Beyond any other musical instrument, the bagpipes have a feel the most like that of North Carolina. A Scottish and Irish heritage lies deep in our soil, one that’s felt every time you see the fog as it rolls down Grandfather Mountain or hear the quiet, thoughtful wailing of the piper in the morning pall. You can’t seem to live in our state without being taken back to a mysterious time where families were divided as clans, men wore kilts and music was not an industry but an art of touching souls.

It is in this spirit that, in 1968, a multi-award winning Pipe and Drums band was formed on campus. In the past 40 years the group has won the Flora Macdonald Highland games 11 times and the Charleston Scottish Games, the Savannah Highland Games, the Loch Norman Highland Games and the Gaitlinburg Highland Games, in various grades, eight times a piece. On Saturday, November 8th, the band celebrates their 40th anniversary at a concert in Stewart Theatre at 8pm.

“We do concerts every year as part of being in the music department. This particular one is unique because we are inviting all the almuni of the band back for a reunion,” said Emily Sprague, a Jane of all trades in the group. Wife of John Sprague, the current head of the program, she does everything from teach to order kilts.

“You could say I’m the chair and only member of every committee we have, but really I’m just a piper in the band and a good band supporter,” Sprague said.

The reunion she speaks of is in two parts, one being a private luncheon for members of the group new and old, including its co-founder, Ten Tonkinson.

“It started as student organization with 12 students on the roll for that first year. Real quickly they worked with the head of the music department, which was Perry Watson, and by Spring semester they were part of the music department,” said Sprague.

The luncheon will feature the announcement of a scholarship endowment from piper Nixon Alexander which will go to a fellow piper in the program each year. Music Department head J. Mark Scearce will also talk about the transition of the music department into the future, a topic much upon the campus’ mind in the past year.

Regardless of campus politics, the Pipes and Drums group lives on, and this is why there is a second part to the reunion: the show itself. The current Pipes and Drums group will perform, first with students in the grade four category and then with higher level players, including students and other musicians, in the grade three category. After which “the regular band will be joined by the alumni, including people that played 40 years ago, and all 65 of us will perform Amazing Grace and Scotland the Brave,” Sprague said. “We’ll all get together and we’ll be on big band.”