Page 48 - The Bagpipe in Cape Breton: From a Conversation with Barry Shears, Piper

ISSUE : Issue 52

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1989/8/1

book can be played quite comfortably on the bagpipe or on the violin." Really, on a well-tuned instrument (that is, bagpipe), there's probably nothing that would equal it. If you hear more and more people playing a well-tuned instru? ment. The problem in this province today is we seem in such a hurry. There's no other instrument in the world that, if WHERE GOOD FOOD AND GOOD TIMES COME TOGETHER YY ROADHOUSE RESTAURANT fY 500 George Place, Sydney, N. ''. (Across from Centre 200) if Dancing: Monday through Saturday ]| SYDNEY'S NEWEST RESTAURANT AND ENTERTAINMENT HOT SPOT PHONE: 564-8844 A Summertime Production Society Presentation somebody can't play it well, they have no reservations about throwing a kilt on and going out and playing in public. If you only knew 6 or 7 tunes on the piano, would you go and play at a concert? Or if you could only play 6 or 7 tunes on the vio? lin, would you go play for a square set? No. But yet, bagpipers or pipers--throw a kilt on them, push them out into the pub? lic eye, let the public take pictures, and they think that's fine. So what we've seen in the last 30 or 40 years is more and more pipers dressed up in kilts, going out and playing poorly-tuned instruments. And really, we're almost down to two genera? tions now that really haven't heard a properly-tuned instrument. Which is real? ly, really unfortunate. (Just let me throw this in, now. The pip? ers you've talked about, the Cape Breton pipers, how often would they--these older players--play in kilts?) Oh, well they wouldn't have a kilt. Unless they had some sort of an army influence or an army asso? ciation. You see the appearance of kilts coming in Cape Breton--the Maclntyre band that formed in 1898 in Glace Bay--I have a copy of a picture taken in 1901 or 1902 at a concert up by where St. Joseph's Hospi? tal used to be in Glace Bay, and they have kilts. But those were newly purchased. Certainly a lot of the old pho- A NEW MUSIC & COMEDY SHOW with MARCEL DOUCET STEVE GAETZ JOHN MOLLIS BERKLEY LAMEY BETTE MacDONALD MAX MacDONALD DORIS MASON MAYNARD MORRISON HEATHER RANKIN Musical Director LEON DUBINSKY Producer STEPHEN MacDONALD SUPPORTED BY July 31-August 5 Vogue Theatre Sydney August 7-8 Rebecca Cohn Halifax August 10-12 Centre Bras d'Or Baddeck August 14-19 Savoy Theatre Glace Bay August 21-22 SAERC Port Hawl

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