The Bagpipe Society

Tools of the Trade

Yannis Pantazis and his workshop

The workshop is like a micro cosmos of our planet: All the elements of nature exist in the workshop to serve a purpose … What purpose? To create … The need for creation gives birth to all that we confront and admire. The natural splendour … This universal macrocosm fits into a small workshop. All the elements of the Earth are present.. Water, Air and Earth materials and FIRE! We will see rotational and grammatical movements, electricity and chemicals. All together to witness the creation … in this case a musical instrument.

When constructing a musical instrument it is like waiting for a nymph to become a butterfly … and yet you cannot expect in any way to shorten time. In time it will be revealed. A musical instrument works like this. Sometimes it takes time to be revealed with all its decency. To serve its purpose, to create projects. And all this is a remarkable observation.

My love for the sound of the bagpipe led me to learn and construct musical instruments. When I went to buy my first tsabouna the truth is that I did not know what I was getting myself into. I had not even seen a single photo of one before. My reaction when I first saw it was to feeling that it was “out of this world”. I saw immediately that all the materials are completely natural and, of course, the smell does not leave my doubts about that!

The love for this, my new acquisition, was accompanied by my love of books and especially mythology. Through the tsabouna I discovered the myth with another perspective. Inside me I combined the sound you hear from these timeless stories. A perfectly natural sound that lured me to mountains and sea. Everywhere is the primordial sound of the past.

I decided to fabricate my own instruments only with natural materials given by mother earth. The main material used is the “Reed” which grows with great abundance in the Greek lands and is of excellent quality. With endless myths written about the reed and for its appearance. Even the shavings of the reed are useful. Bones or cane for the mouthpiece, cane and cow-horns for the chanter and the body of a complete goat skin for the bag.

The etymology of the word in Greek WORKSHOP- “Ergastirio” means Creation on Earth. In a musical instrument workshop all the hidden forces of creation help us to expand the our final purpose. To do what we love.