Linking you up to more Photos (+Credits), which can be found at:
Il Circolo Della Zampogna
The Zampogna that ate Palermo!
So, do they use they entire sheep for the bag?
You mean, the entire empty goat_skin_, right? 
(cringing at the thought…, cant find the ‘bleech’ emoticon)
Yeah, pretty much. The extremities are truncated, and perinieum usually tied up into the bottom of the bag. The sternal knife wound where the animal is slain is most commonly glued up with a skin graft. The hair side is inside the bag, so we’re seeing the underside of the epidermis. Looking closely; one can see where the limbs are tied in a 1/2 hitch.
I have to say, Ive never played on a bag which regulates internal condensation quite as well as a properly dressed goatskin.
(ok, go to town now: Ive given yous all plenty of straight lines here !
)
At er goatskin ain’t properly dresst atall! It’s nekkid as a jaybird… even more nekkid, on acounta the jaybird’s got feathers, lest the cat git it first.
Hear! 
you can download free, its a sei palmi zamp + ciaramella playing ‘Tu Scende’ + a Novena from a 1920’s 78rpm.
Jayzus, those are huge. 
Meaning hair on the inside?
Anyway, how do you drain the excess condensation? By untying the sphincter?
…um…did I offend anybody? 
I don’t think so, but your mentioning of having a sphincter untied has made my colon contract and sweat real hard. 
The condensation just dries out through the skin. That’s the advantage of skin v. synthetic bags. I’ve read that in the 60-es when quite a few zampognas were made with inner tube bags, they included a tap at the bottom, to be opened after playing, and an unsavoury liquid sloshing out. Just imagine what it done to the reeds if you forgot to take them out.
Great Photos! Thanks ChasR
That first (top) photo is a Sicilian Monte Reale Zampogna (near Palermo),
the scale has MINOR thirds on both chanters, instead of the usual major thirds.
Lionel Bottari, of Chicago, videotaped one of these Zampognari at Scapoli a few years back, it’s a great sound and the minor scale is (in someways) more
fitting for Sicilian music.
By the way, the single reeded “a paro” style Sicilian pipes have a cross-fingered minor third, on the high chanter, due to the conical bore (of both chanters). Thus you can vary the tune between major and minor scales.
Glad to see the new forum !
Sean Folsom
Sorry, but the fist photo is a Big Zampogna from “Lazio”, the player is Marco Tomassi from Cassino, a small town near Rome.
He’s also a very good zampogna’s maker, and also the maker of my first “modern zampogna”
This one is seen in Baines’ book. I have a copy of the print that was found in a dumpster behind the Metropolitan Museum after they cleaned out Emmanuel Winternitz’s office. It was an image from some obscure book.
Grazie Signori, For the identification, as the Montreale Zampogne
from Sicily, are very similar to Signore Tomasi’s work.
Thanks Casey, for the high definition scan of this famous photo,
that was also printed in Anthony Baines’ “Bagpipes”, a catalog of
the Bagpipes in the Pitt River’s Museum in Oxford, England
(1st edition, printed in 1960).
This plate in Baines’ photo section doesn’t have the clarity of your
scan at all. The photo is labeled "Sicily"as being a photo of a Sicilian Piper,
and his one other Zampogna photo in these plates (in the back of the
catalog), is also a Sicilian Zampognaro, although it’s labeled as “Italy”
Even A. Baines wasn’t perfect…A WHAT?
Now when the Zampogne get this LARGE… they get DEEP!
Sean “in-the-lower-depths” Folsom
For those who subscribe to ‘Utriculus’,
This issue’s (ANNO X - NUMERO 40) cover features the other zampognaro standing on the same photographer’s set…!
mustve done a whole series of portraits…
anyhoo: although my Italian is sorely lacking, mis-monickering appears endemic in the gran zampogna stratosphere;
Alberto Favara’s (1863-1923)“Corpus di Musiche popolari Siciliane(1957)” compiled around the turn of the century,
and posthumously published by Ottavio Tiby (1891-1955),
has a section on the large zampogne to accompany the cover picture of which I just wrote:
..and I very roughly translate:
He titles the chapter :CIARAMEDDA (!)
“On a general note, the particular nomenclature of this type of instrument used in Sicily goes like this:
4 tubes in a bag (and a blowpipe),
‘im-breathed’ like the pipe of an oboe or bassoon,
ending with a bell like a clarinet.
their names are:” (and I give their lengths in mm:)
Trummuni; 1935 (almost 2 meters long!)
Canta; 1161
Quaitta; 774
Fasettu; 387
He goes on to describe the equal chanter Ciaramedda (Aperto),
still in use today with the same clarity; dimensions included.
Later on in the issue, Mauro Gioielli quotes Ambrogio Sparanga’s " La Zampogna.
-Storie e musiche di uno strumento musicale,
ricerca iconografico 12 cura di Erasmo Treglia,
Finisterre Ed, 2004, p 55,
giving dimensions of a large Zampogna in Fa:
Ch Sinistro: 1515mm
Ch Destro: 906mm
Bordone: 735mm
Bordone Picc: 410
so, anyone wanna like, lend theirs out until , say, just after Christmas??? 
SO:
Ciaramedda
Chiaramedda
The “Typical” name for the Sicilian Bagpipes.
I think the “h” is to help us English speakers.
The Chirimia… a Folk Oboe, played in Mexico and Guatemala,
originally from Spain.
Ciaramella
Chiaramella
The “other” name for the Piffero, plus, it is an interchangeable
name for the Zampogna, with the ordinary non-piping public,
“at large”.
The CIARAMELLE Di AMATRICE
That really different Zampogna. The music of this Pipe sounds to me,
like the Sopilkas / Shawms (played in pairs) from Krk Island, on the
Croatian Coast.
Check out part of this site, that has a bit about
92 year old Alfredo Durante, who is nick-named “Raffone”:
http://www.vetozza.com/raffone.htm
There was a Zampognaro who came to the 1996 Festa
Della Zampogna (I can’t remember his name)
that played the Saltarelli on this instrument.
It sounds great in a discordant way !
I imagine the Meanads danced to this kind of music,
around the idols of Dionysis , 2,000 (plus) years ago !
I hope I’ve done something to ADD to the word-spelling confusion !
Sean Folsom
Did you notice that in the second photo of the original three the player has the top hole of the left hand plugged up, and is only using three holes? Would that be normal?
I’ve seen the same player in a video. He does use four holes, the fourth one is in the back of the chanter, opposite the plugged hole. I had the impression something might be wrong with his little finger, therefore the rearrangement.
the middle guy, the one in the stripe shirt, yes?
what happens when that top hole is plugged is that both chanter fingerings match up:
thumb + 2 fingers down on the ritta (small) one gets you, say, an A(la).
2 fingers down on the manca (large) chanter would get you normally, B (si).
BUT by blocking the top hole on the manca and replacing it with a thumb hole,
THEN thumb & 2 fingers down on both manca and ritta gets you an A (la).
So, the fingerings become alike for both chanters.
OR, he cant reach the holes with his left hand. either way it works.
Looks like its the same size as Sean’s???
Makes for some interesting musical opprotunities to play in octaves…
this just seems to have turned up on my hard drive; honestly don t know where its from or how i got it;
terribly out of focus, probably damaged, but
Of particular intrest as the zampognaro appears to have a bass drum on his back.
