Here’s the scoop: After meeting and date number three or so they start talking a little about their families. He says to her something like, “my Mum’s family comes from a little place in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland: Benbecula”. “Yikes”, thinks my sister – or something like that. That’s where my father’s mother comes from!

So it turns out that the Benbecula village, or maybe more rightly stated, “enclave of houses”, that is Torlum, Benbecula, forms a seriously common thread for both of them. On the birth of their first child I have a feeling they were on high alert for overly close eyes – or, worse, only one: mid-forehead.

Of course, all’s well but interesting to learn more of my brother-in-law’s family; most probably, my family.

Here’s a tune he passed to me. Provided here at his courtesy. I looked at this and thought right away that the way to find out more about it was to talk to Reay Mackay, a Godfather of North American piping.

Reay is a veritable fountain of piping knowledge, a child prodigy and so a person who has made music through a good chunk of 20th century piping life. In his insight to this tune, he didn’t disappoint.

This tune, “Alex MacMillan”, is my brother-in-law’s grandfather [**small world alert**born in Torlum one year after my grandmother with the same surname as my grandmother's mother, the 1891 Scottish census shows both families living in Torlum at that time ... I digress]. It was written by Donald Ewen Macpherson from Skye. Reay relayed yet another fascinating back-story to this manuscript [I admit: it's the second back-story that may interest you].

First, the tune is really good. We both agree, it’s full of merit, clearly written by an accomplished musician and completely playable and worthy of competition. Second, **small world alert** the manuscript is from the hand of Murdo MacLeod, one of Reay’s teachers and Benbecula emigrant – and, just by the way, a pupil of John MacDougall Gillies.

Reay said he could recognize Murdo’s hand anywhere and has copies of tunes written in the same stylish pen. So here we have a tune for a Benbecula man, composed by a Skyeman and in the hand of another Benbecula man – all immigrants to the Toronto-Hamilton area, you’d have to think they were all good pals.

But the really interesting thing about this is related to the composer of “Alex MacMillan”.

Donald Ewen Macpherson was something else: a real all-rounder. Not saying the guy could just play jigs and the big music, no, this guy could play the whole gamut of bagpipe music and highland dance, toss the caber and do all the heavy events – and do them well. In fact, as Pipe Major of the Royal Scots he won the wrestling championship of the British armed services [William Donaldson, “The Highland Pipe and Scottish Society: 1750-1950"].

Macpherson was a man cut from the all-rounder rough cloth of John MacColl and D.C. Mather. Though those guys, while Highland dancers [the kind of Highland dancing, by the way, the Gaelic College is so down on], didn’t seem as big on the heavy events. Not like our Donald Ewen Macpherson.

So what’s the deal with Donald Ewen Macpherson and his buckshot aim at all the prizes on offer at the Highland games?

We only have to look to Donaldson for a little insight. Referring to the early days of the twentieth century he notes the problem [p. 205] of the “same old names” turning up in the solo piping prize lists with the “struggling young player” never seeming to catch a break. I suggest that’s probably an age-old problem. Though pipers like Donald Ewen Macpherson had a solution to covering their travel – and other – expenses: they competed in all the events they were able:

“Given such difficulties, some young pipers preferred to concentrate on track and field events, where arcane considerations of authority and reputation did not predetermine the outcome, where they did not have to bear written accreditation from social superiors before they could even enter (as was the case with piping events at a number of games, including the Northern Meeting), and where victory and defeat were normally unequivocal. Robert Meldrum recalled one of his own pupils, Donald Ewen Macpherson of Skye, ‘who was a most promising piper, playing some splendid piobaireachds, but he preferred the athletics side of the games…”

Indeed he did. He emigrated to Toronto and, according to Reay, opened a gym on Queen Street in Toronto, one of the city’s main streets. Signs, like this tune, point to his continued involvement in the piping world.

So, there you have it: an interesting story and damned fine tune – all courtesy of my brother-in-law.

That’s Brother-in-law: thanks to our small world, with the biggest of upper case Bs.

M.

PS. Interesting to note that on emigrating to Canada Alex MacMillan joined the 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish) and in WWI fought at the Somme serving in the same regiment, and battles, as piper James Richardson, VC.

