Listening to this again has made me think of the Toronto Police Pipe Band controversy of last summer, and of what it is to be a custodian of this musical tradition.

In my own experience in the competitive pipe band world, I found that very few people had more than a vague sense of the tradition they were a part of. Despite the particularity of the form, there are surprisingly few curators of this music. In spite of this, virtually everyone has views about what forms of musical expression are in keeping with the tradition they know so little about.

It seems to me that in order to be a custodian of a tradition, one has to be a curator first. It’s not enough to show up at band practices and games, and to play the same tunes over and over. Owning a set of pipes and being able to move one’s fingers doesn’t count for much. To be a curator, one has to know where the tunes come from, and why they’re being played the way they are.

Curators are essential to the preservation of a tradition, but custodians do more than just curate, more than just preserve the tradition as an artifact of history. Custodians keep the tradition alive by advancing it in a way that is relevant and interesting, while remaining faithful to the tradition itself.

There are too few custodians of this music Michael, but there is no question that you are one them.