ABSTRACT

Protestant marching bands in Northern Ireland convey unambiguous declarations of British identity yet find their performances are embedded in nuanced local contexts that uncover and express how local musicians evaluate social, economic, political, and security challenges in and surrounding their immediate environments. Despite the strong visible and acoustic presence of a claimed British identity, these performances can often demonstrate how local distinctions create disparate, sometimes conflicting, shades of British-ness within the local performance context. This chapter addresses the complex relationship between the local and the national by analysing ethnographic evidence of select bands, performances, styles of music, and instrumentation. The local and the national, it is argued, exist along a continuum in which musician, audience, and observer can view performances as expressing local concerns and national sentiments.