The Pipes Are Calling . . .

The hundreds of pipe bands involved will have travelled to Glasgow from every corner of the globe – from Australia and New Zealand, from Canada, Africa, Europe and the USA – to take part in what is affectionately known as ‘The World’s’ – number 1 event in the traditional piping calendar.

Taking place around The World is Glasgow’s Piping Live! Festival: a week-long celebration of piping held at a multitude of venues across the city.

In 2005 the Festival attracted an audience of 25,000 people to Glasgow, generating over £800,000 worth of revenue for the city in the process, and 2006 – the festival’s third year – is looking even better. “We’re aiming to really put a global spotlight on Glasgow as being at the centre of piping excellence,” says Piping Live! Director Roddy MacLeod. “This year’s programme is bigger and better than ever and will really show that piping is a thriving form of traditional music with a constantly evolving repertoire and a diverse range of performance styles that the city can be proud of.”

But where did this music come from, and how did it survive and develop into its present forms? In the run up to this year’s Worlds and the 2006 Piping Live! Festival, we take a look at the history and evolution of the bagpipes, and at the international piping scene today. . .

While looking incredibly complex (and being very difficult to play well) the bagpipe is, in fact, a very simple instrument. It has three essential features: the chanter is a reed pipe with holes – similar to an oboe – and is used to produce the melody. The drones are extra pipes which produce a continuous, unchanging note. The Great Highland bagpipe, the classic Scottish model, has three drones – one low and two high – which help increase volume. This is essential when one considers that the bagpipe is an instrument intended for use outdoors: on the battlefield, on marches and at funerals for example. (Simpler Eastern European pipes may only have one drone and some more complex bagpipes have four.) Finally a leather bag provides air for the pipes.

It is impossible to say when the bagpipes were first heard, although Hittite carvings made a thousand years before the birth of Christ show a similar instrument. It is conjectured that the bagpipes (in a very rudimentary form) originated in Asia and were brought to Europe by the Romans. There are several Roman references to the pipes, including coins which depict the Emperor Nero playing a bagpipe-like instrument. However, as they were considered a peasant instrument, nothing of detail was recorded of them in literature.

By the middle ages bagpipes were common enough across the known world: their skirl could be heard throughout Europe, Persia, India, China, even – amazingly – in England! However, fashion in music was as cyclical half-a-millennia ago as it is today and, as the 1500’s progressed, the pipes began to fall from favour all around Europe.

But, of course, there was one country where the bagpipes not only remained but flourished. According to historians of the instrument, in the mid-16th century, in the Highlands of Scotland, the MacCrimmon family – pipers to MacLeod of Dunvegan - elevated pipe music to a new level called piobaireachd. It would help ensure the proliferation of the bagpipes throughout the highlands and lowlands until, early in the seventeenth century; Scotland became the first country to officially adopt the bagpipes as a military instrument.

From this moment on, Scotland and the bagpipes would be forever intertwined.

Written records of the bagpipes in Scotland begin to proliferate around this time: in 1623 a Perth piper was prosecuted for playing on the Sabbath and the Royal Scots Fusiliers records begin to make reference to regimental pipers. Sometimes the pipers were ordinary soldiers who happened to play the bagpipes and sometimes they were pipers who were employed specifically for that purpose by the officers of the regiments. It was only in the 1840’s that Queen Victoria’s passion for the bagpipes led to the War Office’s decision that every regiment was allowed five pipers and a Pipe Major: a situation which the British Army provides funds for to this day.

Gradually, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drums were added to the pipes and the pipe band as we know it today began to take shape.

The drum section of a pipe band is divided into parts – The Drum Corps and The Midsection. The drum corps plays Highland snare drums – pounding out a rhythm which both underpins the melody of the pipes while providing a stunning percussive counterpoint – while the midsection, usually comprising one bass drummer and several tenor drummers, keeps a strict rhythm, allowing more freedom for the drum corps.

As anyone who has heard a Highland Pipe Band in full flight can testify, the massed effect of this battery of hammering snare drums, thudding bass drums and wailing, soaring pipes is one of the most powerful, driving sounds in music – an inspiring maelstrom of sound loud enough to drown out even an amplified rock band! Its inspirational role in warfare soon became obvious.

By the time of the Crimean and First World Wars, pipe bands were well established in the military and as a worldwide image of Scotland. Many pipers were killed and injured during WW1 and in 1915 the War Office eventually banned them from being played in the trenches and in the frontlines. However, the ban was sometimes flouted: in 1916 Canadian piper James Richardson was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military honour, for playing in action. His pipes are now in the National Museum of Scotland. Come WW2 there would be reports of troops hearing the inspiring swirl of the pipes at El Alamein, during the Rhine crossing and even on D-Day, on the crimson beaches of Normandy.

By the end of WW2 there were a significant number of trained pipers coming out of the military, many of them wanting to keep their skills alive. All around the world pipe bands were being set up: some were paramilitary in nature – being related to regiments or to fire or police departments – and some were purely civilian. In part as a result of all this interest in piping the College of Piping was established in Glasgow in 1944.

Today the College of Piping, housed in Otago Street in the city’s leafy West End, contains a piping museum filled with historical artefacts, memorabilia and manuscripts. But its purpose is not purely archival – students can still learn the art of Scotland’s national instrument via a three or four year degree course, as they can at the National Piping Institute in Cowcaddens, whose beautiful Victorian building dates back to 1872. Both these institutions are playing a key part in keeping the traditions of piping alive today.

Indeed pipe bands are thriving into the 21st Century. Competition, particularly at the top, the Grade One levels, is intense. It is also rigidly defined: at ‘The World’s’ in Glasgow this August hundreds of bands will take place in the morning qualifying stages. Those who make it through to the afternoon second round must perform in two events: the March, Strathspey and Reels (or MSR) round and then a second ‘Medley’ event where the individual bands may choose and arrange a selection of music.

In recent years some bands finding the competition model restrictive have begun to branch outside of it, playing in concert halls and with other instruments, stretching their repertoires and techniques. This new music can be heard on records like The Simon Fraser University Pipe Band’s live recording from Carnegie Hall (1998) and the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band’s recent recordings Flame of Wrath (1998) and Cascade (2003); records which retain the traditional core of pipe music even as they stretch its parameters.

Then there is Glasgow’s Battlefield Band. Formed in the late 1970’s in the Battlefield area of Glasgow’s south side, The Battlefield Band have done for traditional Scottish music what The Chieftains have done for its Irish equivalent. Robin Morton owner of Temple Records is proud of The Battlefield Band’s achievements. He is also very proud of the use of the traditional tag. “Traditional music is cutting edge music. Traditional music is the here and now. Nostalgia is not a bad thing either – it should not be seen as a dirty word. Good haggis is also better than any other dish in the world!” says Robin. “Scotland is defined by its poets and its writers. It was the work of the Scottish greats that gave Scotland a lot of confidence on the world stage. With this in mind, we should be pushing highly-skilled Scottish professional musicians such as the harp player Alison Kinnaird.” Robin, who has lived in Scotland for many years, knows the key to The Battlefield Band’s success. “The Battlefield Band play shows right across the world. The reception is always warm and it is great to feel that respect.”

With years of touring around the world, playing live to large, diverse audiences and bringing the music to a new level of awareness, The Battlefield Band beautifully mesh the sound of the pipes with guitars, keyboards and synthesisers and make an instrument older than Christianity sound fresh, exciting and vital. The Battlefield Band’s prolific output will be one of the many reasons why the sound of the pipes will be with us for thousands of years to come.