The Highland Games
event offers individual competitions for the Highland Bagpipes, Side
Drum, Tenor Drum, and Bass Drum.
Pipe band
competitions are also held, including the Drum Major
competition. One of the most impressive sights of the
Highland Games is the massed bands, where all of the
competing pipe bands march onto the field together and play
some of Scotland's favourite tunes.
Past results click
here.
During the expansion of the British Empire, spearheaded
by British military forces which included Highland
regiments, the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe was diffused
and has become well-known worldwide. This surge in
popularity was boosted by large numbers of pipers trained
for military service in the two World Wars. The surge
coincided with a decline in the popularity of many
traditional forms of bagpipe throughout Europe, which began
to be displaced by instruments from the classical tradition
and later by gramophone and radio.
In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Nations such as
Canada and New Zealand, the bagpipe is commonly used in the
military and is often played in formal ceremonies. Foreign
militaries patterned after the British Army have also taken
the Highland bagpipe into use, including Uganda, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka, and Oman. Police forces in Scotland, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and the United States
also adopted the tradition of pipe bands.
Before motorized transport became widespread, drummers
played a key role in military conflicts. The drum cadences
provided set a steady marching pace, better than often
accompanying wind instruments such as flutes (signal
instruments such as bugles have another primary function),
and kept up the troops' morale on the battlefield. Military
drummers were also employed on the parade field, when troops
passed in review, and in various ceremonies including
ominous drum rolls accompanying disciplinary punishments. In
some cases drummers had the duty of administering those
punishments.
