International Bagpipe Festival Strakonice 2004

This edition is from our archives, so it is presented as scanned pages rather than text.

HURDY-GURDIES AND PUBLIC SAFETY—THE ALARMING FACTS EMERGE
by Julian Goodacre

Just how safe are hurdy-gurdies? For some time this question has worried the building and medical professions, but it appears that no research in Britain has been carried out in this field. In the light of the disaster at Aldershot, 11th September I feel it is time to press the government into setting up a well-funded enquiry.

The disaster to which I refer occurred at the Blowzabella weekend on Sunday 6th in the foyer of the Aldershot West End Arts Centre. At approximately 2.15pm a large portion of the bar collapsed. Fortunately the bar was closed, as its floor became a mass of broken glasses and bottles mixed with several gallons of spirits. It would be easy to dismiss this accident as unforeseeable—an Act of God—but I believe it was deliberate. For the previous forty hours there had been a variety of sessions in front of the bar—some of them involving up to fourteen hurdy-gurdies, all playing simultaneously. Shortly before this disaster there was a session with three hurdy-gurdies.

I am of the opinion that when two or more hurdy-gurdies employ their trumpettes simultaneously it can cause molecular realignment, which can seriously weaken masonry and other building materials. The greater the number of trumpettes, the greater the structural damage they can cause.

The French are looking this problem far more seriously than the British. Anyone who has been to the Festival at St. Chartier will see evidence of this. It must be the largest gathering of hurdy-gurdies in the world and the organisers have had the wisdom to run it as an outdoor event taking place in the grounds of an old Chateau. Even though it takes place outdoors the Chateau and its surrounding buildings have suffered considerably from the annual throng of molecular bombardment they receive from the hideous buzzing of several hundred hurdy-gurdies. During the last twelve months a portion of one of the towers collapsed and some segments of a parapet became so unsafe that they had to be removed. Portions of the outbuilding are now little more than ruins.

In the village square where much music and dancing takes place from midnight to sunrise the organisers have taken sensible precautions. Two of the dance floors have no walls and thus there is no fear of collapse. The third dance floor has a roof but no solid walls. To ensure that the roof and supports are under as little stress from molecular bombardment as possible the musicians’ platform is placed outside of the covered area.

I shall be pressing my local MP to take up this worrying matter in The House. An enquiry must be begun immediately. Interim guidelines should be issued to all players. Meanwhile I would beg all hurdy-gurdy players to be very sparing in their use of the trumpets and to take all sensible precautions.

Aside from the collapsing Bar Disaster the Blowzabella weekend was extremely enjoyable. Much praise must go to Paul James for programming the whole event. The only suggestion I have for next

year is that on the door of one of the rooms assigned for sleeping be placed a large sign reading: ‘THANK YOU FOR NOT SNORING’

I came across a fascinating item in an American catalogue recently. It’s called The Reedsual and it appears to be an expensive but valuable alternative to the Melton Keynes weekend. It all sounds too good to be true. The catalogue states: ‘The Reedsual makes and repairs all Oboe, English Horn, Bassoon and Bagpipe reeds. Reedsual repairs all sizes of single reeds up to 7 reformings. Reedsual cuts reeds out of blank or semifinished reed stock. Reedsual duplicates a model reed in all its exact proportions and playing qualities. Reedsual makes a reed softer or harder as desired. (Making a reed harder is done by trimming the reed tip until it is very lively hard and then putting a heavier cut on the slightly shortened reed.)’

Does anyone in the society have ‘hands-on’ experience of the Reedsual?

Many readers have been staggered that I have made no mention of Goodacre’s Eaze Pipe since February. Actually the whole matter has been sub-judice for the past seven months pending the outcome of an enquiry. It would appear that there is a police informant among the newsletter readership who grassed to Edinburgh Police Drugs Dept. that I was manufacturing hallucinogenic substances. On a fateful evening in March I answered a loud knock on my door and 15 swarthy Peace Officers burst into the kitchen and removed a large portion of its contents including half a bowl-full of Sharon’s finest Tapioca pudding. All the materials I had been using in my Eaze Pipe experiments were similarly confiscated after being placed in self-seal polythene bags.

I was fortunate that I had previously solved the mystery of the hallucinogenic side effects. It appears that the rye malt extract I had been using had been infected with ergot. This produces effects similar to Lysergic Acid. I had disposed of the entire infected batch shortly before the police raid.