From left we have Julie Wilson (who today looks very much like this young girl), Andrew Berthoff (Julie’s hubby and resembling, here, a Simon Le Bon wannabe), me (in turn, resembling a corpulent sort of forshadowing of the Harry Potter character), a bearded Jim McGillivray, the ever-smiling Lillian Livingstone and Bill Livingstone, showing just a hint of hockey hair.

Forget T S Eliot and his crappy April, I say November is the cruelest month – at least for us in the northern hemisphere. We’re surrounded by nothing but grey (and not the good kind): short days, long nights, and not much in the way of shimmery snow and invigorating crisp cold. Cheery? Not so much.

So, rotten November, my mucky motivation for today posting this happy pic; I’m sure November exists as it does to encourage our yearning for times like long August days and for places like Cafe Gandolfi (and, by the way, for their unsurpassed Stornoway black puddings – avec champignons [of course - just sayin']).

We know you can’t have your peaks without your valleys and November – and, um, early December – counts as a valley!

On reflection, I’m reminded, too, in part from this photo, that friends and family are everything.

Bring on the Yuletide season!

M.

My timing wasn’t great in looking to get the job done: a recital here, a concert there; on the cusp of the hardcore bagpipe performing season, April is not the best month to be without pipes. Whatever. I forged ahead and shipped the pipes overseas by Fedex and their super-expensive-jig-time-delivery route. Kenny assured a speedy turnaround – the norm for McCallum, by the way. We didn’t bank on the customs equation and unfortunately my “horns”, as Scott MacAulay might’ve said, were tied up in London for about a week – ugh!

Long-story-short: for about a month I didn’t play many tunes on the big pipes. I did, of course, finally get my customs-delayed pipes and have to say I’m thrilled with hallmark outstanding McCallum attention and workmanship. But this is not the point of my note today. It’s about practice.

Right. Here’s the thing. With only a week and a half on the pipes I trotted out to the Livingstone Invitational contest – and sucked. Really not great. Not even good. Since receiving my revitalized pipes I had pulled together at home what I thought were solid “living room performances”. But bring on judges and a room full of critical/”nurturing” ears, well, it’s just not the same thing.

Practice is everything. To make it look easy, to be able to deliver something interesting in an environment of stress and distraction (like a competition), well, that just takes practice – and lots of it.

This past week I was working with a young pupil on his pibroch. He was playing really nicely. Hands creating engaging rhythm and technique – and music, too – but, oh, for the blooters . Note mistake here, note error there. Blooters don’t cut it in bagpipe competitions – let alone score-tracking pibroch events. I coudn’t prevent him from making note errors but I could find out a few facts – like how much he practiced.

I found that this promising – and quite excellent – young piper played though each of his two competitive pibroch tunes once every daily practice sess. NOT ENOUGH!

Until a piper get to a place where s/he has a comprehensive understanding of pibroch structure and form, one run-through on the horns is just not enough to burn the score on the personal hard drive. My prescription for this piper was to double his effort: he had to play each tune twice on the pipes – every day. And, if still falling to error-making, extra chanter work was in order.

My pupil wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of more practice (“what about other stuff, my marches, strathspeys and reels and all that!?”).

Suck it up, I say. The old line is so true: if it was easy everyone would do it.

Lauryn Hill nailed it when she said, “you don’t know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It’s all in the practice”.

S/he who can play bagpipes well must surely be the poster child for the hard practice brigade.

M.

I’ve taken some pics and include them here. Maybe someone can shed more light on the persons who won the prizes (there are two names listed both with the surname Walker). There are no longer games in Lucknow, St Catherines or Hamilton. I’ve never heard of competitions in Lucknow (a place I’ve only passed through driving north to Kincardine) or St Catherines. We know, of course, St Catherines produced a great pipe band in Clan MacFarlane, but these medals pre-date the band by decades.

Anyway, a little bit of history. These medals suggest a busy games scene in southern Ontario as far back as 1870. Look at the workmanship on these babies! Hand engraving. They really are lovely pieces of our history. And I always think that when it comes to bagpipes, pipers everywhere share a big collective history: a history without borders.

I cheekily include – for fun – a pic of what the overall solo piping winner is awarded at the North American Championships, at Glengarry Highland Games. Not sure anyone – even they with more dollars than sense – will be buying this at an auction in 140 years.

So I can say today, that the nicest prizes I have are those I never won.

