Dastirum gu sein im Piob - I Am Proud to Play a Pipe!

This is my theme song (like Ally McBeal - remember that?) and “Dastirum”, or pride, is the title of a new CD by veteran piper Allan MacDonald. This is piobaireachd with a difference. After years of playing by the book (literally, in this case) MacDonald decided something was missing from his performances of ceol mor. He has taken his approach back to basics and produced a CD of piobaireachd quite different from anything I have heard before.

This is not a stilted attempt to “modernize” the form, by adding swirly synthesizers or heavenly choirs in the background. Rather, MacDonald appears to have lived with the music (and sung it) until more natural phrasing emerges. (It probably didn’t hurt that he has also been hanging out with Barnaby Brown, the guy who rapelled down a sea cliff to pipe in a cave, and on whose label, Siubhal, the CD is being released.)

I have been able to listen to two tracks from Dastirum - The Lament for the Young Laird of Dungallon, and The Lament for Alasdair Dearg MacDonnel of Glengarry. Both begin with Allan singing part of the ground, after which he strikes in and plays the whole tune on the pipes. The interpretations of the tunes on Dastirum are being hailed as a watershed in ceol mor. Bill Livingstone, Pipe Major of the 78th Fraser Highlanders, and prodigious piobaireachd player of recent years, said he wished he hadn’t heard MacDonald’s playing:

I can’t play the tunes any other way afterwards, and I want to win the prizes

It’s a telling comment, and exposes the way piobaireachd has been interpreted through the prism of competition these past 100 years.

I can’t wait to hear the whole CD and, of course, Allan’s take on I Am Proud to Play a Pipe, which is naturally included in this collection.

There was a magic moment at the Salt Lake Highland Games this past weekend.

The piobaireachd judge, John Partanen moved his competition around the corner from its original location to beneath one of the entrance archways to the fairgrounds. That gate was not being used and I guess he was seeking a little more shade. It was a wide archway, more like a tunnel really, about 20 feet wide by 30 feet long, and about 15 feet high in the middle. Playing surrounded by concrete and stone produced a really nice acoustic, and began to draw a crowd to the opening of the arch. Among the audience was a pair of swallows who, it turns out, were nesting beneath the arch. They were quite concerned to discover 110 decibels suddenly showing up outside their front door and began to flutter around the drones of the pipers as they played.

Strangely (or appropriately) the tune they seemed most interested in was The Desperate Battle of the Birds, played by Sande Storms, of the Salt Lake Scots. She expressed some frustration with elements of her performance after she finished playing, but I pointed out to her that it was probably the best performance of that tune ever, since it was the only one featuring actual birds.

Well, it was a busy weekend.

The Salt Lake Highland Games started on Friday night with massed bands playing for a fireworks display. We had to play Scotland the Brave over and over for about 10 minutes. Seemed more like 10 hours. The worst part - we all had our backs to the fireworks so we couldn’t see them. I heard they were really good, though, from someone who was there.

Crawl into bed at about midnight, and crawl out again to be back at the games for solo registration. 8am.

This was my first time in solo competition, and I had never even watched one to know what I should do. I asked those who were old hands, and who happened to be standing nearby, for help and they told me what to do, where to stand, and so on. The competition went about as well as I suppose I could have expected. I didn’t place in the light music, but I got a fourth place in the piobaireachd which was very gratifying. The adjudicator was John Partanen (a fellow Finn!) and he was really helpful. After I got my score sheet I went back to see him to ask what advice he might have for me, and he was good enough to sing my entire tune, to give me an idea of what I might want to be aiming for.

So I dipped my toe into solo competition, and I didn’t get burned! On to the Payson Games in July…