IF the first harbinger of Spring in urban Scotland is the return of busking bagpipers to Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow and Princes Street in Edinburgh, then flaming summer, despite a chill wind and falls of snow, came early to Manhattan this year. On Saturday 6th April, forty-three and a half miles of tartan marched down 6th Avenue in the form of around 10,000 pipers and drummers, skirling a blood-raising paean of solidarity with the people of the United States of America from the ancient home of an estimated fifteen million Americans - Scotland.

Under the banner of Scottish Power Tunes of Glory, this ambitious spectacle was timed to coincide to the day with USA Tartan Day - a national American celebration that recognises the contributions of Scots and Scottish-Americans to the development of the USA. The date commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, which was an influence on the American Declaration of Independence 456 years later. Almost half of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent, while three-quarters of the US Presidents have had Scottish ancestors.

But the Tunes of Glory Parade was no political event. It was a cultural triumph organised by Epic Concepts, the brain-child of two young pipers, Magnus Orr and Tom Grotrian, and echoed a similar celebration held in Edinburgh in 2000 to mark the millennium. Two years ago, they raised a quarter of a million pounds for Marie Curie Cancer Care who will also benefit from this year’s march, along with Gilda’s Club Worldwide, an American support charity named in memory of actor Gene Wilder’s wife, Gilda Radner, who died of cancer in 1989.

Bagpipe organisations will also receive a cut of any donations - including Glasgow’s Piping Centre and the piping movement in North America.

And where then did all of these pipers come from? From every corner of the globe that has inherited the Scottish tradition - twenty-six countries were represented including Ghana, Australia, Hong Kong, Pakistan and England, and all fifty US states. Pipers and drummers from Scotland included the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band, the Lockerbie Royal British Legion Pipe Band, the Edinburgh Postal Pipe Band, the Lerwick Pipe Band, the Lothian & Borders Police Pipe Band, and the all-family McGregor Band from Perthshire, comprising the father, uncles and cousins of Hollywood super star Ewan McGregor.

And what a breathtaking spectacle it turned out to be, with actor Sean Connery, his wife Micheline, Scotland’s First Minister Jack McConnell, his wife Bridget, and New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomburg stepping out in front to announce that USA Tartan Day is truly bigger and better than ever.

In a very few years, thanks to the work of the American Scottish Foundation, the St Andrew’s Society of the State of New York and the New York Caledonian Club, all volunteer organisations, Tartan Day has flourished, and its success has not gone unnoticed. Suddenly even native Scots have become interested. With their notoriously beady eye for the main chance, this year the Scots themselves came en masse. A large number of them even wore tartan.

And this marks a change of attitude. For years, it has been the ‘cringe’-factor in Scotland that has persisted in relation to the old traditions. Recently the kilt has snuck back into fashion with a younger generation, but for at least a couple of decades, tartan - a unique kind of international branding that attracts the kind of recognition money cannot buy - has been snubbed and shunned by the pseudo-intelligentsia. After all, such individuals reckon, there should be more important modern elements to Scottish life.

Perhaps, but it is always interesting to note how great colourful traditions survive, especially when they are seen to represent so many things to so many people.

Part 2