My Music Ethnography Proposal

I am proposing to do my musical ethnography on the Scottish music culture of the Dallas area. This would likely mean involvement with local groups such as the North Texas Caledonian Pipes and Drums marching band. While this is the wrong for semester the Salado competitions (which are held during November) there should still be a good number of events to which I could attend. Also if worse comes to worse I can try to attend the Scottish Festival held at the Toyota Center in mid-March (though this may be stretching the terms of local).

Currently I believe that the local Dallas chapters seem to take pride in being close to their Scottish roots. By this I mean it appears that they prefer to stick to classical instruments and general setups however as I am not local to the area my current knowledge of the local bands is limited and I probably should attend some events before coming to a conclusion.

My Scottish background (Blog 1 post)

While I can quite safely say that I am a part of and have been influenced by many different music cultures if I had to choose one that has impacted me to most I would have to say it is the Scottish arts (primarily the marching pipe and drum bands). To understand this we have to go all the way back to when I was just a measly 4^th grader.

My school at the time, a private Episcopal school, was known for its world class pipe and drum band and in order to keep filling the ranks it started teaching the Scottish arts at a young age (translate that to 4^th grade). Like any other young boy with dreams of fame and fortune or perhaps just a wish to not have to go to gym I joined the band. However while most of my classmates went into the piping department I for some reason was drawn to the smaller drumming section.

From that point on there isn’t much to say. While I never did amount to being a world champion I did take part in numerous events ranging from competing at Salado Texas to performing in the Houston’s Toyota Center and had a blast doing so (well except being crushed by a giant inflatable castle one year).

Now after all this tale of valor, glory, and throwing freshmen into the hotel pool you might be wondering how this influenced me. While I would love to say some grand life changing point the answer is clearly this was my first exposure to playing an instrument on a competitive/performance level and thus was my introduction to that world. Of course that isn’t the only thing I came out of this with as I still start drumming random strathspeys or reels every so often and tend to watch/listen to the drummers more than any other part of a band but I feel those pale in regards to my first point.