While competitions were waged and visitors explored their Celtic heritage over the weekend, the sound of bagpipes provided a soundtrack.
Kell’s Irish Pipes and Drums were among the bands performing during the Sweet Home Celtic Festival and Highland Games. The band plays the second and fourth Saturdays at Kell’s Irish Brew Pub in downtown Portland.
Bagpipes, among the oldest of musical instruments, are at the heart of the band.
The folk instrument’s origin is lost somewhere in history, Pipe Major Connie Brown said. No one knows how old the instrument is. They were used in the Middle East, in Egypt, then throughout the ancient Celtic world, what is now modern Europe.
Brown’s group uses the great highland bagpipe.
The bagpipe is literally a leather bag, Brown said. The player blows into the bag, filling it up, then squeezing the air through four reeds. Without the bag, a player would be unable to blow enough air through the reeds.
“It’s like blowing up a car tire while you’re driving on it,” Brown said. A new bagpiper sounds unsteady notes that waver up and down.
Three of the reeds are drones, sounding a steady B flat. One of those three is an octave below the other two. The fourth is like an oboe and can sound nine notes but with three pentatonic scales.
Standard western music would mean everything is played in B flat, Brown said, but the pitch of the notes in the bagpipe actually allow several minor and modal keys.
The bagpipes were banned among the Scots by the English because they were used as signals and could be heard miles away. In fact, the English began using the bagpipes for the same reason.
Kell’s Band plays splits its selection evenly among Irish and Scottish tunes. The band avoids the oldest tunes, which are “almost like a bagpipe symphony” and would drive the average listener “nuts.”
What they play is called “light music,” Brown said. The band and the music borrows heavily from the English military tradition and includes a number of marches.
Among the Scottish, a town would have a single piper, Brown said. The idea of putting them together in a band came from the English military.
“The pipers play the same note,” Brown said. Unlike other musical styles, such as jazz, they “never improvise…. That’s so we can get the massive volume.”
The band was started in 1994 by Pipe Major Christopher Skagen and has developed a partnership with Kell’s, playing there regularly and playing in the Starlight Parade.
“People think you have to be Irish or Scottish … to play,” Brown said. That’s not true, people of all ages and backgrounds take up the bagpipes and play in bands. Brown is a part of the Irish Clan Connor and Scottish Clan Stuart.
For more information about the bagpipes and where to learn to play, persons may contact Kathe Coleman, (503) 848-5686 or [email protected].