Scholarship about the history of the Great Highland Bagpipes, has, over the last few decades, focused on the origins and evolution of the instrument, the types of music it produces and the military role it has played historically by high profile pipers. However, there are only a few key studies and this topic is still in its genesis. Further, and paramount to this thesis, existing musical scholarship on the pipes gives minimal attention to women’s involvement with this instrument. In light of this, the key theme of this thesis is to situate female pipers in the history of the pipes and its associated culture through an investigation of ladies’ pipe bands in Scotland and its diaspora including Australia, Canada, England and New Zealand. It will firstly provide a definition of ladies’ pipe bands, before surveying their origin, establishment and existence. Secondly, it will answer key questions regarding the contributions ladies’ pipe bands made to this tradition, what these bands meant to both individual players and to piping communities, locally and transnationally. Further, as piping historiography has, overall, been inwardly focused on Scotland, this thesis provides the first comprehensive and comparative study of piping as an element of the Scottish diaspora.
For many ladies’ pipe band members, and indeed other members of Scottish groups, their association was linked – to varying degrees – to a sense of Scottish ethnicity. The established literature on Scottish associational culture has mostly focused on public and group expressions of Scottishness and this thesis will situate ladies’ pipe bands within this scholarship. Yet it also seeks to fill an academic gap on personal Scottish identities to provide insights into the meaning of Scottishness within the Scottish diasporic consciousness. This thesis will provide a close examination of band members to determine in what sense their personal identities are connected with their group affiliations and how the two are able to co-exist. Furthermore, since pipe band members in the Scottish diaspora were often descendants of Scots (rather than Scottish born migrants themselves), a study of ladies’ pipe bands sheds light on the sense of identity held by multi-generational descent groups, an area of scholarship that has been neglected.
The most important contribution this thesis makes to the Scottish diaspora and associational culture more generally is its focus on women. Extant scholarship reveals that women were not normally sought to join Scottish societies until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the twentieth century, women were more likely to participate in associational life but scholars have preferred to concentrate on the nineteenth century. By focusing on the twentieth century, this thesis therefore contributes to a neglected timeframe regarding Scottish associational culture.
The following thesis comprises two key interrelated investigative threads, addressing the extensiveness, dynamics and endurance of ladies’ pipe bands and the legacies that they have left behind. The first component of this thesis concerns the present lack of acknowledgement of women’s involvement with, firstly, piping traditions and culture throughout the twentieth century and, secondly, within the wider context of Scottish associational culture in the diaspora and in Scotland itself. Ladies’ pipe bands were part of a rich heritage of associational expressions of Scottish diasporic consciousness. Consequently, these bands are a natural source of insight into the origins, evolution and decline of this phenomenon, leading to the integration of women into the broader pipe band society with mixed bands and greater acceptance.
