Opinion piece by Chris MacKenzie


Room for all styles and points of view T


HE really annoying thing about nagging doubts is that they are like double glazing salesmen — very difficult to get rid of. So it was that after I had read the third piece in Benjamin Miller’s excellent thesis on The Evolu- tion of the Highland Bagpipe within the Musical Traditions of Scotland and Cape Breton in the last issue of Piping Today that the doubt emerged and set up home in my mind. What in Benjamin’s thoughtfully researched and well-argued piece was there to doubt? Well I’m no musicologist and certainly wasn’t around in the 18th and 19th centuries, despite what my children might say, so the central theory that cultural and institutional influences fundamentally changed the nature of pip- ing seems well researched, reasoned and argued and I’m in no position to in any way contradict it. No, the doubt crept in as the words of the final paragraph echoed through my mind on my drive to work the following morning. Those words were: “Hugh Cheape surmises the idea of a transformed Scottish bagpiping culture in his ‘Coda’ writing ‘the instrument has been reinvented, the performer constrained and the music re-crafted‘. It is this very tradition that continues to predominate the social perception of Scottish culture across the globe. Until these stereotypes are examined and challenged by musicians and historians alike, alter- native narratives in piping will continue to fall on deaf ears, dismissed as unauthentic or irrelevant.” The picture is thus painted of a moribund musical culture where the performer is constrained by the norms associated with that culture and by definition experimentation and innovation are discouraged and gain no acceptance from those within it (dismissed as unauthentic and irrelevant). This is where the doubt forms.


Arguably the case could be made that up until 20 years ago, in order to be accepted as a ‘good’ piper you had to win one of the Gold Medals and compete at the top level for a number of years before you were given the opportunity to record the latest in the World’s Greatest Piper series. This you dutifully did with the usual sweep of time signatures and, of course, a piobaireachd to demonstrate your mastery of the instrument and the music. This was the time when, to paraphrase Robert Mathieson, pipers played on the boards, then went to the bar to be met by men in tweed jackets who told them were they had gone wrong. Certainly most of the competing pipers at this time wouldn’t venture too far from the ‘straight and narrow’ for fear ‘of never winning anything again’. The redoubtable Seumus MacNeill was in charge at the College of Piping and he was very clear that the best performances were ‘on the platform’ (a view, of course, famously rebutted by Duncan Johnstone). So the picture can be painted of a constrained environ- ment, but even in those years from the war; was PM Donald MacLeod constrained? Was Duncan Johnstone constrained? There is certainly debate to be had. What isn’t up for debate is they created some great music. But that was then and this is now.


The cracks in the competitive dominance of the


piping scene had already started to appear in the 70s, with pioneers such as Jimmy Anderson (The Clutha),


Duncan McGillivary, Dougie Pincock (Battlefield Band), Malcolm Jones (Runrig’s early gigs always had three or four sets with Malcolm on the pipes), Iain MacDonald (Ossian) and one of the few competing pipers to risk ‘dabbling on the dark side’, Rab Wallace with the Whistlebinkies. All of these pioneers were taking the bagpipe into a musical setting with other instruments and beginning to create that unique bag- pipe driven Scottish folk group sound. Undoubtedly heavily influenced by the Bothy Band, these new folk groups quickly gathered a fan base both in Scotland and abroad. Slowly but surely, the next generation came onto the scene and bands such as Wolfstone with their pipe-led folk rock, and Ceolbeg, with Gary West on piping duties leading the way. Solo pipers also started to bypass the competitive scene with Gordon Duncan being the most famous example. Despite winning prodigiously as a junior, he veered away from the competitive scene (although not of course the free form, Macallan Trophy competition at Lorient which he won twice) yet there is no doubt that Gordon was piping genius and his name will live on through his recordings and compositions despite not being on the Gold Medal lists. Another piping genius whose name is on the Gold Medal lists is Fred Morrison who also turned his back on the competitive scene and, like Gordon, took his pipe music far from the boards and wowed audiences the world over with his unique style. Robert Mathieson’s 1993 Grace Notes album provided the crossover the piping community needed. Here was the pipe major of one of the world’s best pipe bands making a ‘solo’ piping CD that had bouzouki, cittern, congas and viola accompaniment and fresh and vibrant arrangements. It took the pip- ing world by storm and every piper had a copy in his pipe box. The stable door was now creaking at the hinges and it was truly booted open when Seumas MacNeill made his “if this is piping I’m going back to the fiddle” speech at the 1996 Piping Times knock- out competition final between Gordon Duncan and Gordon Walker. It clearly was piping, and damn good piping at that, and everyone (well, nearly everyone) could hear that.


