Proud to be prod: music, memory and motivation in an Ulster loyalist band

• Main Author: MacDonald, Darach
• Published: Ulster University 2015
• Subjects: 784.8
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.675466

This dissertation considers the role of Blood and Thunder marching bands in the creation, development and transmission of Ulster Protestant identity. This is explored through an examination of a loyalist marching band from Castlederg, County Tyrone, a small and relatively isolated frontier town that carries a bitter legacy of the recent Northern Ireland conflict on both sides of its community. In order to construct an anthropologically and sociologically plausible account of the band and the wider role of Protestant parading culture in Northern Ireland, I adopted an ethnographic form of research observation. This extended over a period of five years to reflect the generational cycle of band membership. Taking a Cultural Studies approach, I have supplemented my ethnographic data with wide-ranging research on the marching band movement and changes within working class Protestant id entity, especially since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Applying theories developed within the realm of Memory Studies, I then sought to explain the impact of band membership on collective memory and generational identity, as well as the central role of the band in transforming trauma into performative rituals of remembrance by adapting established codes of commemorative practice to youth participation in musical performance.