I have written nine letters to the Times about this—none of which have been published. I am waiting for a police apology and the return of all Eaze Pipe ingredients, tapioca pudding, etc.

J.G.

The illustration to the right was sent in by anonymous donors (not quite anon.; they call themselves Cornamusements Inc.). Didn’t know where to put it so I thought I’d stick it here.

For those of you sick and tired of this Newsletter’s ‘tin’ jokes, an examination of Chaucer and Julian’s catalogue will reveal all.

Whoever you are Cornamusements Inc., please send more! It would make a great regular spot.

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FESTIVAL OF EUROPEAN PIPING IN EDINBURGH by John Gardacre

Although the bagpipe is the national instrument of Scotland and the Edinburgh museums together contain a magnificent collection of bagpipes, it is only recently that efforts have been made to develop the Edinburgh International Folk Festival at Easter into a European Piping Festival. The work has already for some years included a Harp Festival. Last year Hamish Moore contributed his first week of ‘could wind’ piping classes and there was a varied piping concert at the end. This year these were repeated and the whole programme broadened to cover many aspects of piping and pipe making.

Traditional Scottish piping was represented by two striking bands, the Shotts and Dykehead Caledonia Band and the Monckton Hill Band, and by two promising young soloists, Martyn Bennett and Stuart Reid. Anyone who thinks that such players are committing themselves to a hidebound tradition should listen to some of the more progressive music being played by both soloists and bands. Jim Sutherland, though not a piper himself, has contributed some smashing new-style tunes to the ‘Scottish rhythm and swing’ played by his group the Easy Club at their concert. They were not the only ones to be playing this jaunty piping ‘jazz’. The Easy Club Reel. In another direction Mark Duff, who plays recorder and whistles in the young group Capercaillie, slipped in a line on the Leicestershire small pipe to effect in one song.

Another departure from the main Scottish tradition is the revival of the solo Ireland tradition of border and small pipes. In his recitals Hamish Moore has the advantage of being able to draw on his experience as a highland piper and to select techniques and music from the Highland tradition that suit his fellows pipers. He also has the gift of being able to explain to his pupils the minute details of what exactly he is aiming at, at each point in a tune and to give them precise comment even though their individual techniques may never be in the copies of his own. For many pipers interested in this repertoire the week began with the annual competition of the Lowland and Border Piper’s Society, although this was not mentioned in the Festival programme. This is intentionally a relaxed event, to dispel any idea of a formal championship, and many styles of playing are welcomed, from border pipes played as if they were Highland pipes to small pipes sounding more like Northumbrian pipes and with an overlapping repertoire. This year the range was extended in more ways than one by Jonathan Swann’s entry, playing his own developed half-long pipes. If Scottish pipers had difficulty in accepting these as border pipes rather than as a French chanter with common stock-drones, they might welcome them instead as a new form of the pastoral pipes of the eighteenth century.

The Northumbrian tradition was represented by Chris Miller, who is pushing his technique to the limits, especially concentrating on high speed repeated notes with the left thumb, like the Scottish doubling and trebling on the top A. Irish pipes were played by Peter Smith from Dublin and Eugene Lamb from the west coast of Ireland, who is also a distinguished maker. They both can produce that sparkling trickle of tiny notes that dance on the edge of the drones without counting themselves to plunge into haronny with them. The Glasgow group Setanta, who play Scottish and Irish music, were playing for the last time with their Irish pipes player David Munro, who is moving south.

A Hungarian group, Makirag, played exciting string music and also a couple of tunes using a bagpipe. One aim seems to have been to obtain some western currency by selling the instrument between returning home. The central French tradition was represented by Andre Kierus, the virtuoso cabrette player from the Auvergne, accompanied on diatonic accordion by Jacques Laveigne. Arresting Spanish music was contributed by Los Raperigos, a group from Galicia who play gaita, whistle and percussion.

An innovation this year was an exhibition or trade stand event of two days, ‘Meet the Pipemakers’, an opportunity to browse, ask questions and even try out pipes of different kinds. It was also a chance for interchange between the various makers there; but there was never a sufficient crowd of visitors at any one time to justify the planned sequence of lectures and demonstrations by makers.

