In this picture we see the band seemingly going about a sort of fancy Kiwi-esque marching routine. The sun shines. Happily and blissfully ignorant of the concept known as “political correctness” the band regales the crowd resplendent in sealskin sporrans, their V8 Plymouth Belvederes – with 9 and a half miles to the gallon – idle in the car park. Without the aid of today’s fantastic synthetic bagpipe accoutrements their cane reeds, “elk” hide bags and unmatched pipe chanters help the air “tremble” with “…the sweet, sad breath of the pipes” (so says the advert).

This is Maxville and pipe bands before my time but I do know something of pipe band history – especially in these parts. I am pretty sure this band is the Worcester Kiltie Pipe Band – an American pipe band based in Massachusetts. An American pipe band in an ad for Canadian tourism! Perfect.

The Worcester Kiltie Pipe Band was no ordinary band. One of the oldest pipe bands anywhere, they were formed in 1916 and worked their way to becoming the pipe band of the early 60s in Maxville – and North America, for that matter. With a battery of ex-Shotts, ex-Scots players (Pipe Major Jim Kerr, leading drummer, Davie Armitt, et al) they won the North American championship in the years 1960-1963 [my facts need vetting - friendly suggestion to the current version of Worcester to flesh out the history section of their website].

Anyway, an interesting bit of ephemera. Feel free to pass along facts connected with the photo in the ad. I may have it all wrong.

M.

Performances were around 10 minutes in duration. That’s an eternity in pipe band terms but pretty reasonable in the creative, exciting and free-wheeling world of the bagad.

A few observations here relative to our little pipe band world:

Stagecraft: I can’t think of a pipe band anywhere that bests the stage presence of any of the bagads we saw yesterday (and those presented were all part of the premier bagad grade – grade one to us). Although, to be fair, I found the constant licking of reeds by the bombarde players kind of gross – if not off-putting. I’d rather see a bombarde player’s back then have to see a gobbled reed.

Musicianship: Generally speaking, bagads have us over a cider barrel when it comes to understanding music theory and applying a few of its possibilities. For instance, standard throughout the contest was the mid-performance exchange of different pitched bagpipes. Harmony, too – beyond that of the bagpipe’s drone and chanter – was the norm, and in most instances really well done. As is the case with pipe band harmony, it’s the well-placed interplay of simultaneous note intervals that create memorable shivers and touch the soul. We have a lot to learn from the best bagads.

Melodic Variety: I found sameness to the bagad melodies – both in rhythm and tonality. And, from my experience, that is not always the way of things. For Highland bagpipe ears (those dialled in to around Bb) it can be said that the tonal centres of most performances hovered around F and C minor. That, and the requirement for bands to highlight dance music from the Sud Cornouaille region of Brittany, appeared to limit the potential of melodic and rhythmic diversity [how's that for political correctness!].

Bagpipe and Tonal Unison: Where the bagads may rock the musical thing in an overall sort of way, the best first grade Highland bagpipe bands are ahead of bagads when it comes to technical unison and unanimity of technical precision.

My overall observation is about pipe bands. I’ve been a big proponent of longer pipe band selections (medleys). I am not sure I’ve been on the complete right track on that front. Bagads and their 10-plus minutes of performance work for the most part because they have the latitude to rest: they can stop, start as they like and have the option to integrate a variety of sonic textures (meaning: use other sounds like accordion, clarinet, voice, etc).

I’ve recently gone through a season of playing a selection of music with next to none of the above qualities (four bar rest notwithstanding) and jeezuz, it felt like a lifetime.

Anyway, I suggest that until we shake up the profile of what makes up a Highland pipe band performance (instrumentation, duration, rests permitted, staging rules, general parameters),for a competition medley, maybe, five to eight minutes in duration works.

For lovers of the music of the bagpipe maybe the Breton phrase works: “Ur yezh hepken n’eo ket a-walc’h”

One language is never enough.

M.

