Reactions

Uilleann Pipes
1

OK this might be a little off topic, but have you every played for someone who has never heard Irish music let alone the pipes? The reason I ask this is this week I had the chance to play at an elementary school for blind kids here in Japan, and the reaction was, well absolutly amazing, a 30 minute set turned into a 2 hour sing and dance along! The kids were brilliant, if you have the chance to do it I highly recommend it. Anyone else had similar experiances? c’mon guys and girls share, and if you haven’t had the experience, then stop reading this and go out and have it!
:smiley:

Pol MacFionmhacain

2

Well, this really makes me want to describe reactions of people who - as you can imagine - also had no experience. However, they were the typical less open grown-ups who think they had - as we say - “eaten wisdom with spoons” and are possibly a bit more typical of other countries, too.

My flatmates couldn’t fully understand my obsession with what I was doing, and having spoken to other German traditional musicians, I learned that they’ve met with the same experience. I have thus surmised that many people cannot cope with hearing too many notes within a few bars of music, as would be the case in Irish, Scottish, Old Time, Bluegrass etc, and are left feeling uncomfortable. The particular sound that the pipes create can also be a problem. I remember once playing a recording of the ‘Brendan Voyage’ for an acquaintance who shouted at me: “Turn off that awful stuff!”. In the earlier days of my journey of obsession with pipes I was often asked: “Could you not choose a decent instrument.

I can remember being very upset once when I was invited to a party with the request to bring my guitar or my 5-string banjo but under no circumstance was I to bring my “Dudelsack”. Luckily, with several years of piping behind me then, I had developed a thick skin, but I will never forget this experience. Of course I purposely went to the said party with one arm as long as the other, left all the instruments at home and did not take the court jester´s role!

Another story springs to mind here: I was at a big folk festival in Germany once and we were having a session which was in full swing when a fan of the German folk scene (hum-ta-ta, hum-ta-ta) stood to listen for a while. After he left, he was overheard saying: “They play the same tune all the time”.

Best,
Hans

3

I am also in Japan, Pol.

I have had many similar experiences.

I think the most unusual was playing at a large buddhist temple in the mountains of Shizuoka. The audience consisted of over 100 senior citizens, and the other performer was a Japanese chanson singer.

It was a very hot summer’s day, but hills surrounding cliffs, bamboo groves and trees created incredible sound reflections.

Mukade

4

That’s a great story, Pol, thanks for sharing it.

Those children seem to have appreciated the NEWNESS of it - and the experience for them was certainly a wonderful one.

Now - compare that to the plastic Paddy’s here in the USA who ask a piper or any other IRTrad musicians in to play some “Irish music” and they get twisted out of shape because you haven’t played “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” or “Danny Boy”. :roll:

5

It’s refreshing to hear stories involving positive receptions. While a couple of my musician friends have been intrigued by the pipes, the more typical responses I’ve seen are boredom or mild discomfort followed by a polite “Wow, that’s really… interesting.” in the same way I might respond to someone proudly giving me a guided tour of her Beanie Baby collection.

6

Yeah… :laughing: just don’t start trying to demonstrate your latest triplet whilst comparing it to the other triplets you know and then going on to showing them the different crans you know and explaining how their timing relates to rolls in a similar way… they don’t appreciate that… although, it’s a good way to get rid of carol singers, sales men, delivery men… you know… relations… that sort of thing :smiling_imp:

PD.

7

I used to get real sick of the losers in the street when busking, you know, in groups of 4 or 5, usually male and in the company of females, the types who obviously have such broad outlooks on life that they feel they are being sooooooooooo original and hilarious to boot if upon seeing me playing a tune, would immediately lapse into their version of Riverdance :moreevil: Oh, the chicky-babes would be soooo impressed. GITS!!!


Cheers,

DavidG

8

In 1995, I spent three weeks in my town’s sister city of Komaki(near Nagoya). I had been there as a student for a week in 1985, and my parents went in '88 & ‘92. This time Komaki wanted two teachers to meet English teachers in their schools. My dad couldn’t find anyone who wanted to travel with him, so I made a joke asking if they would like a bagpiper and they said yes!
What a grand three weeks! I got to play in elementary and middle schools every other day, and at a concert for the city, I opened up for a Taiko drum band named TAO. Somewhere near Nagano, I played on Koyagatame(sp?) mountain at what they told me was 10,000 feet elevation. The reeds still worked at that height. That was the first cool weather I had seen in weeks.
Everywhere I went, peoples’ reactions were truly kind. They showed great interest and were happy to share their music. Things always ended up in a sing-along. :party: (Then a drinking binge.) :party: It’s rare to have such devoted kind listeners and have so much fun with them. Those are memories I’ll smile on in old age.
Marc
P.S. Ausdag, I get sick of the gits with the Riverdance parodies too, but if they chuck a bit in the tipcan, they’re a little more well…feck’m they are still idiots, but you’ve got some of their cash.

9

I have had plently of negative reactions, mostly to whistle-playing, actually, but I have a positive story to tell.

Well, my boyfriend, who thinks everyone else loves the uilleann pipes as much as he does :smiley: made me bring the pipes along to his friends’ rock band practice. When the band was done practicing, my boyfriend says, “Justine’s going to play the Irish pipes now for you guys!” Well, I haven’t excatly gotten great reactions when I play the pipes to, say, members of my own family for example, so I was reluctant, but basically I was eventually forced into it against my will.

They were all chatting when I started up, so I was thinking, “Good, no one’s going to be paying attention anyway and I can just get this over with.” But as soon as I started playing, they all turned towards me and got completely silent. They were totally silent until I finished my tune, and then they said “Wow, that was great!” And they started asking questions that showed they had really been paying attention, like “When you lift it off your leg, is that to change the tone?” and stuff like that.

