Dr. Angus MacDonald: the pipes|drums Interview – Part 2

p|d: It’s interesting. There is so much teaching now that’s been happening in both the public and private schools. But it seems to be a lot of that is around light music. One would think that there are some very knowledgeable piobaireachd players in the schools. But perhaps the Piobaireachd Society could get involved with influencing the curriculum in piobaireachd.

DAM: Not only in the schools, but now there are traditional music colleges, offering quite a few different traditional music courses such as at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, on Skye, University of the Highlands and Islands and others.., The main one I’m thinking of is the Royal Conservatory in Glasgow. My brother worked there and did try to teach a lot of the new young pipers different styles in piobaireachd and where it came from. But most of them tended to go back to the competition style of playing. I mean, there is also a new generation of pipers in Scotland who don’t compete, very good players. Some of them far better than those who you hear in the competition boards. The likes of James Duncan MacKenzie, Angus MacKenzie, Angus Nicolson – they’re all very accomplished players and it would be nice to see them experimenting more with ceol mor.

p|d: A lot of people in the competitive piping world sometimes don’t realize how much it’s changing, in Scotland especially, where the attitude is getting less and less about competition and more about just the music and performance and wherever the best venue is for you to perform.

DAM: Yes. I remember when we started getting traditional music programs on television in Scotland, the BBC started doing that, they brought over the Bothy Band from Ireland to play and there was nothing in Scotland that they could put on stage as the sort of Scottish answer to them. And the producer, at the time, came to me and asked me to get guys together. We put five people, Alasdair Fraser, the fiddler, and myself and a few others, Alistair MacDonald, the guitarist, John Carmichael the “box” player, Charlie Cowie also on fiddle. But that was really the first time pipes and other instruments appeared on the TV. Now, there’s hardly a band in Scotland that would not include pipes in their line-up. So things have changed that way.

p|d: And there’s some piobaireachd performance experimentation, John Mulhearn, for example, doing some interesting things. Calum MacCrimmon with Breabach, they’ve been pushing it to a general audience.

DAM: Yes.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of Dr. Angus MacDonald: the pipes|drums Interview, exclusively for subscribers.