Old style Highland piping

[Padraicog]

Here is a fabulous example of traditional 1800s dance style piping. The MacKenzie Brothers from Mabou are performing in Glasgow at the Celtic Connection Festival in this clip. Enjoy the music, and you pipers out there, why not learn some of these tunes and try and revive this exciting style where you live?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLayjKtWduQ

Slightly misleading in my view. Two of the tunes are modern one by the late Donald MacLeod and the other by Gordon Duncan. Furthermore the style these guys (good though they are) are playing is very common amongst Scottish Pipers and probably has been for a number of years probably even before the MacKenzie brothers were born.

[Nathan]

Slightly misleading in my view. Two of the tunes are modern one by the late Donald MacLeod and the other by Gordon Duncan. Furthermore the style these guys (good though they are) are playing is very common amongst Scottish Pipers and probably has been for a number of years probably even before the MacKenzie brothers were born.

I find your comment interesting. When I say style, the tunes can be new, it's the interpretation of them. If you can point me to other pipers who play a dance style let me know. Listen to the Barry Shears link I posted and tell me if you think he and the MacKenzie brothers play a different style. I haven't heard dance sets like this in Scotland yet, so I'm interested. Maybe Barry is making a more subtle distinction.

Cheers,

N

[neloon]

I find your comment interesting. When I say style, the tunes can be new, it's the interpretation of them. If you can point me to other pipers who play a dance style let me know. Listen to the Barry Shears link I posted and tell me if you think he and the MacKenzie brothers play a different style. I haven't heard dance sets like this in Scotland yet, so I'm interested. Maybe Barry is making a more subtle distinction.

Cheers,

N

Nathan,
I have to say that I don't really find these guys different from the usual Scottish pipers playing for dancing e.g. here in Wester Ross *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-WMWZhXM3Q

Of course, the normal dance music in Scotland is provided by a ceilidh band led by a box player (usually) but, here, on Skye, the two have joined forces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ImYx15Deo

* Not much traffic in Poolewe at Easter!!

Ailean

[OC Richard]

I love Cape Breton music! I listened countless hours to Jerry Holland albums back in the 80s, and spent many an hour listening to the music live at various music camps.

In that MacKenzie Brothers clip, when there's just the piano and fiddle it really sounds Cape Breton to me, but when the piper comes in he's playing in the normal modern Scottish style that you'll hear in any good pipe band. If you heard a Grade One pipe band (be it SFU from BC or FMM from NI or Shotts and Dykehead from Scotland) play that first jig, every piper in the band would be playing it exactly like that fellow is playing it, all the same fingerings and ornamentation and timing and style.

If such a Cape Breton piper was playing in an archaic style brought over from Scotland in the 18th century and perpetuated through the generations, I would expect to see old-fashioned stylistic things, playing more in line with Joseph MacDonald.

[Nathan]

I love Cape Breton music! I listened countless hours to Jerry Holland albums back in the 80s, and spent many an hour listening to the music live at various music camps.

In that MacKenzie Brothers clip, when there's just the piano and fiddle it really sounds Cape Breton to me, but when the piper comes in he's playing in the normal modern Scottish style that you'll hear in any good pipe band. If you heard a Grade One pipe band (be it SFU from BC or FMM from NI or Shotts and Dykehead from Scotland) play that first jig, every piper in the band would be playing it exactly like that fellow is playing it, all the same fingerings and ornamentation and timing and style.

If such a Cape Breton piper was playing in an archaic style brought over from Scotland in the 18th century and perpetuated through the generations, I would expect to see old-fashioned stylistic things, playing more in line with Joseph MacDonald.

So while what I typed about the style was factual and in keeping with what Barry Shears has written and discussed on the subject, the example I posted wasn't correct. I was probably lulled into the familiar sound of the fiddle and piano and thought the piping was following a similar path.

I'll listen closer to Barry and look up Joseph MacDonald to gain more of an appreciation for the subtle differences of dance piping here and there. Most of the pipe bands I hear aren't grade 1 by any means and I find the approach of a lot of pipe band pipers to be plodding and metronomic missing a certain... lilt and also a quickness to the scotch snap seems to be gone.

I enjoy this forum. There are many well informed participants. Would you agree that the link I provided to Barry Shears is more Cape Breton style?

N

[Gael Ridire]

Wonderful history lesson, thanks so much for posting this.

[CMcG]

I finally caught up on all the videos posted here and I think I get what Nathan is talking about in traditional piping, as exemplified by Barry Shears playing. The other videos, including the one in Nathan's first post, seem to show more of the standardized, pipe band style.

The hallmark of the modern approach appears to be a uniformity and evenness in the rhythmic subdivisions and strong emphasis on the downbeats e.g. 1 (strongest) and 3 (slightly weaker) in 4/4 time. This makes the music rather square, which is ideal for marching, but not as good for dancing.

Yes people can and do dance to it, but there is a bit of incongruity between the embodied rhythm of the dancers and that of the piper. This is visually evident in the video neloon posted where people are dancing to a solo piper, but is made more audible in the first video Nathan posted. Here the fiddle and piano begin, only to be joined later -- and juxtaposed in rhythmic feel -- by the pipes.

Shears on the other hand, shows a style that is more reminiscent of fiddling and more conducive to dancing. Here the subdivisions are "swung," which gives them a lilt, and there is more emphasis on weak beats, off-beats, and/or syncopation. Given the design of the instrument, I'm guessing the traditional style would require a difference in playing technique and ornamentation to achieve that kind of "groove."

In the video Nathan posted where Shears is talking, he told a story about taking a pipe major course in Ottawa and being told not to play reels "that way" because they aren't for dancing! It would be interesting to read his MA thesis, which has now been published as a book called Dance to the Piper.

[piperchris]

Very interesting! Beautifully done! Thank you!

[Nathan]

I just read an interesting interview with Shears that was published in Cape Breton magazine where he goes into the dance (ceol beag) tradition as well as the pibroach (ceol mor) tradition in Cape Breton. Interestingly, a lot of pipers are decended from a certain MacIntyre who, prior to emmigrating, was the official piper of the Captain of Clanranald. I read it in a bound book, but found a copy of the article in which Shears provides considerable detail here:

http://capebretonsmagazine.com/modul...hp?itemid=3296