RootsWorld's Bagpipers on Plastic

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Robert Mathieson
The Big Birl
Lismour / Scotland

Pipe Major Robert Mathieson offers a recording of Highland pipes and Shepherd's new small pipes on The Big Birl. It's a mixed bag of great folk traditions and over synthesized arrangements for the Enya crowd. After a brief solo on the small pipes, the opener turns into one of those swooshy white noise splashes so popular in the pop-Celtic scene these days. But then he hits a set of jigs with a jazzy piano (Dave Milligan) and a band of concertina (Simon Thoumire), whistles (Dougie Pincock) and varied percussion that, while outside of the tradition, is great fun and damn good music. There are some top-notch, straight rootsy moments, a feeble attempt at calypso, some gorgeous slow airs and a bit of an over emphasis on electronics for their own sake. It's a mixed bag, but the hits outweigh the misses and there's enough experimenting that works to make it worth the money. - CF

The band that has most defined the American concept of modern Scottish folk music is probably BATTLEFIELD BAND. On Across The Borders (Temple Records, Scotland, via Rounder) this quartet is captured live this time out in a set roaring numbers on bagpipes, fiddles, guitar, flutes and keyboards recorded at Queen's Hall in Edinburgh and distills their style nicely. But the extra spice is added by a host of guest artists. Long time mate Alison Kinaird joins them on Scottish harp. Legendary County Sligo flautist Seamus Tansey plays off Battlefield wind-man Iain MacDonald in a brilliant duet of reels. Yorkshire singer Kate Rusby and California bagpiper Eric Rigler also make showings. Perhaps the most curious moment in the show is the battle of the bands between the Battlefield boys and Glasgow country rockers The Radio Sweethearts (a side project of BB member John McCusker), clearly won by the country bagpiping solo that punctuates the last verses. Another live one from the Battlefield Band has been long overdue, but as always, worth the wait.

No tricks, no gimmicks, no flashy concepts or fusion even graze the outskirts of this recording. The Gathering is just what the label implies, a congregation coming together to praise the roots of their music. John Robert Devall (Shetland), Kathryn Tickell (Northumbria), and Alisdair Fraser (Scotland) bring their fiddles together for a set of jigs. Andy Cutting (Britain) and Karen Tweed (Britain) join forces on an accordion duet that harkens to the old and swings with the new. Hamish Moore (Scotland) solos on the pies. Lined up behind them are Brendan Mulvihill (Britain, now US), piper Carlos Nunez (Spain), Martin Hayes (Ireland, now US), Joe Derrane (the button accordion's Duke of Boston), piper Patrick Molard (Brittany), and an inspired list of performers who have lived the life of the Celtic-rooted musician and brought it to the world. They all came home in 1995, to Cork, Ireland, to join each other in duets and trios and quartets to honor not only the music, but the world-wide culture that has carried it from New Zealand (Brendan Power) to Quebec (Raynald Ouellet).

While the album is devoid of the electronic swoosh and swirl that has become "celtic" music in the age of Enya, there is certainly no dearth of power and poignancy. Molard's pipe solo, "The Last Chance" is an inspired simplicity, the grouping of Power's harmonica with the accordions of Tweed and Cutting provide us with "Jazz Jig," a tune that has a irrepressible groove without any extra noodling. These artists have come together, not fused together, and the end result is just what the title demands, a gathering of souls and hearts and hands, in celebration and anticipation.

OK, they have removed the bagpipes from the mix here, but all the same, here's something to rasp the edges and rattle your cages: Ortonlon plays traditional Breton music on 12 bombardes. While this reed instrument is best known in the context of large pipe and drum bands called bagad in Britanny, here it is presented in solos and trios and on up to all twelve at once, accompanied by guitars, bouzoukis, violins, flutes and even a banjo. For those who love the raspy, reedy sound of these instruments, but don't care for the more regimented format of the large band, these recordings offer smaller ensembles in unique arrangements by players from some of France's best bagads.

