Philadelphia Piping

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

It is a cold, gray day in Philadelphia, and the furnace in the drafty old Commodore Barry Club can push the temperature only to about 50 degrees F, but the musicians just button their overcoats tighter, blow on their hands and take out their instruments. After all, it isn't every day that so many of their kind -- 20, at least -- gather in one place. In a musical subculture so arcane that few even know it exists, this counts as a world-class event: the first East Coast Convention of Cumann na bPiobairi, the national Irish Pipers' Club -- and what is a little discomfort? The novices are eager to hobnob with such superstars as Al Purcell, from Detroit; Bill Ochs, Jerry O'Sullivan and Matt Connolly, out of New York; and Denis Brooks, all the way from Seattle. For the pros, it is a chance to trade techniques, tunes and gossip saved since they last met.

The 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 by themselves. They are difficult to obtain, harder to maintain and nearly impossible to play.

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 piper, improbably named Roy Rogers Jr., has a mysterious air leak. "Blow some smoke into the bag and see where it comes out," advises Britton.

He is tall and thin, with curly blond hair cascading over his ears and neck, a mustache and a goatee, a thrift-shop tweed coat, a 1940s-vintage wool overcoat and a single earring. Britton will lead today's workshop on the fine points of piping technique. He is something of a phenomenon: only 26, he has been a master piper for a decade. He did have an unfair advantage: his father George was a folk musician and music teacher before it was fashionable and was a founder of the venerable Philadelphia Folk Song Society. Tim started on baritone ukulele before he was eight and took up the Highland pipes at eleven (the "war pipes," he calls them, an appropriate name for an instrument that is the Scottish equivalent of the bugle).

But a 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 I'd use the pipes to play rock."

In the end, Standeven refused to tell this unworthy kid where to get a set of pipes. Remembers Britton: "It took me three years to get my first set." Once he had them, though, he learned quickly and, by the age of 16, had resolved to become a pipemaker himself. That he did, with great success. Like children, bagpipes always belong, in a sense, to those who brought them into the world. Thus, while some of the musicians show off Kennedy's pipes, or Quinn's, about a quarter of those present boast a set of "Timmy's pipes."

The preliminaries are finally over, the pipes assembled and tuned, and it is 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 sound continuously in the background; the others, called regulators, are activated by brass keys studded along their length and are used intermittently for emphasis. Last of all comes the melody-making chanter, an oboe-like device attached to the bag, with holes and keys and a double reed hidden at the top.

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 me, it's the least bizarre of all the alternatives. Now, there are three ways to play C natural . . ."

And he is off on a four-hour lecture, full of piping lore and the illustrative invocation of legendary figures. "Now, Willie Clancy's playing had a lot of raw energy. He liked to bite every note with sharp teeth -- or maybe even with dull teeth, so it would cut even rougher. Liam O'Flynn, on the other hand, prefers to play a tune refined to the ultimate, with the least 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.

By late afternoon the lecture is coming to a close, but the best is still to come. Tonight, and probably continuing far into tomorrow morning, there | will be a seisiun, as in jam seisiun. Fledgling pipers will bring out instruments they really know how to play -- fiddles, hammered dulcimers, tin whistles, mandolins -- and dream of a day when they might join the elite. When a good seisiun is in the air, the word spreads, and the chance to play with not just one but five or six of the best pipers in the country all at once will bring out Irish musicians from all over the Philadelphia area. Note that it is the music that is Irish, not necessarily the players. The emotionally powerful jigs, reels, hornpipes and slow airs of traditional Irish music have made converts from all races, religions and musical creeds. Britton himself is three-quarters German, and Sandy Jordan was raised on bluegrass.

Tomorrow's event: the reedmaking workshop. Even those who get to sleep after 5 will be prompt. Reedmaking is the essence of piping, the frustration of frustrations (a classic instruction book on the topic is The Piper's Despair). But it is a necessary evil for those who cannot afford to drop $25 or more every time a reed goes bad, which happens maddeningly often. In fact, says Britton, quoting an old oboe players' maxim, "there are no good reeds. We just learn to play the bad ones."

The heat is finally up, which forces some of the pipes to go out of tune. Another hardship to overcome, but the pleasure of piping is earned through sacrifice. Says Britton: "I heard of one piper who had an operation to cut the skin between his fingers so he could stretch to reach the holes better. Personally, I think that's a little extreme -- but I understand the impulse."