Dunaber Music

Bagads: The Long and Short of It

Yesterday morning I dragged my ass out of bed and caught most of the bagad performances from the season’s first bagad championship. The camera work wasn’t especially sophisticated but the sound seemed pretty good and I was really thankful that a TV network in France opted to stream the contest live. Very, er, tres cool.
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Pipe Bands and Political Parties

One of the few purely academic things I remember from my time grinding away at university and studying political science is about political parties; specifically, the definition of political parties. You’ll know political parties are about bringing together like interests, promoting those interests and engaging people to a level that makes political authority happen. Political parties are about aggregating interest. Simply put, political parties are about bringing together people who think the same way.

It strikes me that pipe bands are no different.
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Joyeux Noël on Remembrance Day

In honour of the day, here’s a short clip from a really good “war movie”, Joyeux Noël from 2005, based on the true stories of the World War I Christmas ceasefires along the Western Front. It’s one of those movies that uses bagpipes in a rare authentic way.
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Aged to Perfection (Ravi Shankar)

I had a great night last Saturday. I was treated to a concert of Indian classical music. And what a treat. None other than the world’s greatest exponent of the art was centre stage, sitar in hands. Ravi Shankar, the eighty-nine years old living legend, and his twenty-eight years old daughter, the remarkable, Anoushka, enthralled the sold out audience with non-stop musical virtuosity.
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Idiomatica

Idiomatica. A bit of a poncie sort of self-conscious name for a medley, isn’t it. But what fun to say – and play. I feel confident saying that the Toronto Police Pipe Band had a great, if not challenging, winter of practice shaping this puppy up (as Pete Aumonier might say). And If anyone had any doubt about the degree of serious intensity most of the pipe band world takes pipe band music you only have to look to the internet. Yikes. Reading a sampling of the voracious and sometimes downright bitter opinion Idiomatica elicited made me think the Toronto Police Pipe Band might’ve had a cheerier response had we marched on the field and pulled a Sinead (publically rip up a photo of the Pope). Either that or offer the world the 7,864th medley that starts with a marchpipe. Continue reading Idiomatica…

A View of Pipe Band Ensemble

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Pipers’ & Pipe Band Society of Ontario’s annual adjudicator’s seminar. The theme of the day was the always-befuddling topic, “pipe band ensemble”. As you should expect, there was lots of interesting discussion. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a high degree of dislike for the word “ensemble” – I’d never thought much of the word, either; in fact, it was a possible majority who thought the word could be replaced with something better.
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A Pipe Band for the Masses

Iain MacDonald passed along a youtube link at the end of the string of comments from the get-rid-of-the-über-boring-pipe-band-set post. Really, now. I think it deserves full front row centre treatment. It is marvelous.
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Sunset the Set

If you were going about promoting a Highland Games, or a pipe band contest, and investing piles of your own time and money would you want the pipe band contests across the grades to be designated a “set” (march, strathspey and reel) or “medley” contest? A set contest, where listeners hear the same narrow repertoire, a maximum of three tempi and two key changes? Or a medley contest where, from a repertoire perspective, almost anything goes? What would an audience prefer? The overwhelming majority would opt for medley. I’d bet my outside tenor on that. If I were a games promoter I’d insist on an across-the-board medley designation.
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Easter Baggs

In December I wrote about the dearth of Christmas tunes composed specifically for the bagpipe. I came upon this (slightly wierd) antique Easter postcard – see below – and was struck by a similar thought. Easter is the highest of Christian holidays and [Great Highland] pipers have traditionally been overwhelmingly Christian. Where are our joyous Easter tunes? Is there an Easter tune made for the Great Highland Bagpipe?
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Pibroch Piobaireachd

We know there’s politics everywhere. And, when given the option, the way we choose to spell words is no exception. A Canadian, say, living in the United States, might exert quiet subversion by hanging on to Canadian spelling of any number of words. A note to his boss might read, “…followed up on the neighbourhood initiative; successful in addressing the signage colour controversy; local employees in good humour…”. That Canuck is implicitly saying to his American boss, “I’m Canadian, I’m not like you, I spell bigger, better…”. He’s also implicitly proclaiming to his boss he’s an asshole. But that’s a tangent of a different colour.
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