M.

At this point in February I’m fed the eff up with it. Like a lot of you, I’d guess – at least the you in the northern hemisphere. Of course for you lucky Antipodeans, it’s nothing but bonnie summer days.

I’m cleaning out the office this gloomy Saturday afternoon and got side-tracked flipping through an old photo album; one that belonged to my late Uncle Robert. I came across one gem that reminded me how lucky I am – or how lucky we are – to live when we do. It’s a photo of my father, William, probably taken with a Brownie camera around 1936. Scrawled on the original in my grandmother’s hand, “Bulwer school bus”.

Bulwer is a small farming community in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. My father’s family settled here in July 1929 after emmigrating from Scotland courtesy of a World War I veterans’ program (I can’t imagine it was called a “program” in those days).

Anyway, some school bus: a horse-drawn sledge!

It looks pretty, um, basic to me: there appears to be windows and, well, horses. And that’s about it. Brrrrrrrr. I guess it beat the one or two mile trudge in the snow from farm to school but the horse-drawn sledge reminds me that winter in rural Canada in the 1930s probably wasn’t all that cosy – or easy. It would’ve been very different, wouldn’t it?

No afternoons at the mall, or the “food court”, or the movies, or the PlayStation, or the Internet …

But, then, there was dashing through the snow.

M.

The MacCrimmons: that fabled sixteenth century piping family of virtuoso geniuses. The MacCrimmons, of course, were [and to a lesser extent, I suppose are] the family that provided piping services to the expansive MacLeod clan.

There’s controversy around the MacCrimmon family. Their origins, their piping genius – even their existence – have occasionally come to be a topic of discussion, if not debate – mainly among pipery types (who else would be bothered?).

Anyway, I’m fessing up here: I’m one who believes they lived – well, we know they lived – but I believe many of them living as stratospherically brilliant musicians. I mean, just look at Euan and Calum for sweet evidence of my contention.

My intention today is just to say this: if you’re looking for a monumentally excellent moment, a cool life experience (this goes for anyone – regardless where you live), I suggest – no, I say – for an unforgettable moment in your time, well, head to Skye.

I respectfully suggest that like the devout followers of Islam and the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, a trip to Skye and the site of the MacCrimmon school at Borreraig is a near-must for Great Highland Bagpipers.

It may not be the religious experience that is the Hajj. But it is special. I’ve ventured to Borreraig a number of times and have always come away a better piper for it.

Go to Borreraig. Bring your pipes. Play a tune.

You’ll not forget the experience – ever.

Now there’s a New Year’s resolution.

M.

And what’s that percentage? GHBs represent about 0.0014931492726393354 of the world’s population. More or less.

Should pipers feel vulnerable? I think I really refer to the pipe and not the piper so, I put it this way: is the playing of the GHB an at-risk art form?

I’m not sure. In a way, I guess, the GHB is extremely vulnerable: the music is very loud and in-your-face. It usually takes patience and thought to take in, understand and appreciate — all rare commodities in our modern, urban, short attention-spanned world. Oh yeah, and not many people play the GHB.

Bagpipe music is not pop music. It never will be. It’s a genre of folk music that survives in the twenty-first century world thanks to passionate pipers [and competitions - note to self: blog this subject]. Sure there are a few parts of the world where the GHB will always find a welcome home and a place to be heard, like, say, the north of Scotland, but a continued and thriving global GHB depends on passionate pipers, particularly those who teach.

I used to teach a lot. Teaching bagpipes kept a little money in my pocket through my late teens and well into my twenties. I had the time, interest (and need for cash) that provided the push that saw me teach scores of pipers. It takes time and real energy to devote quality teaching time to an aspiring piper. Today I wish I had more of it. But we all do what we can and most of us contribute to the art form the best way we’re able.

Passing on what we know to other pipers is vital for a continued and vibrant art form, one that the GHB represents.

Hats off to those of us who devote time and energy to teaching, to creating a new generation of GHBers. If you can, teach.

For me, yep, I’ve always kept the group teaching, the workshops, going but can say today I have only one pupil.

Well, it’s a start.

And for a look at what triggered today’s homily, here’s one of my prize pupils, Jenny Hazzard of Woodbridge, Ontario and Edinburgh – one of the best pipers anywhere. I stumbled on this photo today.

