The Bagpipe Society

Starting Drone

One of the ‘perks’ of being Chanter editor is that from time to time I can take the opportunity to blow my own trumpet. I don’t do much public performance these days except occasionally playing

the pipes with my Morris team - but on the 6th March I played support for a gig by Sarah McQuaid, ably assisted by my daughter Micayla on ukulele. That might be considered a strange mixture by some people but I think it worked quite well - you can judge for yourself by visiting my Youtube channel ‘Pibydd’.

A few changes within the Society are currently in

progress. Firstly, we have a new Society Logo as depicted on this and future editions of Chanter. This depicts a jaunty little fellow in medieval garb playing a set of medieval-ish pipes - it’s not meant to be a technical drawing so, please, no

comments about supposed innacuracies, like the fact that he’s playing with the bag under the right arm. And yes, we know there are technical features on the pipes missing, like stocks etc. It’s the spirit of the thing that matters… The artwork is by Rima Staines by the way, as is another design featuring a green man plus bagpipes. Both designs should be available as T-shirts and other products by the time you read this by visiting: http://www.cafepress.com/BagpipeSociety for the Logo design, and http://www. cafepress.co.uk/BagpipeSocietyGreenMan for the Green man design.

Another change which should have happened by the time you read this, or by the Blowout, is a fancy new Bagpipe Society website. This has been/is being constructed by Andy Letcher, our Publicity Officer, and website designer Joe Wass, and hopefully it will help raise the profile of the Society as the old website

was getting decidedly dated.

Part of the new website is going to be an archive of articles which have appeared

in past articles of Chanter and other Society publications. I have been contacting authors for their permission to include their articles on the website (and to date, no-one I have been able to contact has declined) and as a result have prepared a load of articles from during my tenure as editor for Andy to include. When it’s all up and running we’ll be going back in time and adding articles from older publications.

From now on, though, it will be assumed that authors of articles submitted to Chanter also agree that they may in time appear on the website.

The Bagpipe Society has now made a very substantial donation to the Kenneth Van Jackman Memorial Fund. As explained previously, this was money we had accumulated in our US bank account, which since the advent of Paypal had become redundant though still being subject to bank charges. The committee felt it

appropriate that these funds should be utilised in the US on the grounds that it was more efficient to do so as there would be no currency exchange charges to incur, and after all this money had been accumulated from US members in the first place.

Richard Shuttleworth writes: ‘The Memorial Fund now stands at $4,450, including Bagsoc’s donation, and this figure will increase as the executors to the Jackman estate sell some of his instruments and music that are surplus to requirements. A second memorial concert planned for October, 2011 will raise further funds; this may well become an annual event. All proceeds from the fund will be used to encourage people, especially young people, to take up the pipes and become proficient players so that piping may offer a lifetime’s source of enjoyment and pleasure.’

It has been agreed that Steve Bliven, who has long promoted the Bagpipe Society in the States, will be the Bagpipe Society’s representative with the Memorial Fund to ensure that our members’ donation is being appropriately utilised.