Meet the queer and non-binary Ohioan transforming bagpiping culture across the country

Sixteen years ago, Laureano Thomas-Sanchez stumbled into the bagpiping world by happenstance.

As a middle schooler in the Cleveland suburb of Parma, they often stopped to chat with a crossing guard in the afternoon.

“I was in the school band and one day I was walking home with my saxophone case,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “I told him I thought it would be cool to play the bagpipes. He stopped and just kind of looked at me dumbfounded.”

The crossing guard – who happened to play bagpipes himself – coached Thomas-Sanchez through their first notes.

“I just fell in love with the sound of the instrument itself. I was mesmerized by the drones and how the chanter is so resonant and piercing,” Thomas-Sanchez said.

Since then, the 28-year-old queer and non-binary professional bagpiper has risen through the ranks of the piping world, winning solo competitions and coveted leadership roles in high-profile piping bands while navigating a culture often punctuated by racism and homophobia.

Thomas-Sanchez is the current pipe sergeant for the Great Lakes Pipe Band and piping instructor at the College of Wooster, a private college with a school pipe band in rural Wayne County, Ohio.

But their Scottish-Filipino heritage and LGBTQ+ identity haven’t always made piping easy. 

“Coming up bagpiping as a person of color, I always felt like I had to play extra good to prove myself,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “It’s definitely softened up because I made myself very well established, especially in this area. I’ve proven that I know what I’m talking about and I deserve to be here.”

Now, the professional bagpiper is fighting to keep the culture alive while making room for a new generation of diverse musicians.

“There are so many layers of bagpiping lore and history,” they said. “It’s such a rich community of people, and it’s only getting better.”

Rising through the ranks

“Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, New York City — any of these cities that were built kind of around steel or around the big automobile boom in the early 1900s, they all have a rich bagpiping history,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “When all of those British people came from England and Scotland and Ireland to the United States, they brought the bagpipes with them.”

In Cleveland, Thomas-Sanchez began taking lessons from Michael Crawley, current major and drumming instructor for the 87th Cleveland Pipe Band and a fixture in Cleveland bagpiping for nearly 40 years.

Next, they joined the Great Lakes Pipe Band, a Cleveland-based Grade 2 pipe band where they began travelling to compete.

After high school, Thomas-Sanchez enrolled at Michigan’s Alma College and joined their bagpiping program. They learned to love the mental and physical intensity of both group and solo competition. 

“When you’re competing in the summertime in July it’s 95 degrees outside, you’re standing in the field and you have to stand there and play bagpipes in the sun for 15 minutes straight. It’s a test of your mental abilities, your physical abilities,” Thomas-Sanchez said.

“When you’re competing with a band, it’s just very, very competitive. Very cutthroat and serious,” they said. “It’s not typically like other musical ensembles. If a [pipe] band wins a contest, the prize money goes straight back into the band. You don’t get a cut as a player. You’re just doing it for the love of doing it.”

Both pipe bands and soloists compete at different grade levels. Beginners compete at Grade 5 for about a year, then move up to grades 4, 3 and 2. At Grade 1, players join the open or professional competition category.

Thomas-Sanchez has competed in the open since 2018 – just seven years after they first picked up the pipes.

In Ohio, pipers compete under the Midwest Pipe Band Association, which hosts sanctioned games and tracks results and points players accrue during solos competitions.

When the group halted in-person events during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Thomas-Sanchez struggled to cope.

“I had to really reframe my relationship with music after the pandemic because my entire piping career was built around competing and getting out the field and putting myself in front of somebody to play tunes,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “Once all those contests were canceled, I no longer had a driving force to want to play anymore.”

In 2021, Thomas-Sanchez joined pipe band and dance and comedy troupe Tartanic for eight weekends at the Michigan Renaissance Festival. Since then, they’ve joined the troupe at Renaissance festivals across the country – including a recent stint in Texas.

Thomas-Sanchez said the entire experience helped them find joy and fulfillment in piping again.

“At this stage of my life, I enjoy watching people just enjoy music,” they said. “When I play at these Renaissance festivals, there’s nobody there that’s judging my technique. There’s nobody there that’s judging the sound of my instrument. It’s just people who enjoy the music and they’re dancing and they’re just having fun.”

“I had to reframe what drives me to be a musician and why I care about this,” they added. “What do I want my legacy in this to be?”

The answer? Leaving the piping world a more welcoming and inclusive space for musicians than they found it – especially for young people who don’t see themselves represented.

Coming up and coming out

The respect Thomas-Sanchez has garnered over the last 16 years as a piper doesn’t always shield them from the harsh reality of piping culture, which doesn’t often leave room for musicians who are not white, straight, cisgender or Christian.

