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Mumbo-Jumbo: It’s all just innovation to me
(from PWD 28, July 2011)

by Bruce Campbell

WE ARE now well into the ‘summer’ season in the northern hemisphere, so it is about the usual time when writers of piping matters start to bag the non-musical gyrations of pipe bands.
Over the years I have read it all - from ‘mumbo-jumbo’, ‘musical diarrhea’, ‘finger-gymnastics’ down to ‘just plain rubbish’.
I have also noted a couple of bands giving quite cute performances where a Slow Air is included as a March in quick time simply by having the drummers play a March time contra style rhythm.
I have heard this last one in both Grade 1 and Grade 4 and have no hesitation in saying it is breaking the rules.
In days gone by when I used to be one of those ‘wise men with the clipboard’ (and I pray that my commonsense keeps those days just that, ‘gone by’) I would make a mental note of bands who were ‘taking the mickey’ and make sure that they got marked accordingly.
These days, however, I have a totally different attitude.
See what the removal of judging pressure does for your liberated senses?
Before I get into making any profound statements (or is it just more ‘mumbo jumbo’) I have to be honest too in saying that I have an in-built retreat back to the pure art form of solo pipe music which I personally treasure so much.
And yes, as I would say at a meeting of PA (Piobaireachd Anonymous) I AM a devotee of the high art of Piobaireachd ....
(I believe that that also gives a certain insight into a person’s mental state - or lack of it)
So my now sporadic dips into the pipe band marketplace are only that - sporadic.
On average I might hear a pipe band competition/concert no more than a dozen times a year.
So I do admit that my head isn’t being constantly bombarded with the type of music under scrutiny.
I also do admit that I like it - very much.
That includes all of the new-found invention.
That perhaps isn’t what you expect to read from somebody who confesses to sit in the same room day after day with the Bobs of Balmoral sharing the same CD player as Robert Reid and Calum Og MacPherson, but that’s the way it is.
For me, pipe band music of the modern era is all about innovation; it is all about pushing the boat out that little bit further.
Sure, some of it goes that little bit too far - but most often the bands which are doing the boat pushing are at the very top of the tree.
And that is how it should be, too.
Only after earning your spurs are you in that hallowed of all positions where your musical experimentation should be taken seriously.
For the bands at the bottom end of the pile, and because of their rather obvious technical and instrumental imperfections, it will sound like musical junk, so it is better, IMHO, to tread the well-trodden path of safety.
I can well remember the change in musical fashion brought in by the 78th Fraser Highlanders in the early 1980s.
I had been brought up on the sound of the great Edinburgh City Police Pipe Band who blazed new trails in the 1950s under the great and late Donald Shaw Ramsay.
I am sure that their trophy shelf never reflected their musical brilliance (even although it did bulge) and that their-then innovative approach was equally frowned upon by the establishment.
As a young Edinburgh policeman I had the opportunity of seeing the trophy cabinet of the next generation under another great pipe major, Iain MacLeod - and that was truly impressive.
But I always regarded the great years as those of Donald Shaw Ramsay.
Maybe that is just nostalgia speaking.
But likewise I look back on the 1980s as the era of Bill Livingstone’s 78th Fraser Highlanders, a truly inspiring musical outfit - and not just because they had so many top class players but because their music was sensational.
Equally importantly the way both of these bands presented their music was sensational; musical performance par excellence.
I often think that Donald Shaw Ramsay and Bill Livingstone were at either ends of a musical journey; one starting it and the other completing it - and from the mid-1980s onwards every top class band on the planet knew that it was OK to push the boat out just that bit further.
The trick, of course, is to make sure that you are in the top end of Grade 1 before you try it - and that you don’t get too sensitive to what the critics say; after all, who cares what piping writers say.

E-BOOK (plus MP3 recording) released 12 December 2011