Word: uilleann
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...word bagpipes conjures up an image that is, in this case, far off the mark. Unlike their strident, better known and more ancient Scottish cousins, the Irish (or Uilleann) bagpipes are soft and melodic; their construction is different, and no one wears an ethnic costume for performances. Not that the Irish scorn the Highland pipes; they play them too, on occasions like St. Patrick's Day parades, but that is in part because the Irish pipes cannot be played standing up. Besides, they are not very loud. The Scottish variety is challenging enough, but Uilleann pipes are in a class...
...Indeed, Uilleann piping is so intimately linked with frustration and suffering that players consider themselves initiates in what approaches a religion. According to tradition, it takes "seven years' listening, seven years' practicing and seven years' playing to make a piper," but the reward is mastery of a difficult physical skill, plus the experience of creating one's own musical nirvana. The sound is something like an oboe, something like a bassoon, and, when all the various parts are used, like several of each playing at once...
Even after 21 years, though, the suffering is not over. Uilleann pipes are fiendishly temperamental; they can break down in dozens of ways without warning, and the prudent performer is always ready for a crisis. "Can anybody help me with this reed?" calls out Sandy Jordan, a Virginia-accented neophyte and the only woman in a room filled with bearded young men. Timothy Britton, a piper, pipemaker and transcendental meditator, comes over to have a look. "The reed's cracked," he says after a quick inspection. "Here, try some Krazy Glue." More trouble from across the room: a cigar-chewing...
...band win fans in the rock era by playing old dance tunes on such instruments as harps and the uilleann pipes? (Music...
...Barry Lyndon sound-track album (Warner Bros.), the Chieftains' music consists of dances and airs played on tin whistles (surprisingly debonair in sound), bones (animal), the bodhran (a goatskin drum), fiddles, harps, an oboe and, most glorious of all, the Irish bagpipes, more precisely known as the uilleann (elbow) pipes. Unlike Scottish bagpipes, which are breath-blown, the Irish pipes are pumped by a bellows under the right arm of the player, who must be able to finger and pump at the same time...