Uilleann piper bloodline and isolated pipers.

Uilleann Pipes
1

I don’t really know HOW to put it in words, but bloodline is the closest thing I could think of. The “bloodline” I’m talking about is for example: I was reading about Tommy Reck, and how he learned from John Potts who, in turn, learned from pipers that went as far back as the pre famine I think. Or Liam O’Flynn who had lessons from Leo Rowsome(who piping goes back for many generations), and also had much influence from a Willie Clancy, and Séamus Ennis. And their piping influence goes back all the way to the pre famine I think…

So that’s what I mean about bloodline, pipers who leaned and were influenced from many previous generations of pipers leading ALL the way back.

And I am wondering, if I, an isolated piper, who gets much of my influence from the old pipers like: Ennis, Clancy, Reck, and some newer pipers, like Paddy Moloney, and Liam O’Flynn. If I could technically still a part of that bloodline, that could possibly go back all the way to the Pre-Famine? (It would be super cool and a big honor if it was a yes!)

So, in-short, if I am STILL not making much sense! :confused: As an isolated piper who tries to play the old fashioned style, would getting influence and trying to play in the similar style like these pipers I have mentioned, who got lessons and influence from many many generations going all the way back, would I technically still BE a part of this bloodline?


I hope I make sense, because I am very very very very very very very curious and interested in this phenomenon, and am interested in what you actual real pipers (and pipe-makers ! !) think of all this. ( I think I have heard some people say NO, but am not sure. Hence why I am asking)

2

Well, I for one want some of what you’re smoking!

:open_mouth:

Continue listening to the classic recordings, find a reputable teacher, travel to tionols, and spend about 10,000 hours honing your skills. Forget about all that bloodline stuff, put some blood and guts into learning how to play, and you’ll be grand.

3

I tried my best to make as much sense as possible! :blush: but the bloodline thing was just out of curiosity, a trivial like thingy.


Where can I find a good piping instructor, at a Tionol or piping workshop? I practice for quite a bit, and listen lots and lots.

Just need to meet real pipers…

4

[rant] I am much more concerned by the piper bloodline topic in a different way: are you Irish and did any of your ancestors play Irish music? I get this question all the time. People see my non-Irish surname and wonder how I can possibly play Irish music :frowning: . It seems to be an American thing: people want to point to the one, real, authentic thing that fits neatly into some nice stereotype. People also lap up the narrative of someone who, basically, went right from the teat to the tune. Come on: growing up in America in the '60s and '70s the most common influence in your early musical background was probably “classic rock”. People need to own that. But it doesn’t fit the charming 5th-generation piper thing.
[/rant]

5

Regarding “bloodline,” I think the word you want is something like lineage, of line of transmission.

You might want to contact Joey Abarta http://joeyabarta.com/. He’s known to have a particular affinity for the piping of the older generations and I believe gives Skype lessons.

6

yah, ‘chain of descent’ being my current favorite…& even then it still kinda implies elitism.

the music itself will find the vessel it needs to be in, wether it’s been helped into that vessel or not :slight_smile:

7

Yes, line of transmission is what I probably meant. :slight_smile:


Thanks for that link, love Joey Abarta’s playing. Pat D’arcy does skype lessons, too, and also has a C# chanter by the same maker. Just need a webcam though.

8

some words that comes to mind are authenticity and faithfulness to the tradition - being open to something that’s new so long as it does not constitute a travesty - these are qualities that those brought up in the midst of music have bred into them, but the rest of us have to try to adopt a style as best we can from a distance and try to be faithful bearers of tradition

9

I don’t think you can claim “bloodline” or musical ancestry or whatever unless you are one of those people who learned direct from someone and have it in your community, your family, etc. Those of us who come into it from the outside, we have to own our own background and that’s fine. You can listen to recordings of whoever you like, but the most you can say is that your playing is influenced by the playing whoever you like listening to and maybe try to consciously imitate. But when people talk about lines, like Seamus Ennis to Liam O’Flynn, it implies more of a direct transmission thing, which listening to “40 Years of Irish Piping” ain’t.

