Ulster Scottish Medley - Chicago Games 2022

For the first time here at Dojo U, we recently rallied our students to form Team Dojo – a 'virtual band' made up from Dojo students all…

In my part of the world, “The Green Hills of Tyrol” is a staple of massed band performances. You can count on hearing it at some point at the beginning and end of each games day. It’s also used frequently for pipe band tuning—the second part is quite effective, since you are basically playing down the scale from High A. But this little workhorse of a tune is one of the oldest pipe band tunes in our repertoire today, and has quite an amazing story.

For centuries, there has been a long-held belief that bagpipes were classified as an instrument of war and were banned in the Act of Proscription of 1746.

The story goes that in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising of 1745, culminating in the now infamous Battle of Culloden, possessing a set of pipes or playing bagpipes them was banned.

Unfortunately, history is always far more complicated than we think...