Happily, my shift didn’t start until the afternoon of January 2, 2000, so I was good to go and enjoy the passing of the millennium as I pleased. And my choice happens to kick off my list of memorable musical moments of the “noughts”: 2000 through to two days from now:

And my list in rough chronological order (note: these spring first to mind and I wouldn’t be surprised, if I tried again, the list might be slightly different):

10. New Year’s Eve 1999. James and Jan MacDonald host one of Vancouver’s most famous Hogmanay doos. The hoi polloi of Vancouver’s piping and drumming community all find their way to the MacDonalds. This special year I managed to snag an invite and subsequently flew five hours west to be part of the fun. What hosts. What fun. A remarkable midnight marchpast of our throw-together pipe band with members including Pete Aumonier, Jack Lee and Angus MacPherson will never be forgotten. Good people; good times. [by the way, for fans of the movie "Whisky Galore", James MacDonald is the wee baby in the carriage in the scene where his dad, Neil Angus, plays at the réiteach].

9. Recording Shambolica! and Jane Siberry, July 2001. I was awfully lucky to engage a pile of talented people to work with me on Shambolica! and one of my all-time favourites was among that group. There’s something about Jane Siberry’s voice that moves me. She’s a national treasure – or, more rightly, an international treasure. She jammed her eclectic backside in Bryan Greenwood’s studio’s sound booth and for six straight hours made amazing music. Her work on “Nut Brown Maiden” is electric.

8. Bruce Gandy’s Gold Medal-winning performance, Northern Meeting, Inverness, September 2003. Bruce and me go back a long way and while we’ve always been intense competitors (especially with each other) I was thrilled to be there for his winning tune. One of those performances that fires on all cylindars and can’t help but win. “The Rout of Glenfruin” was the tune, for the record – a tune that should be played more, I think.

7. Colin MacLellan’s Clasp tune, “End of the Little Bridge”, at the Northern Meeting, Inverness, September 2003/4 [Colin, nor I, sure of the date]. What a tune. This tune was edge-of-your seat stuff. Tempo, rhythm, drama, all falling together in one rare and fabulous explosion of pibroch playing. People who hate pibroch should’ve heard this tune.

6. Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band tuning up for the World Pipe Band Championship, Glasgow, 2007. FMM are the poster people for precision and musical intention. Listening to them prepare for their world-winning performance: an indelible memory.

5. A week in Glasgow with the 78th Frasers (Halifax Citadel) Pipe Band, 2007. As a traveller to Glasgow for piping and pipe band events the 2007 trip with the Halifax Frasers, a great band I “guested” with, will be hard to forget. I can’t speak for any other time but in August 2007 this band had magnetic and percolating pipe band chemistry. What a great time. Win or lose, this was a great adventure with great people – one that sustained the whole week’s visit.

4. Toronto Police Pipe Band playing off the field at the North American Pipe Band Championships in Maxville, Ontario, August 2008. The park had been beset by hurricane-like rain and the usual (fantastic) performance spot had been moved to a farmer’s field – or what felt like a farmer’s field. The crowds were right up yer backside and well in to their rain-delayed cups. This was the year of “Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions” and marching off with Padrig Sicard’s Breton march will never be forgotten.

3. Ruth Sutherland’s singing of, “Tuireadh Mhic Criomain”, at Scott MacAulay’s memorial gathering, November 2008.

2. The Toronto Police Pipe Band’s playing of “His Father’s Lament for Donald MacKenzie” in the car park of Lycée Des Métiers Marie Le Franc in Lorient, France, August 2009. A strange moment. No one around. Our band manager, Jack Wield, ex-Edinburgh Police Pipe Band, thought the same. He said, “My God, that was beautiful”. Goose-bumpy.

1. OK. This isn’t in order. And, its not a bagpipe-y sort of thing. But a bit of a confessional: One of the most memorable musical moments for me may not’ve been in the bagpipey world. Here is k d lang:

All the best!

M.

It strikes me that pipe bands are no different.

A pipe band will attract people who are interested in joining the group because of really basic things: the band’s ability to win a competition, its social makeup and, finally, its musical aspirations. And for most people looking to join a band, I suggest that is the order of importance.