Another innovation was the series of Piping Festival lectures given on the last day. Hamish Moore sketched in some of the historical background to present day lowland piping, the transition from pitch tuning to modern chromatic tuning, the hunt but reported an hopes for the future of ‘breaking down the barriers’ between lowland and the construction of Irish pipes and Peter Brown spoke about their music. He maintained that while there were distinct regional styles of fiddle playing, piping styles were more personal. This might be because until recently there were so few pipers playing in Ireland. He prefers jigs and reels to hornpipes, which are ‘more European than Irish’ and have ’no sadness’.

Xan Silver, with Los Raperigos, gave an expert introduction and demonstration of their music, starting from simple percussion instruments and the gaita as a solo instrument and concluding with ‘composed’ music and ‘classical arrangements’, sometimes using three gaitas in harmony.

The principal theme for the piping festival was stated by Hugh Cheape in his talk ‘The European Roots of Scottish Piping’, illustrated with diagrams (instead of the musical examples) in the other talks. He is assistant Keeper at the Royal Scottish Museum and is actively campaigning to win for the bagpipe collections in the Edinburgh national museums the recognition of their international importance and the public display that they deserve, In sorting and cataloguing the pipes he has been struck by the variety of types represented and the fact that few of them conform to what we know as the standard Highland pipes. This is not just because pipes to museums are often cast-offs and the ‘real’ pipes remained in use. His researches into old illustrations and publications, types of music and tune names all confirm the pattern: the development of the Scottish pipes must be accounted a nineteenth century movement, part of the re-adoption of a Highland identity for the whole of Scotland. Before then the Scottish pipe music was recognisably part of the European song and dance tradition.

The foundations have been laid for a British piping festival of European scope, in the most appropriate venue in the world. This year it was supported by Scottish, Irish, English, French and Spanish cultural bodies and pipers’ societies. Now it is hoped that EEC support can be obtained via the EEC Cultural Co-operation Committee likewise. Much has been achieved by the Festival Administrator, Marian Ramsay, under the ofbeat festival directorship of Robin Morton and with the enthusiastic help of the others. What is needed is a presiding genius to pursue energetically the ideas that have been thrown around so far. Marsh can hardly be expected to undertake this in addition to the classes and his concert commitments. The whole project is so much in line with the aims of our bagpipe society that the least we can do is to wish success to the new director, Archie Fisher. But there must also be some way in which we can actively show our support and help him and Marian Ramsay continue and develop such good work. Next year the Festival will be from March 25th to April 3rd and the Festival of European Piping will be concentrated on the second weekend, April 1st-3rd. Write for fuller details, which should be ready around Christmas.

RECORD REVIEW by Simon Owers
XORIMA–KORIMA Edigal Bell 70007
This is the first, and only record, by this young Galician group Korima, but one hopes that they make more and very soon. They are a five-piece band who compose most of their own material, which is very strongly rooted in the traditional idiom. The influence of Breton and Scottish music makes itself plain in some of their wholly instrumental items, but it is the Galician traditional influences that shape most of the tunes. In these days of increasing cultural homogenization it is most refreshing to find a group that respects the traditions of its own culture while still being responsive to cultures of others. To me, this is the only way to put a cultural heritage to good use, without a continuous evolutionary process, any culture becomes fossilized and its practitioners risk becoming intolerant of differing philosophies or traditions which consequent disastrous results at either personal or national level. (End of digression.)

While always retaining a keen sense of dynamics and textures, Korima are a very high-energy group which has a great fondness for playing very fast. In the hands of technically unaccomplished groups this approach can result in a chaotic thrash that is infinitely more fun for the player than the bass-would listener. Here, however, the excellent arrangements and playing skills keep such excursions under tight rein.

The band features two gaitas, bombards, recorders, bozouk, guitar, accordion, bass, piano/synthesiser and assorted percussion. The use of piano as an upfront instrument is a salutory reminder of how effective it can be when played thoughtfully (all too rare in most folk bands). The gaita playing is deadly accurate even at high speed (which is not to say that the playing is gratuitously speedy, but only where it is most effective). The bombard playing is also excellent, and really lifts some of the tunes with its clarion tone.

Nearly every tune on this record is a strong one which leaves you whistling it for long afterwards, and the arrangements all leave room for exploration of dynamics and texture. Thankfully, a lot of folk bands are moving away from the all start, all play, all finish approach to tune playing, and Korima’s arrangements are exemplary in bringing out the most in the material. Of all the tracks, I could single out the closing one for special mention. In two parts, the first is a panderiada (named after the dance named after the drum – the pandeiro – used to provide the rythms which motors along very smartly with the two gaitas taking the main part. Following this, the second part is the well-known Up of Slurs which is taken up by the piano and whistle at a pace which makes you wonder how long they can keep it up until the bagpipes make a re-appearance at Warp Factor Nine, leaving you (me anyway) breathless by the time it’s over. The articulation used by the gaitas on this difficult tune is razor sharp, giving clarity to the melody while bundling it along in a way that makes your average jig sound like a slow air. Brilliant!