It’s not just Yanks who ask me if I am Irish because I play the pipes. Irish, English, Scots ask me the same. Having an Irish-sounding surname doesn’t help. But I’m a nice Jewish girl from Colorado and I just like the music and I like playing the pipes. That’s it.

10

Sweet, I can claim bloodline to Leo Rowsome!

11

Good enough… : I

12

Yeah – if you want to claim you learned from someone you need to, you know, learn from them… :wink:

Is that something that is important to Uilleann pipers? In Highland piping it is somewhat important. I know who my teacher is (obviously) and her teacher, and his teacher, and that fellow’s teacher (John MacDonald of Inverness).

It’s kind of neat to know.

No matter how much I listened to recordings of someone I would never claim to have learned anything from them, but rather that I learned it from the recordings. Both because it’s true, but also because I might not really be playing it the way that other fellow would want it to go, if he heard it.

13

When I learnt to make the Pipes (well I am still Learning of course) I did not learn from a master but by studying an old instrument that was made by a master. It was as much about trying to understand the instrument, what it was all about, asking myself the questions because there was nobody else to ask. I think it was better that there was nobody to ask , no Master to give direction, his/her direction. My direction came from the source, through my head and back out again untill I understood.. or leastways think I do.
I think it is the same as learning the music… you have to come to understand the music , understand what is happening… and you can do this by listening, by trying to understand what you are listening to. You don’t need a direct bloodline as such.

That old instrument also taught me to play as part of the learning curve, combined with an inordinate amount of listening to the right stuff.

I have a motto which goes something like this : " People can learn, but can they be taught ?"

14

A difference though, is that making a musical instrument is not a performance art.

Here is an interesting experience I have had more than once. My instructor will give me a tune. I make a recording of it. I have my instructor’s advice for what I’m aiming for. I go home and work on it. I know for certain that I’m emphasizing it just the way my instructor said, and I have the recording to work from. Then I go to my next lesson and my instructor says, “You’re not emphasizing these notes at all.” :confused: My instructor will then play exactly what I /thought/ I was playing. So then I put so much emphasis on it that to me it sounds crazy exaggerated, and my instructor says, “now you’re getting there, but emphasize it even more”

The point of that is that it’s good to listen to everything you can listen to, but, at least for me, it can be really hard to translate that into a stylistically correct performance without my instructor’s help.

15

I sometimes need help, so I sometimes slow some stuff down to help me listen.


It seems it all boils down to: Shut up and listen to the ITM! :thumbsup: :tomato:


Which I am more than okay with, I love observing and listening! :smiley: One of the many reasons I love listening to ITM over and over is picking up things you haven’t heard before, or hearing a piper playing the same tune but slightly different.

Beats trying to read all that scribbling and bibbling IMHO..

Can never read that stuff anyways…


I think I should also mention here, that the Uilleann pipes are pretty much the only instrument I play now. I don’t even have a whistle! (Though I should probably get one..) and I haven’t played the highland pipes in a very long time. So I have lots and lots of time to practice! :slight_smile:






@Tommykleen & TheSilverSpear: I know what you mean, I’m part Irish though, but my surname used to be O’Malles, but the French Canadians (I believe) changed it to Mallais. Which I hate hearing. Now everyone thinks I’m French! (I am a tiny bit though)

That reminds me whenever I took out the pipes to play, some people would talk to me , usually asking if I was Scottish, which I was. But one thing that really irritated me is that they all asked me if I was in a Band. To which I always replied " No".

But to be fair ya can’t REALLY blame them! :poke: :tomato:

16

[quote=“highland-piper”]


“A difference though, is that making a musical instrument is not a performance art.”


But it does pertain to learning by observation.

17

I find this very interesting because it’s not something that I hear uilleann pipers talk about very much.