Here’s Jenny playing one of her first tunes on the pipes, performed in the basement of my parent’s house on Coppermill Drive, Toronto:

She’s hardly changed a bit! Go Jenny!

M.

I remember, a couple of years back, standing on at the side of Loch Langass in North Uist and sending and receiving BlackBerry messages. There I was, standing on a pretty great example of desolate landscape, a heap of land in the midst of the North Atlantic, and still, there I was, in “real-time” contact with most of the rest of the world. That’s amazing. Really.

Think about it: it wasn’t until 1956 that direct overseas dialling came to be [think, too, on that "dialling" point, how many of us are now adults and have never "dialled" a phone]. Until 1956, all overseas calls were operator-assisted [and more piping trivia: D R MacLennan, half-brother to George Stewart, won the Oban medal, that year, in 1956, his double gold medal year].

Technology has brought most all of us so much closer together and I have to think it’s a really good thing. I guess, how close is too close, too much, is maybe a thought for another day.

Just a reflective thought for a really lazy Sunday afternoon.

M.

From my earliest piping years its been Blair Drummond: A tune that’s both a perennial pipe band March, Strathspey and Reel favourite and a tune at the top of any top solo piper’s competing strategy.

I’ve always thought of BD as a great tune and yet if you’re to google “Blair Drummond” there is zippo bagpipe-pipe band-drum reference until around about the one hundred and tenth entry. Eek. And that reference is a year 2000 world’s CD.

Anyway, I’ll say now that Blair Drummond hasn’t found it’s way on my list by design. It’s been by chance. The tune is not one of my solo favourites. Yet, due to its six-part nature (and, therefore, part of a small and select group of pipe band repertoire) it’s the trophy wife [husband? Blair is a bit of a masculine given name, to my mind] of untold competing pipe band’s competition sets. In my many years playing in grade one pipe bands, there are few where BD wasn’t a featured strathspey. In fact, the 78th Fraser Highlanders of the olden days won a worlds with BD.

Anyway, a just a thought for the day – a hot day if you are in my neck of the woods.

I hope that the tune at the top of your own most-played list merits its place.

M.

In this list I’ve stayed away from competition winning streaks; I’m not sure record-breaking fits in that well with the definition I’m using: those moments that might be defined as “highly original and influencing the development of future events”.

So here’re my five “seminal” moments; I haven’t cast them in stone, of course, and these could all change tomorrow:

1. Friday, Janaury 18, 1901 – 9:30 pm – MacDonald, Morrison and Norris meet in the Horse Shoe Bar, Drury Lane, Glasgow and devise the three pace drum roll to the bagpipe ‘E’ note to commence the pipe band performance of a march tune alongside a strathspey and reel. Pipe bands never looked back.

2. Saturday, June 22, 1957 (month/day to be confirmed) – Drumming maestro Alex Duthart, with his drum corps of Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band, wins the first of his 14 world drum corps championships. This moment marks the sort of official comming of age of his pipe band drumming style. A virtuosic and musical way of scoring and interpreting that is standard today.

3. Monday, September 21, 1959 – 12:15 pm (date/time to be confirmed) – Bob Hardie agrees to take on the leadership of the Muirheads & Sons Pipe Band from Jackie Smith. Pipe Major Hardie builds on Smith’s already excellent band to create a legend. Hardie’s band creates a sustained level of musical excellence that is reflected in their refined musical phrasing, sophisticated technique and tight unison. Without Hardie and Muirheads we would not see pipe bands evolve as they have.

4. Saturday, August 13, 1983 – Boghall & Bathgate Caldeonia Pipe Band play their medley at the World Pipe Band Championships begining with the “The Big Road Brusher”. This excellent tune, written by accordion player, Bob Abbott, marked the beginning of a generation’s worth of medley openers and created, it might be said, a new form: the pipe band “marchpipe” or “reelpipe”. Here’s a 1984 rendition:

5. Wednesday, August 12, 1987 – 8:00 pm – 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, concert in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. This evening represented the output of a dynamic musical collective that was the band at that time and signalled a change in the way many pipe bands build and portray their music [full disclosure: I was part of the band that played this show].

I can think of at least five other moments but blogs work best in fives, don’t you think.

You’ll have your own moments, I’m sure.

M.