkot became one of the world's largest producers of bagpipes, especially affordable instruments for learners and bands. High-end competition pipes are mostly made in Scotland and North America.

• The World Pipe Band Championships began in 1947.
• A Canadian band first won the world title in 1987.
• An Irish band won in 2010.
• Sialkot in Pakistan is a major bagpipe-making centre.
• Pipe bands are found in Oman and Jordan.
• Utah's first pipe band, formed in 1939 by Scottish Mormons, declared itself American "first, last, and all the time".
• Toronto's 48th Highlanders, formed in 1891 after lobbying by Scottish societies, set up a pipe band almost at once.

• Myth: Scottish bands always win the world title. Scottish bands won Grade 1 for forty years, but since the 78th Fraser Highlanders of Ontario won in 1987, bands from Canada, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have also taken the title.
• Disputed: How much of the world's bagpipe production comes from Sialkot. Claims vary and quality ranges widely. Sialkot is one of the world's largest producers, mostly of affordable instruments, while high-end competition pipes are mostly made in Scotland and North America.
• Myth: Piping belongs only to Scotland and its diaspora. Bands are also found in Oman, Jordan and Pakistan, where the instrument was adopted through military links with Britain, and Brittany has its own piping tradition.
• Myth: Piping abroad always expressed Scottish nationalism. Utah's Scottish Mormons formed a pipe band in 1939 and insisted it was not meant to stir national feeling, because they were Americans "first, last, and all the time".