Other pipers often targeted Thomas-Sanchez for their dark hair and complexion. Navigating racist microaggressions became a major part of his career as a bagpiper.

“I used to get the whole ‘Oh, you play bagpipes? You’re not Scottish.’ Well, actually I am Scottish. My mom is white from Glasgow, Scotland, and my dad’s from the Philippines. Because I look fully Filipino, I would get questioned about my race constantly, especially coming up when I was younger.”

Today, a growing number of pipers don’t look like the stereotypical white, male, bearded piper often portrayed in media. But Thomas-Sanchez is still among just a handful of out LGBTQ+ pipers competing at the professional level.

“I never really had the idea or concept that I was a non-binary person or that I was somewhere within the queer community until I was in college. It’s around 2020 and 2021, and I start to recognize that I’m not like everyone else in my band,” they said. “I can just tell that I’m a little different. It’s difficult to want to be open and talk about it because of some of the words that I’ve heard people say over time.”

Because piping culture is highly competitive, and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment can rear its head during crucial moments for a piper and their band.

“People will be treated equally until someone messes up or something goes badly,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “Then they’re very quick to be like ‘Well, I bet that fag over there…’ or ‘This homo over here…’ They’re going to be quick to point that out.”

“Out of nowhere, now someone’s sexuality is being brought up,” they added. “I’ve heard just awful things from people that you would think of as friends that are cool and like ‘Oh, now I’m not so comfortable being open with you guys anymore.’”

Thomas-Sanchez called piping culture “an evolving thing” in the midst of a major generational shift.

“People are more openly queer in the community, but now there’s just way more closeted homophobic people,” Thomas-Sanchez said.

“It’s getting better as the older generation retires or they pass away. That’s when we start to get a little motion forward,” they added. “It’s just unfortunate that people have to get old and pass away there to be any meaningful change.”

“I finally grew up. I’m not in my early 20s, and I’m able to just have the courage to call people out on some of these things,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “It’s just a shame that as one became more accepted, the hate just became a little quieter.”

Two sides of a coin

As they’ve grown older, Thomas-Sanchez said they’ve also grown to appreciate the effect their own performance and musicianship can have on others – particularly on Black and brown people interested in the instrument.

“It’s two sides of a coin,” they said. “I would have white people giving me shit about being a tan, brown bagpiper, but there’s times when I interact with people and it’s so meaningful to me.”

After playing pipes at the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival, an indigenous family approached Thomas-Sanchez.

“When I’m out there with long hair and my hair in a braid, I look very racially ambiguous between either being Hispanic, Filipino, Native American. Depending on where I’m at in the world or in the country, people think I’m different things,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “Here in Cleveland, people always think I’m Puerto Rican. But when I was in Oklahoma, they thought I was Native.”

“I’m not Native at all, but just to see what it meant for this person to have someone that looks like them doing something like that was meaningful to them? That’s the thing that sticks with me.”

The next stage

Thomas-Sanchez recently only recently accepted the College of Wooster teaching position.

They’re excited to pour into a program that will benefit from their commitment and skill as a piper and instructor.

But Thomas-Sanchez has no plans to slow down their performing schedule, and will continue to travel for competitions and Renaissance fairs across the country and beyond. Next up, they’ll travel to Kansas City for Winter Storm, a major international solo contest in January.

“So many musicians never play for anybody,” they said. “They’ll sit there and practice in their living room and become phenomenal players, but they never show it to anybody and they don’t let anybody hear it. I just feel like music needs to be heard.”

For young LGBTQ+ people – or pipers whose race, ethnicity or religion might shake up the piping status quo – Thomas-Sanchez has only words of encouragement:

“The first step to being good at something is to be bad,” Thomas-Sanchez said. “You’re going to sound bad. You have to go through the whole process. Just know that there will come a time that you’ve been practicing every single day for 16 years, and nobody can buy that.”

“No amount of money can give you that skill,” they added “And nobody can ever take it away from you.”

For their love of competition, Thomas-Sanchez said they have only one achievable goal in their career.

“I can feel the history when I play my instrument of all the pipers and people that have come before me, that they kept this art going,” they said. “I feel a sense of responsibility that I have to continue to leave it in a better place that I found it.” 🔥

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Ignite Action

• To learn more about the pipe band, comedy and dance troupe Tartanic, click here.
• If you are a young LGBTQ+ person in crisis, please contact the Trevor Project: 866-4-U-Trevor.
• If you are an transgender adult in need of immediate help, contact the National Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860