Banging the drum
MacDonald offers a neat parallel for people outside the Loyalist community seeking to understand the motivations of those who join Protestant flute and drum bands: he suggests that GAA clubs fulfil a similar role in the Nationalist community.
It doesn’t tick all the boxes — outraged hurling and Gaelic football lovers can point with some justification to a century and a quarter’s history behind the GAA, while the blood-and-thunder bands emerged from the start of the Troubles, about 40 years ago.