Also around this time, Hamish Moore and Dr Angus MacDonald were ‘importing’ Cape Breton-influenced music into the Scottish piping scene and receiving plaudits, and CD sales, for it (even if not all agreed with their tenet about it being unadulterated Scottish music, see above).


One of the key components in encouraging the growth of the ‘piping fringe’ was the establishment in 1994 of the Celtic Connections festival as this gave many of the new bands and pipers a new stage to perform on, and they took to it like a boy eating beans! In the early days, it was not unusual to have competitive pipers of the quality of Roddy MacLeod and Willie McCallum share the bill with Gordon Duncan and Martyn Bennett. Here was tacit accept- ance that the competitive scene and the folk scene stood shoulder to shoulder, and you pay your money and take your choice as to which your prefer (and many are happy to listen to both). So where does that potted (oh so potted) history leave us. Well, we now have a one of those early


pioneers, Rab Wallace, as the Principal of the College of Piping. We have some of the most innovative pip- ers of the last 20 years, Chris Armstrong and Finlay MacDonald, teaching at The National Piping Centre. We have a National Youth Pipe Band who are one


of the best concert bands in the world and have a repertoire that has no boundaries. We have a piping festival in Glasgow that runs for a week before the Worlds where piping in all its many, many guises, will get both an airing and an audience (the festivals in Lori- ent and Armagh can also take a bow in this regard). We have a pre-Worlds pipe band concert where one of the best pipe bands gets to push the boundaries of the pipe band world (the role this concert, and its subsequent recordings, has made on attitudes to pipe music cannot be over emphasised and would need an article on its own to do justice to). Pipers can make copies of 250-year-old pipes and play them with a Cape Breton influence (Seudan) and they will get ap- preciated and lauded. Some pipers have even taken rock tunes and adapted them for the Great Highland Bagpipe and melded in traditional tunes and called it BagRock (The Red Hot Chilli Pipers) and taken it round the world with great aplomb. Other pipers, eg Allan MacDonald, have examined the world of piobaireachd in depth and produced new slants on the old tunes and had much success in linking it to old Gaelic songs. Pipers such as Angus MacKenzie (from Cape Breton), Calum MacCrimmon and Ross Ainslie are considered amongst our finest pipers without treading the boards at the Northern Meeting. Interestingly, the competitive scene is also growing from strength to strength with many of the competi- tions struggling to cope with the numbers of entrants. The judging of the competitions has ‘loosened’ to be less prescriptive about arrangements, although at the same time recognising that competitions still need to have some boundaries.


So it seems that piping has reached a happy com- promise. Those that need the competitive edge to drive on the improvement in their piping can walk that path, those that need a more unrestricted route for their musical expression can head for the concert stage, and crucially there is nothing to stop pipers doing both.


There will always be debate and argument about the relative merits of different types of musical expression — it would be a very dull world if there wasn’t — but it seems clear to me that from a piping perspective you can play whatever you want, and I do mean whatever you want, in whatever style you want. Whether people will like it is a different matter but that’s the chance you take in any musical genre. If your pipe is well set up, and your execution good, you will get respect from the broader piping community and your music certainly won’t fall on ‘deaf ears’. There it is then; my nagging doubt, writ large. l


If you want to have your say on this issue — or anything else in the piping world — send us a letter, or email pipingtoday@designfolk.com


PIPING TODAY • 19


OPINION


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