The music of the Great Highland Bagpipe is heard worldwide in Pipe Bands and the Pipe Band defines bagpipe music for most listeners. Conventionally a pipe band is a grouping of a number of pipers, ideally between eight and twelve, playing with a 'corps' of drummers with side, tenor and bass drums and adding a strong beat and emphasizing the rhythms of the music.
Pipe bands have been a notable cultural and social feature of life in Scotland for well over a century, particularly in the towns and villages and industrial communities of Central Scotland. Mining communities for example sustained a very strong tradition of pipe bands and music-making, particularly between the 1920s and the 1970s. The pipe band movement now spans continents, including North America, Australia and New Zealand, and involves many thousands of players across the world who come together in competition seasons where the bands are graded in increasingly rigorous and spirited contests.
Pipe Bands originated in the Army, particularly in the 19th century when from 1854 numbers of pipers were officially adopted by individual regiments with the sanction of the War Office. Before this time military pipers were only employed on the personal wish of company commanders and at their own expense. When new regiments were raised in the Highlands in the second half of the 18th century, for example for the 'Seven Years' War' or 'French and Indian War' (1756-1763), the American War of Independence or Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and in the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), it became a firm tradition for each company to have a piper or pipers. The Highland bagpipe became the principal musical instrument of the Scottish Regiments in the British Army and this has created or strengthened its role as the perceived national instrument of the country.
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