Like political parties, bands rise and fall in popularity, shift their approaches, their ethos and their leadership. The winningest parties represent the will and the perspective of the populist centre. Consistently champion pipe bands are much the same. Strong leadership, a general approach interesting to broad groups of people and sound decision-making (unfettered by any hint of the extreme) are the earmarks of successful political parties – and pipe bands. I suggest “successful” in the context of political parties is forming government and for pipe bands it’s winning.

This past August in Lorient I met up with Mark Saul, the famous Australian composer. Many fine pints aside, we talked a lot. Like me, he’s hugely supportive of any band’s efforts to “do its thing” – we both have a bias for that “thing” when it’s adventurous. We also talked about the risks in moving forward with “adventurous” when that approach isn’t of interest by the mainstream. Political parties never get elected when they take the adventurous, non-mainstream approach – think the Green Party, Canada’s socialist New Democratic Party or Britain’s Liberal Democrats.

Like many pipe band enthusiasts a lot of pipe band judges are not keen on extremes on the musical spectrum. If “adventurous” approaches make winning harder what’s the long-term viability of “adventurous”?

I wonder. It’s a risky business and one that most pipe band leaders tend to avoid.

Mind you, I can tell you I joined one pipe band fringe group many years ago and ended up a member of a World Pipe Band Championship team.

If it happened once, surely it can happen twice.

Here’s to the fringe – parties and pipe bands!

M.

One of the great figures of the north of Scotland at the time, and the whole of Britain, for that matter, was Brigadier Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat: War hero, soldier, politician, sportsman, one of Britain’s largest landholders, a Lord of the Realm – and lover of bagpipes.

Winston Churchill, in a letter to Joseph Stalin, described Lord Lovat as, “the handsomest man who ever cut a throat”. It was Lovat, the war hero, who led his commandos ashore on D-Day – “The Longest Day” – to the sound of Piper Bill Millin’s bagpipes.

At “Inverness” (the competing piper’s synonym for the Northern Meeting) during the year of my recollection Lord Lovat was in attendance on the second day, the day of the Clasp event, the big event for former winners of the Gold Medal. Bill Livingstone competed in the event and was introduced to Lovat. They struck up a good conversation, probably the only kind both could carry. It should be noted Lovat was 25th Chief of the Clan Fraser and Bill, Pipe Major of the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, a group sponsored by a group of Canadian historic commemorators of the seminal, “Battle of the Plains of Abraham” where the 78th Fraser Highlanders, and Lovat’s forbears, figured prominently. Anyway, the conversation of the Fraser piper and the Fraser Chief proved satisfying enough to warrant an invitation to tea the next day at Beaufort Castle — Lord Lovat’s home on his Beauly estate outside of Inverness. And guess the name of the gooseberry travelling with Bill and his wife Lillian?

Yes, indeedy, it was me. No shame. Tea with Lord Lovat at his castle – bring it on!

So it was to be. The three of us loaded up the rented Ford Fiesta and made our way from our Kenneth Street, Inverness, B&B to the castle for a spot of tea with His Lordship.

And here’s your cliche of the day: I recall the whole meeting like it was yesterday. After winding down the long tree-lined drive of the estate we arrived. We parked and nervously made our way up to the castle’s big door (I’d wager even Bill, the experienced lawyer that he was, would concede nervousness). And knocked (and, with apologies to Mel Brooks, “what knockers!”). Expecting no less than Jeeves to answer the door we were greeted by a kindly Highland woman dressed in a cleaning smock, “Yes?”, she said. “We’ve an appointment to see His Lordship,” Bill replied. “Yes, come this way”. And in we were. I recall Bill saying ‘His Lordship’ because I clearly recollect us dissecting the visit and laughing together at the line. I mean, outside of a movie set, how many times in your life would you find yourself saying, “We’ve an appointment to see His Lordship”? We thought it hilarious.