AD VIELLE QUE POURRA Menage A Quatre
Green Linnet/Xenophile

OK, so Furnald's in wheezer heaven with this one. Accordions, bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies; what more could I ask for?! After a brief stint as a trio, French-Breton band Ad Vielle Que Pourra is back to quartet status and better than ever. In addition to the rasp of the aforementioned tools, they have fiddles, piano, guitars (electric and acoustic), reeds, some percussion and even marimba and kalimba for color. But more importantly they have inexhaustible energy, humor and a wanderlust that allows them to rove the world at whim, while still maintaining a truly French bearing. Take a listen to their tribute to Nino Rota, "Cine Citta" as it blends those clear-toned marimbas with the raspy edge of the hurdy-gurdy in a cinematic wash that never loses its fringe element of folk. Brilliant in its simplicity, yet it has no lack of intricacy.

But the heart of the album is more traditional in its roots if not in execution, from the jauntiness of what they call their Judeo-Celtic dance tunes to the Renaissance splendor of "Bransle Bas Con Bas," their fusion of three centuries of musical instrumentation into three minutes of sly turns and twists. Gypsy waltzes, folk-rock a la Québec, a tarondelle (the marriage of "Mrs. Tarantella and Mr. Rondeau") and a Greek bluegrass tune just show how far they think they can go and still call themselves true to their roots. They can, and they are.

The Chieftains has always been a mixed bag for me; on one hand they are masters of their craft, and one of the longest running groups dedicated to preserving and expanding Irish and Celtic music. But they can also be formal to a fault, scholarly to the point of pedantic. They have of late fallen into a "play with the stars" syndrome that has produced its share of awful music, but also a few golden moments. They brought out the best in Mick Jagger on "Long Black Veil" last year and the worst in Nanci Griffith the year before.

Santiago seems to have found a balance. Here they have focused on the music of northwest Spain, the region of Galicia that is often referred to as more Celtic than Spanish. Their original journeys were instigated by their meeting Galician bagpiper Carlos Nuñez (who has played for many years with The Chieftains, as well as doing recordings with Ry Cooder, Sinead O'Conner, Dulce Pontes, and Spanish rock singer Luz Casal), but soon they were encompassing the Galician influences in Europe and the New World, and by the time they finished they had brought in the talents of Ry Cooder, Linda Ronstadt, Los Lobos in music from Cuba, Mexico and the U.S. southern border. They try their hand at flamenco and Cuban son. Some of this works, some of it falls to "world-mix" muddiness. But bravo to them for the attempt. The Spanish rooted tracks work best, and they introduce the world not only to the prodigious talents of Carlos Nu�ez but also to some of the styles and musicians much less known from the Basque region, as well. There's enough brilliant moments to highly recommend Santiago.

TRE MARTELLI Omi e Paiz
Robi Droli, Strada Roncaglia 16, 15040 San Germano, Italy email:[email protected]
After near destruction in floods in 1994, with the loss of instruments, field recordings, homes and equipment, one of the premier folklore bands of Italy has come back strong with this new album. Their music comes from the Piemonte region of Italy and is rich in diversity, blending raw folk melodies with almost classical elegance. Instrumentation is equally broad, with hurdy gurdy, fiddle, piffero, ocarina, melodeons and accordions, graced by the occasional bagpipe and lots of percussion. The album is a mix of instrumentals and songs, including some "mouth music" styles where only voice and percussion supply the music for the dances.

OK, it's not a bagpipe, but it has a lot of the same character, and since it's such an obscure instrument, it needs a home somewhere. The launeddas is a sort of proto accordion, a reed instrument with a wheezy, breezy tone. The duets and solos on these 7 tracks look back on old music that sounds so damn fresh, and devoid of the cheesy pop aspects these songs usually get treated to. This one is visceral and solid. The instruments are alone, with no pop or new-folk trappings. Excellent.

