All of these factors nourished the cultural


conservatism brought from outlying areas of the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides, such as the island of South Uist, where Gaelic is still spoken today. This sentiment was allowed to grow further in the new communities of the Cape Breton Gaidhealtachd and life was able to carry on in much the same fashion it had in Gaelic Scotland, but without outside interfer- ence.


While cultural cohesion was shattered


in more diversified New World communities such as Australia, New Zealand, the Eastern United States and other areas of Canada, the Gaelic language and lifestyle were able to flour- ish in the far-removed communities of Cape Breton Island. A logical counter-argument to claims of purity within Cape Breton Scottish music is the suggestion that perhaps the musical traits characteristic of music and dance in this area represent some sort of cultural innovation on the part of these New World communities. However, this argument overlooks the fact that, in most cases, the isolation faced in Cape Breton not only separated the island from the rest of the country, but also separated individual communities on the island. While musicians did occasionally intermingle, new ideas would only be heard by those within a close proximity of the musician. Therefore, the characteristics that can be seen as shared by the island’s musi- cal community as a whole undoubtedly give a glimpse of what was brought over by early Gaelic settlers of the island. A pre-Victorian style of Gaelic Highland music — the music of community pipers and fiddlers: strathspeys, reels, and jigs played for the scotch fours, set dances, and solo step-dancing, as well as marches and laments played for funeral proces- sions “in the old Highland fashion”.


Decline of Gaelic Language


AMONG peripheral communities of Gaelic emigrants, it seems that the first step away from traditional Gaelic culture, and music in particular, is the loss of language. Communities that lost use of the Gaelic language early after resettlement, as seen in other areas of North America, rarely retained any remnants of tra- ditional music, save what was later imported as novelty from Scotland. The connection of these two elements is immediately apparent even outside the obvious Gaelic song tradition, upon hearing the rhythms of spoken Gaelic and those present in dance-piping and fiddling.


PIPING TODAY • 30


‘Even today, it is considered high praise among Cape Bretoners to say that a player has the Gaelic in their music’


Even today, it is considered high praise among Cape Bretoners to say that a player “has the Gaelic in their music”. This is aptly echoed by Cape Breton poet Malcolm MacNeil’s In Praise of Gaelic. He writes:


Gaelic Language and the music of the pipes, The two are the same for me; That is no reason to wonder, Since I am descended from the seed of pipers.


While these sentiments still run deep in some areas of Cape Breton, gradual urbanisation and industrialisation would eventually lead to the decline and near disappearance of the Gaelic language, and along with it, traditional piping and fiddling in Nova Scotia. The community musician or bard was once a function in Gaelic society and a paying job at the expense of the clan chiefs. Left without wealthy patrons, the new social order within Cape Breton communities did not allow for survival on these skills alone, and many musi- cians were forced to adopt new occupations to supplement their income. Many workers eventually moved to rising urban areas, focusing around coal mining facilities or ports such as Sydney or Glace Bay. Others relocated to the northeastern United States in search of better work. As seen earlier in Scotland and in other immigrant communities, these social changes would have a great impact on the nature of Gaelic traditional life. Barry Shears notes, in his book, Dance to the Piper: The first three decades of the 20th


century witnessed a decline in the num- ber of Gaelic speakers in the region and increased migration from rural areas to urban centres […]. This period also heralded intense changes in Highland piping and the perceptions of Scottish culture among native Nova Scotians. In the case of Nova Scotian pipers the tran- sition was from an ear-trained, community piper to a musically literate one, and from a bagpipe soloist to a pipe band musician […] following the prov- ince’s industrial expansion. This process was allowed in a large extent by the transition from Gaelic to English neces-


sitated by industrialisation. Shears notes that: “as English gradually replaced Gaelic, […] the function of instrumental music gradually changed.” He parallels the writing of folklore specialist


John Shaw who wrote this about the changing nature of Gaelic song in Cape Breton: Combined with other recent agents of cultural change, the language shift has effectively altered the social context for singing – interrupting the lines of trans- mission and changing the community’s internal concepts of such fundamental concepts as function, performance, occa- sion and composition. As Shears notes, this follows precisely what happened to piping in Cape Breton, and throughout New World Gaelic communities as they made their transitions to urban life. The fundamental difference that sets the tradition apart in Cape Breton is that these changes did not come into widespread effect until the middle of the 20th century, leaving the roots of traditional Gaelic music much more intact than what can be seen in most other communities.


WWI/WWII Pipe Bands THE 20th century would bring another catalyst for change to community pipers in Nova Scotia. While the conflicts of WWI and WWII were fought far from the shores of North Eastern Canada, many Nova Scotians volunteered for service and came back with an altered perspec- tive on their cultural heritage after service. Many men died in battle serving the British Empire, and many of those who returned viewed themselves as more “worldly”, often be- coming dismissive of their Gaelic cultural roots. The Great Wars also brought the pipe band,


as we know it today, to Nova Scotia. While Barry Shears dates the first official Highland pipe ensembles in Canada around 1898 and 1906 – the MacIntyre band of Cape Breton, and the later Pictou County Pipe Band – John Gibson speculates that these groups must have been far less regimented in nature, given that they were purely civilian groups and would have had no exposure to the military style bands of the British Army. While there are no records


THESIS 3.2


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