Music
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‘PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR MORE FROM THEIR NIGHT OUT’ Hitlist THE BEST ROCK, POP, JAZZ & FOLK*
✽✽ Dean Friedman Quirky, whimsical singer-songwritery fare from the NYC wordsmith who enjoyed an early career high with his 1977 song ‘Ariel’. The Ferry, Glasgow, Fri 7 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Belladrum Tartan Heart Music Festival The heilan’ knees-up gathers for its sixth year, featuring The Phantom Band, Sons and Daughters, Seth Lakeman, and a headline performance from the newly reformed Toploader. See Five Reasons, page 36. Belladrum, Inverness-shire, Fri 7 & Sat 8 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Kilmarnock Edition Festval A great value mixed bill of crowd pleasers over two days including Seth Lakeman, Camera Obscura, Lloyd Cole, Kris Drever and The Saw Doctors. Get there early for a showcase of local talent in the afternoon. Dean Castle, Kilmarnock, Sat 8 & Sun 9 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Grand Scottish Proms Bring a warm blanket, a hip flask, and an umbrella to keep the showers away, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Scotland will bring the soundtrack to a picturesque evening of fireworks under the stars. Glamis Castle, Glamis, Sat 8 Aug. (Classical) ✽✽ The Holloways Get your singalong on for these rowdy Libertines-esque types who play one of the last ever nights at the Doghouse which closes this month. It will be missed. Doghouse, Dundee, Thu 6 Aug; QMU, Glasgow, Fri 7 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Rachel Unthank & the Winterset The eerie beauty of RUATW’s The Bairns landed the quartet a deserved 2008 Mercury prize nomination, and its Rachel’s voice on these songs from northeast England that’s key. Tolbooth, Stirling, Sat 8 Aug. (Folk)
Bag of tricks
As the annual festival of Piping Live! kicks in, Claire Sawers finds there are plenty of fans on hand to debunk the ageing myths about bagpipes
In Germany they’ve got the doodlesack; in Sweden, the säckpipa; and in Italy, the zampogna. Nearly every country in Europe has some version of the bagpipe, giving the instrument a range and diversity that stretches beyond that lone piper on Princes Street squeaking out ‘Scotland the Brave’ for the tourists.
Roddy MacLeod, director of Piping Live! – which attracted 25,000 visitors last year to Glasgow – thinks people will be surprised at how vast the modern day piper’s repertoire is. ‘Everyone has heard ‘Highland Cathedral’ or ‘Scotland the Brave’, he says. ‘But new music is written for pipes all the time – from all around the world. We’re seeing more experimental styles cropping up. The festival was set up six years ago to bring those styles together.’ This year, the week-long programme welcomes a band from California; an Indian-Celtic fusion group; a ‘Celtinavian’ duo from Sweden and 16,000 others from New Zealand, Pakistan, Canada and beyond. ‘I like the idea that people get to experience all that’s on offer,’ says MacLeod. ‘From lone pipers to traditional pipe bands, as well as more ‘rock’n’roll’ variations like Red Hot Chilli Pipers or Peatbog Faeries.’
MacLeod admits that bagpipes haven’t always enjoyed the coolest of images. He started playing the bagpipes when he was ten and growing up in Glasgow. ‘I didn’t exactly broadcast it. Back then I might have got a slagging, even just for wearing a kilt.’ But now, not only are kilts sported proudly by Scottish men, bagpipes are enjoying an image revamp too. Bagpipes have shown up in music by everyone from Eminem (his radio-unfriendly rant ‘Bagpipes
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from Baghdad’) and The White Stripes to metallers Cromagnon and Korn. And they are particularly beloved of Americans who want a spectacle at live gigs too; see this year’s T in the Park where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs brought the East Kilbride bagpipe band onstage or Madonna’s Reinvention tour where she enlisted Lorne Cousin to pipe in a leather kilt after spotting him play at Stella McCartney’s wedding.
Edinburgh’s Rob Calder, aka the ‘bagpipe busker’, can vouch for the bagpipes’ international appeal. He’s just finished a coast-to-coast tour of America, relying on hospitality from bagpipe fans along the way. ‘The reaction to bagpipes, 90% of the time, was great,’ he says. ‘Most piping heard in the US is through pipe bands at Highland games, weddings, funerals and the like. That is, the more formal stuff.’ Although most of Calder’s requests were for ‘Amazing Grace’ or the Marine Corps hymn, he thinks there is huge scope for piping to attract new audiences. ‘It’s great to hear the pipes in modern music. It’s an instrument that resonates when heard from time to time, so should be used in moderation for its biggest impact on the mainstream public.’
As for their sex appeal, Calder reports that bagpipes have a strange magnetism. ‘I have been subject to wandering hands up the kilt, photographs, propositions, telephone numbers on $20 bills. A wedding ring even found its way into my bag. So, yes, bagpipes seem to impress the ladies . . .’
Piping Live!, various venues, Glasgow, Mon 10–Sun 16 Aug. www.pipinglive.co.uk