The opening phrases are thrash-core power chords, and then, what the hell, it's a bagpipe, playing a reel over a Caribbean drum beat! ... I have been a fan of Canadian band Rare Air since their first album, but nothing prepared me for this: primitive, loud, vicious, beautiful like a flesh-eating plant. This record screams at you most of the time, and even the quiet, melodic passages leave you uneasy. While their music has always been loosely rooted in European and Celtic musical tradition, Primeval is filtered through a Coltrane/Coleman space warp that you might be tempted to call jazz, but it's so far out of the American mainstream that the comparison is worthless. The doubled sex and bagpipes in Roland Kirk's "Volunteer Slavery" slash across a walking blues line, and then trade so Os i a a big band from the '40s. "Chicago Shopping Mail" starts as a smooth, flutey walk, but eventually the bagpipes and electric guitar reduce it to something out of Dawn Of The Dead. There are tight, funky bass lines, prehistoric percussion, and bagpipes from the side of heaven nearest to hell. If you think Ornette Coleman should be weirder, Steeleye Span louder, and the Mekons more Celtic, then you're ready to breathe some Rare Air.

There is little that compares to the roaring thunder of a Breton pipe and drum band. I had the good fortune to hear one of the premier pipe bands, Kevrenn Alre, last year, and now you get to hear another one, 13 times National Bagpipe Champions BAGAD KEMPER. The basic layout of the band is about a dozen bagpipes, a dozen bombards (a brutally raspy reed instrument) and a horde of snare and bass drummers. The output from this is a tremor and a clamor that shakes the very walls. The insistent drone of the pipes and reeds and the driving cross rhythms of the drummers are inimitable. Most of the tracks are recorded live, but they also use the studio to experiment a little, adding acoustic guitar and flute in ways that would be impossible in a real-time situation. They also go out of their own region on "Kopanitza," a well known Bulgarian dance tune in 11/16 time, again with the guitar and flute adding extra ambience to the unusual sound. -Cliff Furnald

It's those bagpipes again! In the good Celtic tradition, a sad story to go with it. Like Rare Air did last year, Blowzabella has released one of their most adventurous records ever, and then broken up! More's the loss, because from the opening chaos of "'Spaghetti Panic" through heart-wrenching love ballads back to a live plate of "Spaghetti," this bond has yanked the roots out of the ground and grafted them onto all manner of strange new branches. At the core of it all are those most medi eval of instruments, the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipes, cranked and wheezed by Nigel Eaton and Paul James, both with a drone that could freeze the bone. Swayne and Freya's saxophones add a hot jazzy tone and Ion Luff's bass supplies a funky moan. But this band's strongest point is still its ability to keep alive the old traditions of Flemish, Breton and Celtic music. Jo Freya's vocals on "La Belle C'est Endormir" are bittersweet, and the folk tunes are lively and never dated. They also extend the ancient into the future on cuts like "Bean field/Monster Cafe," eight minutes of electro-Breton rhythms played out on acoustic (except for the bass) instruments. It pounds out a jig one minute, and then swings the next, but never quite lets go of the taproot of folk music. Excellent! - CF

WOLFESTONE has a similar growth chart to the Oysters, starting out as an "alternative" folk dance band in 1988 in Inverness, Scotland, eventually adding a bass player and drummer with rock and roll pedigrees and with The Chase they come to full fruition as a rock and roll band with folk leanings. They have also added synth keyboards, a distraction at times, but usually subtle enough to be inobtrusive if not exactly helpful. The strength again lies in the song writing, and with the coming of Ivan Drever to the band in 1992, they acquired a recognizable sound. Check out: the folkier "Close It Down," a bagpipe-and-jazz "Appropriate Dipstick" and the punchy set of tunes in "Tinnie Run."