Of course, these were all great musicians, so maybe that’s why they were so interested, but it was still nice to get a good reaction like that. :slight_smile:

J.

10

Off the leg, it like, goes to eleven, you know? And this is my Woof set - no, don’t touch it. No, no don’t even look at it. You’ve seen enough of that one.
Seriously though, that’s something I love about musicians - most are genuinely interested in instruments, musical genres and cultures other than the ones they’re most familiar with.

11

This is a story about revenge and appreciation for the bagpipes (GHBs) and their possible positive applications.

Many, many years ago I was a participant at the Minnesota Rennaissance Festival. I played in a few groups out there but what I liked to do most was play the GHBs…an instrument regarded by most at the festival as a nuissance and royal pain in the arse. I was constantly criticised for the volume of my pipes, and very often would have to tolerate the close angry red faces of other cast members who would shout at me while I played…not that I could hear them…but reading their lips wasn’t a difficult thing to do.

However, even more annoying was a group of teenaged boys who pulled carts around, giving people rides for a fee. Obnoxious during the day, but more so at night when they drank vast amounts of booze, played their boom boxes loudly, fought, screamed and carried on thoughout the entire evening and well into the morning hours…in a campground that was trying their best to sleep.

On one weekend, I was approached by a shop owner, with a tidy little sum of cash in hand, and asked if I was for hire. My job was to awaken the freshly passed out, and severely hungover band of yahoos at first light on some Sunday morning. I whole-heartedly agreed to do it and on the Sunday morning we had chosen for this mercenary work, I put my GHBs together…not bothering to tune them, it really wasn’t necessary… strode up to the row of tents that were occupied by my targets, punched in the drones and chanter, and played as badly as I could…no tune, just carefully crafted terrible noises.

The effect was sudden and very humorous. Half naked, these fellows scrambled, crawled and rolled out of their tents moaning and swearing. One kid ‘flashed the hash’ (as it were) and another ran away as fast as they could with his hand over his ears. All of this to the cheers and applause from the rest of the campers who had gathered around to watch the event.

Afterward, folks seemed to be a little more tolerant of me and my piping. As for the yahoos, they ceased their loud partying for the remainder of that festival season (I’m still not certain if it was because of me, or the fed up campground director).

It may have not been the appreciation that I would have preferred, but it was appreciation all the same…and I finally managed to have some fun piping as well. :smiley:

12

I did the same thing with both my Highland pipes and uilleann pipes for a “bunka sai”/“culture festival” at the junior high school where I used to teach in Mie pref. The Highland pipes definitely got a more immediately enthused response from the students based mostly on the volume factor, but the teachers were more into the uilleann pipes and harangued me with questions for the rest of the day.

Perhaps the most interesting musical experience I had in Japan was when I got invited to dinner at the house of one of my friend’s students. Turned out to be this amazing 300±year-old house jammed with beautiful calligraphy and paintings. The food was excellent too–lots of fantastic sake and abalone. Anyway, my friend had convinced me to bring my flute along and after playing for everyone (and immediately being rewarded with three large cups of sake drunk in quick succession–“kampai!” ), one of the other guests, a retired high school teacher, told me he taught shinobue (Japanese transverse flute) and that the family’s oldest son was one of his students. The son grudgingly got out his shinobue and the three of us then regaled the house with Japanese and Irish music for the next several hours…and drank a lot more sake.

13

Funny how Japan seems to be a place for good Uilleann-piping experiences. :slight_smile: I had an unforgetable one during hanami some years ago. hanami (=flower watching) happens during the time the cherry-trees are blossoming: you are supposed to watch them, thinking about how brief is life, like a cherry flower, but in fact, you just sit under the cherry-trees and have tons of food, beer and sake, and mainly worry about how brief is the life of the beer cans and sake bottles. The one I attend was in company of fellow shakuhachi and shamisen students, near our teacher’s place. And after a lot of japanese songs and music, I played the Uilleann-pipes in return. Everybody enjoys a lot this “exotic” music and I had to answer a lot of questions about the Uilleann-pipes after. Then came some of our teachers friends: a chinese pipa player and a mongol batokin player (batokin is a two strings instrument which sounds like a cello). After they played, our teacher took his shamisen and suggest the four of us to play together. We tried a well-known japanese tune: “Sakura, sakura”. And believe it or not, it worked!

14

did the same with the guys at work. The bad thing was that I worked out the intro to “born to be wild” and they wanted to mic it… oh the humanity :boggle:

15

Hi,

Two odd reactions when busking:

There were three of us, fiddle , pipes and guitar. This guy watched us for 5 minutes or so and when we stopped he went up to the guitarist, pointed to his guitar and said “What’s that”?

Busking on my own once, a group of 6 young kids (early teens) stopped and listened for a while. Usually it was older people that stopped to listen so I thought it was unusual. When I had finished playing one of them came forward and asked “Where are the batteries”?

David

16

Nice stories guys keep them coming !
Pol.

17

And I’m telling people you have to muffle it on your leg to avoid breaking the windows, and if you didn’t lift it off at the right time, the build up of sound waves would smash your femur - that’s why you used to see so many one-legged pipers around in the old days. :roll:

“How do you know when to lift it off?” :astonished:

“When you can feel it bruising the bone, wanna try?” :laughing:

j.i.

18

… or that you’re only holding it there against your leg because you need to pee so bad that … oops! :blush:

djm

19

I liked Billy Connolly’s joke about most important rules to remember when you turn 65 (not that I’m quite there yet!):

  1. Go for a pee at every available opportunity
  2. Never trust a fart!

I won’t tell you what number 3 was - I’ll blush! :blush:

j.i.