Band tradition 'is in DNA of Protestants'
An author from a nationalist background - Darach MacDonald - got a new perspective on Ulster's Ptotestant band culture
I REALLY didn't know a Miller Brown flute from a piccolo or even how to tell a good parade from a bus queue when I embarked on research for my book, Blood & Thunder – Inside an Ulster Protestant Band.
So my year as an active observer with the Castlederg Young Loyalists Flute Band provided a steep learning curve, not just about marching bands, their music, historical importance and the sheer scale of their activities, but also about my own attitudes to the most vibrant form of Ulster Protestant culture.
Like most people from a Catholic nationalist background – and many others – I assumed that the bands were rolled out by the Orange lodges for the summer to play loud, predictable music with the primary aims of asserting Protestant supremacy and provoking their neighbours across the "community divide" which they insisted on transgressing. More than 30 years of working as a professional journalist had barely dented this view.
Yet, like many others, I was fascinated by the spectacle and sound of the bands. Who could not be thrilled into curiosity by their combination of exuberance in displays of baton-wielding acrobatics and thunderous music, and the uniformed discipline in the ranks of drummers, fluters and flag-bearing colour parties?
That contrast also masks a cultural tradition that is much more complex, one suspects, than many of the band members realise. For in donning the band uniforms, these young Protestants are responding to a tradition written into their DNA down every generation since the Plantation of Ulster. It is a cultural tradition of military drilling and martial music that contrasts sharply with my own.
My admission to this parallel world came via former Ulster Unionist MLA Derek Hussey, who was the initial bandmaster of the Castlederg Young Loyalists when they founded in 1977. In turn, bandmaster Trevor Donnell and the young members were more than hospitable and willing to talk openly. Among many others who aided my research and encouraged me in writing the book, News Letter columnist and Kilcluney Volunteers veteran Quincey Dougan was refreshingly forthright and very knowledgeable about the history and strong culture of the marching band movement.
So from a freezing January night when I stepped nervously into the Bridgetown No Surrender Orange hall in Castlederg for the band's first practice of the year, I had a warm reception from participants who are immensely proud of what they do.
It was a year of highlights, each of which marked another phase of the learning process I chart in the book. In between there was a packed schedule of parades and the weekly scramble to ensure a good turn-out for events, arrange transport and times and meet the considerable expenses. There was the diligence in practising and perfecting the music and the drill of marching as the tight wee unit that is familiar to many supporters of band parades.
Since those days when Blood & Thunder bands were springing up everywhere as a loud proclamation of Protestant pride in the darkest days of the Troubles, the CYLFB has gone through a remarkable evolution. Four serving band members were killed by republicans and nobody denies that attitudes of those who formed the ranks over the initial decades were often hard line. Yet today, the band has a strictly enforced code of discipline and the younger members are made conscious of the pride in their community they demonstrate through their discipline as much as through their musical abilities.
In a part of the world where we dismiss and even disparage the culture of the “other side”, it is time we all begin to respect diversity. Perhaps through understanding difference, we may even come to respect and appreciate it. Just look at me with my foot still tapping!
l Blood & Thunder – Inside an Ulster Protestant Band is available from the News Letter bookshop. Telephone 028 9089 7700 for details.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Belfast
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Fog
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 4 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: North west