I said about two years ago that the instrument of the nineties would be that musical wheeze known as the gaida, the duda, the sack o' wind from the other side of hell. The Bagpipes. Groups like Rare Air, Blowzabella and The Davy Spillane Band have taken the instrument into new territory, no longer confining it to Morpeth rant's and war chants. The bagpipes have the intensity of rock, the slides of blues, and in the right hands, a hint of the subtlety of jazz. Hamish Moore, piper and whistle blower, takes on all of these forms, as well as traditional Celtic music, with gusto. Prodded by the horns and synths of Dick Lee, the music on The Bees Knees often finds new and interesting ground, while occasionally stumbling into a tar pit of false experimentation. The opening cut is a jazz/rock experiment that works well, adding cello, bass and drums to their own breezy arsenal in a fit of skewed tempos and changes. It's the intensity of the playing that keeps it going, something that fails them on a few other cuts as they try for a more free-association style that gets bogged down in itself. Some of the biggest surprises in the set are the traditional tunes, which are played with excitement and skill, and just a hint of the earlier skewing. A set of instrumentals that opens with "The Rock And The Wee Pickle" has a cello scraping out the bottom that gives it an extra bit of drive on one tune, and a regal quality on the next. Mixing jazz and folk tradition is far too uncommon in the music world, but as more and more musicians from one side reach into the other, an interesting new hybrid is emerging that should prove fertile ground in the future.

First warning. When I first listened to this album in its Spanish release last year, I wasn't impressed. It doesn't hit the high energy of a lot of other Spanish music, and I tossed it aside. Don't make my mistake. There is a distinctive subtlety to Milladoiro's music. It is from Celtic traditions unique to the northwest region called Galicia, and shares a lot of the same melodic style as the music of Ireland. The band itself is a multi- instrumental wonder, seven musicians playing five times as many instruments: bagpipes, harp, guitars, fiddles, accordion, whistles and drums, with a scattering of electronics. They can evoke wistful memories in "Invernia" or rock through a bagpipe and drum dance in "Muiñeira." Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for the romantic harp or the quiet, sometimes neo-classical arrangements of some of the pieces when i first heard it. Whatever the reason, don't make the same mistake. Let the music of Milladoiro play just a little longer. They'll be on tour in the U.S. soon, so give the folks at Green Linnet a call to get the details. Live, this band should prove to be an experience.

It's not their primary instrument, but this Swedish band uses the Scandinavian bagpipes to great effect!
HEDNINGARNA
Trä
Silence/ Sweden

Hedningarna is a unique mix of Swedish and Finnish musicians and singers. On their third album, Trä (a play on the words "wood" and "three") this band has acheived yet another milestone on their quest for a new local music for Scandinavia. Their research into the ancient legends and music of their homes, their reconstruction of old instruments linked to their use of modern technology has put them in the forefront of new music. In one breath there are fiddles and lutes in an almost barogue setting, and then suddenly ancient harps are run through a mixmaster of electronics, voices are synthesized, bagpipes get fuzz boxes and ouds sound like the last dream of Jimmy Hendrix. When they play on stage they draw a crowd of young toughs and aging hippies, a testemant to the fact that they are making music that speaks not to modern pop culture's "generations" but to the universal soul and wit of their own culture. Trä is a testament to the strength of that local approach. All the trappings of pop are there, but none of the sell-outs. This is high energy rock music that sounds like nothing that could be made outside of Scandinavia. - cliff furnald

LA CIAPA RUSA Antologia (Robi Droli) - I am not an ardent fan of "revival" groups, being more inclined towards experimenting within a tradition. But there are a few bands who make a real impression on me with their ability to breathe life into the old songs while staying "in the tradition." La Ciapa Rusa is one of them. They are archivists, and proud of it in a country that doesn't always encourage such research. This chronological set follows their own development from a strict interpretation to their current looser approach, including, as they phrase it in the notes, "a polite use of electronics." But the heart of this music is the acoustic instruments; bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, piffero (a double reed wind instrument), accordion, many kinds of strings and percussion. Through every phase of their career, they have had great solo and group vocals, marvelously direct and earthy. Lively dance tunes and dark dirges; thundering choruses and sunny solos; herein are twenty examples of Italy's rich tradition, played with vitality by a changing group of virtuoso musicians who obviously love the music too much to mummify it.