Clan Band: A Century of Piping, Drumming, Characters, and Stories from Clan Macleay Pipe Band

CLAN BAND is the story of a remarkable bagpipe band that has been in existence for over a century. A band that was performing the same year the Titanic went down; and played through two world wars and other conflicts that have followed up to the present day. What started out as a research project to solve a controversy over the origins of the band, ended up revealing people and stories nearly lost to memory and history, such as the band’s first Pipe Major who died of typhoid fever in 1913. Or the two families in which three generations in each were so involved in rebuilding the band several times. While this is a history and profile of a band and all who have made it so, and of the supporting Scottish, Irish, and other Celtic communities, it is also about bagpipes - especially the Great Highland Bagpipe - drums, and bands that have become so associated with everything from funerals, to the military, police and firefighters, to college and other commencements and, of course, parades. In the telling of the story and current look of one of the oldest continuously existing pipe bands in North America, we discover, through photographs and stories, those involved and how the band relates to the global community. We invite you to explore the nearly magical phenomenon of this instrument, of the bands, and of the community that has been mesmerized by the pageantry and sound of bagpipe bands…and how that practice endures.