a question, if not quite advice...

[OC Richard]

There's a fairly long tradition in Scotland for various localities, collieries, police departments, and so forth to have pipe bands.

But yes in the USA it traditionally has been a post-famine Irish-American thing. Many of these Irish ended up in somewhat enclosed communities in big cities in the northeastern quadrant of the country, where they used their combined voting power to elect Irish mayors, who in turn nominated Irish police chiefs and fire chiefs, who in turn hired Irish policemen and firemen. They took care of their own, in other words.

In Chicago, for example, the police chief was Francis O Neill, a traditional Irish fluteplayer and Irish folk music fanatic, and you auditioned for a job on the police force by playing traditional Irish music for the chief. He hired the cream of Irish traditional musicians from nearly every county in Ireland.

Francis O Neill, by the way, was a fanatical champion of the uilleann pipes and despised the Scottish Highland pipes, and in particular despised Irishmen playing this instrument in favour of the uilleann pipes. Ironic that it's the Scottish Highland pipes, and not the Irish uilleann pipes, which have been used by the Emerald Societies in connexion with American police and fire.