File under essential purchase.
This record is available from Collatt’s or if not by mail order (along with all other Galician and other Spanish records) from ARPAFOLK,
S.O.

IN SEARCH OF THE 100 BAGPIPERS
by Paul Miller

Most of you will have received a circular a month or two back inviting you to join the British-Bulgarian Friendship society on their trip to the Rozen folkore festival in Bulgaria for something less than a bargain price (23688+extras? must be a joke). Being a seasoned traveller of the Balkans but having made only one trip to Bulgaria, which was somewhat limited due to having acquired a plastered leg on the way, I decided to make my own way there. So armed with a cheap charter ticket to Yugoslavia, a visa for Bulgaria (£20?) must have been another joke) and against the advice of Bulgoraphil friends who warned that events like this have a habit of getting cancelled at the last minute, I set off for Rozen.

Looks like I should have heeded their advice, Because when I got there all the posters had been overprinted with a new date - the festival had been postponed for a week!

So what happened? Were the promised 100 bagpipers too busy like I was, queuing for bread? Was it because long-standing party leader Todor Zhivkov was being ousted from power because he doesn’t get on with Gorbacev (The order to take his portraits down came while I was there.) Local officials were not to be found and those not in authority were as clueless as any Bulgarian is about what is happening in the country.

Anyway, your intrepid Bagpipe Society member had to miss the festival as my charter flight left from Yugoslavia while the festival was on… I wasn’t too sorry to miss the 100 bagpipers, except for the fact that they would have been playing the local instrument, the Kaba Gaida which has a beautiful deep tone distinct from most other bagpipes. The idea of playing 100 together is probably not traditional but more probably the idea of some official or committee; still, I was curious to know what they would have sounded like. In certain villages in Macedonia there is a tradition of playing large numbers of Gajdas (or Gajdi in the plural) together and in the village of Dolneni they can still manage an ensemble of 10 players and pretty amazing they sound too, but Pece Atanasovski, Macedonia’s most famous Gajda player who comes from that village tells me that it once was able to muster 100 players. So it looks like the Bulgarians stole the idea from the Macedonians!

Anyway this was supposed to have been a report on the festival. Instead I have to ask if any members did actually make it to the festival on the presumably rescheduled BBFS trip? Or did they turn up the wrong weekend as well?

P.M.

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LORIENT THROUGH THE DRINKING GLASS by Simon Owen

For the bagpiper, the Lorient Interceltic festival in Brittany is like a course of aversion therapy. If nine days of continuous bagpipes can’t cure you of being involved with them, nothing will! For most people, of course, nothing will. Imagine some four thousand participants, a large percentage of whom play bagpipes (generally Highland or Galias), playing virtually continuously from afternoon till dawn; music of the spheres to some, souls in torment to others.

Each Celtic nation sends a delegation to the Lorient Festival, and it is easy to lose track of who is currently claiming to be Celtic. It took several years for Galicia to be accepted in to the Celtic fold, and now their neighbours and fellow Gaelters, Asturias, are claiming Celtic nationhood. Although neither has been accepted into the League of Celtic Nations, such distinctions count for very little when you have such exuberant people and wonderful music.

The Welsh contingent was a massive ten musicians (seven of PENCERDD and three of CROMLECH), although we did manage a good showing on the bagpipe front, with myself and Richard Brown from Pencerdd and Peter Davies of Cromlech using various beasts of burden. Welsh music has never had the highest of reputations in the past, being either unbearably polite and bland Elsftedfa-type parlour music or choral singing excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan (as I heard when I was on the festival a few years previously) We were determined, therefore, to keep a high profile and continue the trend started in the last few years of the more progressive Welsh groups such as Aberjaber.

On arrival at two in the afternoon, we passed the main marquee which had a sign saying that Pencerdd would be playing at four o’clock. This left very little time for any apprehension and no time at all to gauge the standard of the other groups or the mood of the audience! I wondered how, in such a short time, they could manage to do sound checks, but in the field of chackling and settling up, I feel that the Lorient organization has hit on an excellent arrangement. Each group is given an hour-long slot in which to set up and perform. If they tinker with microphones for most of that hour and play for only a few minutes, that is up to them. To my mind, nothing is more frustrating than endless and often self-indulgent sound checks which can last longer than the actual performance. In addition, the sound crews were excellent and really understood what the groups were doing, following the music and mixing accordingly.