We were seated in big comfy over-stuffed chairs in a bright sitting room. Within minutes Lovat entered the room and warmly welcomed us all. I recall a big presence: well over six feet in height, a healthy, ruddy complexion and an impressive shock of thick white hair. Shortly after sitting tea was brought in on what I recall to be an especially ornate-looking tray. “Would you pour the tea, Lillian?”, Lovat asked Bill’s wife, and, of course, she did. But I think Lillian may’ve felt a bit like Hyacinth Bucket’s accident prone neighbour, Elizabeth (see the BBC show: “Keeping Up Appearances“), in dutifully filling the Limoges cups. Happily, no breakages.

So there we had it. Tea with Lord Lovat. A lovely meeting with a bona fide 20th century hero and undeniably warm, friendly person. We discussed his estate, the challenges in keeping it, bagpipes, bagpipe politics, and, I distinctly recall, his opinion on the prospects of a Canadian band winning the World Pipe Band Championship (he thought likely). Lovat had a lot of Canadian connections and he was genuinely pleased to see the result two years later, when the 78th became the first non-Scots band to win the championship.

Lovat saw us out to our car. As we made our way down the tree-lined drive we looked back and saw Lord Lovat slowly walking down the middle of the road back to his home. The three of us all regretted not having a camera, thinking this a great image of the man. “What a great band album cover”, we thought.

Lord Lovat died in 1995.

Anyway, there you have it, a look at of one of my great and good memories.

M.

We in pipebandom can – and do – get pretty uppity about our place, the pipe band movement’s place, in the culture of the world. We view pipe band music and pipe band importance as serious business: “don’t they know who we think we are”, I think back to a silly and oft-quoted line from a long-ago band. I know I have – and do. But really, I have to tell you, when the Chieftan guy, Lord Provost of Glasgow, Blethery MacSomebody, said, “…and I am happy to say that as of half eleven today the BBC has had 50,000 hits on their web offerings…”, I thought, “WTF, is that all?”. Good gawd, there’s 6 billion people on God’s green earth and a group of people not much bigger than the small town I live in tuned in … crap bags. Not good.

I suggest that should the full “ratings” stats be released by the BBC we, the “pipe band world”, will get one of the most accurate measures of our place in the world. We may not know, or have a sense, of the stretch of our influence in world music, world culture, but we will have a sense, courtesy of hard numbers, of our hard core audience. I would sorely hope it is way above 50,000 “unique hits”.

And a comment on the crowd: The BBC provided a fine aerial few of the crowd. The assembly of performers (and not all performers, I note, opted to participate in the massed bands thing) out-numbered the audience – or, at least, appeared to out-number the audience. Do the people of Glasgow really care about the WPBC? Enough to buy a ticket and have a listen? Once again, it looked liked families and friends filled the stands.

Hats off to Bob Worrall: He is one smooth, in-the-know and all ’round good-talker guys in the commentary department. While some of the pipe band world’s governing bodies (read: RSPBA) may not recognize his leading adjudication abilities, the world (all 50,000 of us online, at least) rates him tops in all areas that touch on fair and insightful.

Congratulations to all the winners and all the participants – you played your hearts out and we appreciated it all.

M.

PS. Is it just me? I hate it when in a music contest like this people start saying stuff like, “I’m proud to be a Canadian because the Canadian band won”, or “Proud to be a Scot becauase the Scottish band won”? That rings hollow with me in a contest that, I think, is about music.

One of the local schools is used as headquarters for feeding the hundreds of performers. The food is classic institutional, as you’d expect, but the management of the cafeteria “system” is remarkable.

Here’s the drill: you grab your tray, select your eats and out the door you go to the tables. But not before the lunch security matron counts the food on your tray. Feel like two slices of cheese in lieu of say a salad? Forget it. You’re sent back, tail between legs, to return your ill-gotten grub. Two rolls? Mon Dieu! Not on. One of our guys had his food matron-handled as hidden stashes of food were sought – concealed, perhaps, under a piece of meat. “Watch out for him”, she called to her colleague. Anyway, its all good fun. A real experience. There lots of wine and cidre at every meal and, anyway, we’re not here to eat – or sleep, for that matter.

I am writing this in the Lorient town square (with Doug Stronach, Tom Foote, Nathan McLaren, Reagan Jones, Shane Cressy) in an outdoor table of the Cafe Parisien. The sun is setting, the beer is cold, bombardes are playing, people are dancing.