In the Highland piping world it used to be talked about a great deal, especially in piobaireachd, in which idiom every piper could trace an unbroken line of master-to-pupil relationships going back, in many cases, to the 18th century.

There’s a great book Highland Bagpipe Makers which also serves as a history of Highland piping, because nearly all the early makers were top players. Maker after maker follows the same pattern: a boy is born to a piping family, at a young age takes some initial lessons from his father, when showing promise begins formal tuition in piobaireachd from an acknowledged master, as a youth starts winning all the top prizes, then sets himself up as a pipemaker.

For example George S MacLennan:

“The MacLennans were a well known piping family going back to Murdoch McLennan, town piper of Inverness in the 16th century. A descendant, another Murdoch or Murdo, was a piper at the battle of Culloden in 1746. His son Duncan served in The Black Watch as a piper and was at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. His son Donald was the father of Alexander who won the Prize Pipe at the Northern Meeting in 1857 and John who won the Prize Pipe in 1848. Donald himself taught John Ban MacKenzie, Donald Cameron, and Sandy Cameron. Another son, Duncan, was the father of George, who was the father of William who won the Gold Medal at the Argyllshire Gathering and the Prize Pipe at the Northern Meeting in 1878.”

Many of today’s players can trace their piobairached lineage to one of these pipers.

The book has a great story that illustrates the interwoven master>pupil thing:

"The young Robert (Reid) and his brothers Jim, Sandy, Tom, and Willie were all pipers but Robert showed the most promise. He was taught by his father until the age of 12 when he became the pupil of John MacDougall Gillies, who was teaching many of the top players at that time. In 1913 Robert won the March at The Northern Meeting.

While preparing to play at the Northern Meeting one year Reid saw an old man listening to him, and when Reid stopped playing the old man came forward and said “You’re playing that second bar of The Earl Of Seaforth wrongly.”

“Oh you think so.”

“Who teaches you?”

“John MacDougall Gillies.”

“Well when you get back to Glasgow tell him he’s playing it wrongly.”

“Who are you to tell Gillies how to play a tune?”

“I’m Sandy Cameron. I taught him.”



BTW Willie Clancy, according to The Dance Music Of Willie Clancy, didn’t come from a piping line, but learned tunes from his father (flute and concertina) and his mother (concertina). He never saw anybody actually playing pipes until he was 18 years old, and didn’t get a practice set till he was 20. He had been playing whistle, flute, and fiddle. A late bloomer on the pipes!

“In 1947 his piping had improved to such an extent that he entered and Oireachtas competition and won first prize.” Willie would have been 29.

18

I’m strongly going to advocate for music notation literacy here. Yes Its difficult at first, but it yields enormous dividends in the end, even (some may say especially so) in a primarily aural genre such as ITM.

There are those that say real notation isnt even necessary anymore, now that we have youtube and a host of sources for aural learning. Or worse yet that complete “ABC” rubbish, which should be stricken from the face of the earth. Understanding notation is the key to access the page BEHIND where ones teachers are playing; learning from a recording is like xeroxing a xerox, (if that term 's still in use :wink: ) and will eventually degrade, like a lifeless clone.

If we are talking about real “musical lineage” here, and not just another litany of… “Well, I studied with ‘so&so’, therefore I know what im talking about”…, (a huge trap for aural traditions) then the ability to read and understand actual music notation forges a durable link in the chain as opposed to degrading imitation. [/rant]

19

I am dyslexic when It comes to that stuff, man! :frowning:


I have heard about a thing called Color sheet music, where certain notes are a certain color. I think I may give that a try someday!






That’s pretty cool about Highland pipes. I have read articles on some pipers line of transmission, going all the way back to the MacCrimmons!


Are there pipers today that have this “line of transmission” going back to the MacCrimmons?

20

Yeah it does, because it’s really difficult (perhaps impossible) for most of us to objectively observe ourselves whilst performing.