Our first performance went tolerably well, and we finished with a set of Welsh tunes played by myself and Richard on two pipes, having hung a large Welsh flag from the drone of mine to indicate that it was a Welsh bagpipe (gaita gallega?). We were closely questioned afterwards by a newspaper reporter on why we used gaitas, and what had happened to Welsh bagpipes. The result of this conversation was the following newspaper paragraph which demonstrates that he took my answers for less than gospel truth!

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Cherchez l’intrus…

[Image: Surprise pour les festivaliers assemblés samedi après-midi, sous le chapiteau des arts : un jour de gaîté figurait au nombre des musiciens de groupe gaëlls]

Pencerdé, « La goIte, m’a-t-il expliqué, ressemble à la cornemuse gaëllole au Moyen Age. » (?)

Having settled into the routine fairly quickly, certain things became obvious. Primarily among these was the enthusiasm of the Lorient and Vittelng public for informal playing. Setting up in a bar inevitably resulted in many free drinks and a lot of interest. As with a lot of festivals, this was the best part of the proceedings, especially for meeting and playing with other musicians. Most nights we would play, usually in the same bar, until four or five in the morning. Fortunately, concerts did not resume until the afternoon, the morning’s only activity being a parade by a different pipe band every day.

Although a group’s concert schedule is by no means arduous, we hardly got to see half of the other concerts that were on. However there were several outstanding groups: the Gallican Luar la Lubre, whose gaitero had a deeply wonderful three-drone gaita; also from Galicia, Armegüi, who feature more vocal music than is usually associated with bands having two gaiteros. Although Asturian music is not so immediately memorable or exciting as Galician, I enjoyed the young Asturian group Lian de Cubel, who featured an excellent gaitero. Not to everyone’s taste were the Gallican rock group Brath, who integrated the gaita very well into rock numbers with firm traditional feeling, but were less successful at rocking up actual traditional tunes, which were a bit too simple for such elaborate treatment and ended up a little over-dressed.

Although Irish music is not exactly my favourite to listen to (rather than play), I could not help but be impressed by the absurdly young and extremely talented Irish groups, especially Slabh and Tamalin. Unfortunately I missed seeing Davy Spillane, who I think was performing solo and also missed hearing Calticants, who are an Italian band using the ‘bags’ (the North Indian pipe resurrected by Massimo Fumagalli) and are a very theatrical and musically very exciting group.

For the bagpiper the wonder of the event was not in the variety of bagpipes on show, as would be the case in St. Chartier, but the sheer weight of numbers of sets of pipes around, usually Highland or Gaitas. A common sight at mealtimes would to a bagpipe mountain stacked up while their owners partook of the excellent food. On several occasions I was transfixed by a pile of Antonio Corral gaitas twenty or thirty deep (the Man himself ran an excellent pipe band Gaitas de Xarabal); surely they wouldn’t miss just one?

Since the Irish, Scottish and Breton pipe bands use the same pipes (more or less), it was interesting to compare the different styles and repertories. This was made very easy on the day of the Great Parade, when seventy different outfits went in procession along a mile-long course. It took two hours for the whole parade to go by, and most of the participants played pipes. The Breton bagadou seemed to be the most interesting, since the bombarders give them a flexibility of approach to the music which the bagpiper only bands don’t have. For the first time in its history, the parade was not led by the naval bagad of Lorient, Bagad Lann-Bihoué. Pride of place (I this time went to the Frenchmen marching band of two flatau, rauschpfeife and percussion. As the only Welsh representatives willing to process, we were put at the front to avoid upsetting the careful programming of the rest. Apart from the fact that we couldn’t be heard when the bagad turned passes behind us was playing (2 gaitas vs. 20 pipes, 20 bombarders and 8 drums) our only embarrassment was the lack of a national costume. Alex Evans’ suggestion that we went naked painted with blood was not put into practise since it was a chill morning and none of the shops sold woad.