When you have this, who needs a second piece of cheese?

M.

Check out the 2009 order of play, or “draws“, for the event: grade 3B: 27 entries and no qualifier; all bands play for the trophy. Same thing does for grade 3A with 29 bands and grade 2 with 26 bands in the contest.

And grade 1? The premier event. The event that pronounces the true pipe band champion of the world. With 23 bands. Yes – twenty-three bands. Well, there’s a “qualifier”.

The grade 1 event is the one event where there is the deepest international participation: 14 of the 23 bands come from outside of Scotland. That’s over 60% of the bands entered. The bands have violated every green guideline on the planet and together have travelled something like 240,000 kilometres to have a shot at the championship. Yet, the contest has a “qualifier”.

I just don’t get it.

I’ll think the best and assume there is fair and equitable reason for this qualifying approach, one that befits a competition that is fair and equitable.

But, I say again. I don’t get it.

Can someone draw me a picture?

M.

The role of pipe band judge is a hard one to fill. It’s probably made that bit more difficult in the context of youtube-generated chatter and the resulting “buzz”. Woe betide the judge who overlooked the side of the band that was recorded and the blooter-fest that filled that corner of the field: it’s a good old-fashioned internet head-offing for that guy. Conversely, the pipe band that comes off less-than-fantastic is relegated to a 1000 more hours in the practice hall – or worse.

As an experienced judge I know that in the context of fair band assessment its incredibly important to take into account where one stands to listen. One person just can’t take in the mechanics and inner-workings of the whole performance at any one time. Yes, the overall effect can be assessed from one stance, but only in the context of that perch. For instance, the overall effect of a band might be assessed from the “top” of the circle (to the percussionist: “heavy on pipes”) or, perhaps from the bottom of circle (to the piper: “heavy on drums”).

I suppose this is all to say, if we’re using youtube recordings as our guide, and interested in making accurate assessments of a band’s performance (or judge’s assessment) we need to be mindful of the accuracy of youtube-like recordings. The quality and limited range of many amateur recording tools and the serious sound compression that occurs with youtube uploading are only two considerations.

Anyway, fat chance dodgy internet recordings will ever temper the pipe band fanatic’s need to sit in his wired garret and anonymously sound off.

It is an interesting phenomenon, though, isn’t it.

M.

Regardless: the crowd on the field was hugely positive. I think moving forward pipe bands will find that matters more and more.

For anyone interested the name was inspired from the score sheet musings of the ensemble adjudicator at last year’s world’s qualifier: he scrawled, “not playing in the Scottish idiom“.

I think, like some of you, that the percussion accompaniment really makes the thing work. And, surprise, regardless of what bubbleicious1989 thinks, I really think the thing works. Drum Sergeant, Doug Stronach, bassist Reagan Jones and the whole percussionista group constructed inspired and appropriate scoring making great use of space.

Most pipe band people like their musical space jam-packed with clearly audible sound; lots and lots of notes – everywhere. Without “content” as I hear drummers call all them notes, there is no viable accompaniment. Like silence between two new acquaintances, rests or, open space (or “open real estate” as the drumming adjudicator wrote at last week’s contest), is generally uncomfortable for pipe bands. I hope that perspective changes.

One of the most common and ill-informed comments heard around is, “I can’t judge it if I can’t hear it” — usually said in reference to percussion rests in performance. Someone said, “silence is the best of all musical states”. Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, I know silence in performance is not easy. Perfectly placed silence, or rest, is surely one of the most important and difficult elements in music. It takes a seriously deft hand to pick the right points in time to halt sound and accent melody with rest. A thought to be explored another day.

It’s becoming increasing clear to me that had we submitted “Idiomatica” as a group of named melodies – perhaps “sections” would be a less presumptive word since so many felt it amelodic – the performance would have been perceived very differently and less audacious.

Idiomatica is a medley freely assembled in the style of the band’s choosing. Like any other band in the contest, it is one group’s expression of a medley. A medley of melodies, one that starts off in one planned place and ends in another.

In orchestrating medleys, we can rest and be thankful.

M.