Word: uilleann
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...CHIEFTAINS: THE BELLS OF DUBLIN (RCA Victor). Is it too late for season's greetings? Not when they're as enterprising and altogether buoyant as this collection of Christmas songs by the great Irish traditional band, who augment their fiddles, harpsichord and Uilleann Pipes with vocal accompaniment by such % diverse characters as Elvis Costello, Rickie Lee Jones and Marianne Faithfull. A real Christmas treat...
...year later, when he met a misanthropic Uilleann piper named Tom Standeven, he had the flash of inspiration many Irish pipers describe: "I was just blown away. I knew instantly that I wanted to play this instrument." Recalls Britton: "Tom was like a high priest with a new disciple. He told me that a piper has to be a woodworker, leatherworker, metalsmith and reedmaker just to maintain the instrument, and that I would have to learn Gaelic to understand the rhythm of piping. Basically, though, I had really long hair at the time, and I think he was afraid...
...time to do some serious piping. Britton straps himself into his instrument like a fighter pilot getting ready for combat. First comes the bellows, a smaller version of the fireplace variety, belted next to his body and held under his right arm (whence comes the name: Uilleann is based on the Gaelic word for elbow). The bellows replaces a Scotsman's lungs in filling the leather bag that drives the sound. The bag goes under his left arm; out of it and across his lap comes a collection of wood and brass tubes. Some of these are the drones, which...
Britton begins to play, with the counter-intuitive, complicated movements that make the Uilleann pipes so damnably difficult: he presses on the bag with his left arm, periodically refilling it by pumping on the bellows with his right, occasionally hitting his regulator keys with the right wrist while simultaneously playing melody on the chanter, not using the sensitive tips but rather the relatively nerve-poor second joints of his fingers. "It feels bizarre at first," he says (since his mouth is unencumbered, he can, unlike a Scottish piper, play and instruct at the same time), "but, believe...
...possible moral disturbance." In the course of the afternoon we learn the pipes were born sometime in the 18th century; the reason, say some, was that the British banned the playing of the war pipes, having enough trouble with their difficult Irish subjects as it was. Others claim the Uilleann pipes, based on French and Italian prototypes, were simply more versatile and better able to manage the complexities of Irish jigs and reels...