I love the sound of a massed palta marching band, and the Gallican costumes were the most elegant on display, especially those of the men. The Asturian seem less lamboyant, both in costumes and music, although not without charm of their own. They do not go to for large groups of pipers (a dozen or so at the must) and marching is made most uncomfortable due to their amazing three-pronged clogs. The Asturian pipes are outwardly the same as Gallican gaitas except they only ever have one drone (as far as I could see) and have a flared end to the drone rather than the characteristic bottle-shaped ends of the Galician drones. However, they employ exclusively closed fingering as opposed to the Gallican open or semi-closed and the tunes use overblowing as a matter of course, to at least the three finger note of the second octave. The Gallicans very rarely stray above the break and even then only go one or two notes above.

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For us, the highlight of the festival was the night at the fishing port nearby, for which a large boulevard was blocked at each end and six stages erected at intervals on which groups performed from evening until daybreak. Fish was on the menu of nearly every bar and stall from freshly grilled sardines to fish couscous. If they could have made beer from fish, I’m sure they would have done so. By 4am or so the whole 15,000-strong audience was very drunk and very cheerful. A similar event would be impossible to stage in Britain as it would result in the stupid, ignorant and aggressive behaviour that usually seems to accompany a certain stratum of British society. At Lorient however, everyone was fully occupied in enjoying themselves and being friendly to one and all.

Hopefully, we generated a lot more members for the bagpipe society with the large number of leaflets we gave away. There is an exhibition of Lutherie in the main marquee (including, this year, a superb bagpipe maker Dominique Bougé making French and Balkan pipes) at which we might be able to set up a permanent stall next time. It seems that we were well enough received this time to be asked back next year, so I hope to be writing a similar report then. Watch this space.
S.O.

For details of Lorient ’88 contact Simon Owen. We will be advising you through these pages in plenty of time for you to plan your bolts… Ed.

LETTERS

Dear Bagpipe Society,

Re Hale the Piper

The pipes are not shown in any detail but did appear as in the illustration you have but larger in the other, now lost, part of the broadsheet.

The drones clearly have holes. This now makes sense through comparison with other types of weak tuned drones or does it remain as an error on the part of the artist? No means of inflation is visible. ‘Old Hale’s Hornpipe’ used a range of notes from A below the stave to F sharp in the top line - this is worth looking at again (but not available, lost or stolen or mislaid, when asked for last at the local library) (reproduced in John Offord’s book-typist)

The bell on the hale’s pipes appears to be attached by binding or staples; or are they keys?

Was Hale also a pipe maker? There appears to be a lathe in the background with odd, partly finished pieces under it. The lathe itself looks a glance to be very modern and anachronisms appear to abound, what with the tune, the pipes and details from the illustration. Accuracy or concentration?

And as for your blood running cold, is someone trying to tell me something? Hale isn’t such a common name and my musical unconscious has certainly not been developed for me by the last generation of my family. Oddly enough I do a lot of what my paternal grandfather did; he was an ‘Anglo’ concertina player, born in the Black Country, who moved (back?) to Derby. I am an English concertina player with a definite leaning towards practical, repairing, making aspects. Who knows where we both came from?? (Grandfather died before I was born.)

Derrick Hale,

A number of other members have written to draw attention to the item by Jon Swayne on the Hale pipes in John Offord’s book of English Dance Tunes, “John of the Greeny Cheshire Way”. In it Jon casts doubt on the authenticity of the bagpipe itself and suggests that it might be an invention of the artist in an attempt to depict “an instrument current 100 years before his time”….
ed

Dear Bagpipe Society,

I would like to tell you about our Pipeband in Switzerland, the Basle Drum and the Swiss bagpipe.

In Switzerland there are two Pipebands: one in Basle and one in Zürich. There are a few little groups of about three or slightly more members. The pipeband I’m a member of is ten years old now. The very beginning of the band consisted of three members who brought along bagpipes from Scotland without any knowledge of maintenance, tuning, fingering or anything else. Slowly they began to improve their piping after having got aquainted with a Scottish instructor, who normally still comes once a year to Basle, together with a drum instructor. During recent years the band has grown bigger and more experienced. It might be mentioned that the Drum Corps is relatively good, for all the drummers are already very experienced Basle Drummers.

The Basle drum is a low-pitched metal drum with snares and two cowhides which are not as strongly strained as for example the Scottish drum in nowadays. The drum is played sometimes in groups of 50 drummers who play together. Mostly you can see the Basle drum at the “Fasnacht”, which may be known abroad, for the Basle Carnival is very famous.

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The Bagpipe Society

International Bagpipe Festival Strakonice 2004