eric reiswig wrote:
I think anyone is a hero who works to promote pipes and piping in whatever capacity they can. Were it not for the founders of NPU 30-odd years ago, for example, i wonder in what shape the instrument would be today. Ditto for all the pipemakers who've resurrected the craft, and all the players who got us listening. Past and present.
I certainly agree.
The subject header was fairly eyecatching and evocative to me for a couple of reasons. First is that in piping, possibly even more than in the music generally, there were/are so many people working 'behind the scenes' so to speak who are doing so much for the preservation/ continuity of piping information and resources (not only playing or pipe making techniques as rightly mentioned but general history, archive recordings and lore as well), the sort of people whose names may be familiar to some, vaugely familiar to others and unknown to more: Sean Donnelly, Mick O'Connor, Tom Clarke, Terry Moylan, Pat Mitchell, Peter Browne, Reg Hall are a few of the names that spring to mind here in my location. Such people are producing a growing body of archive material, articles, archive programmes, interpretive publications and programmes or classes, in short they are expanding and enriching the resources that the piper has/will have available to him/her. Of course on the most practical level it's more about how we as musicians interpret those resources.
I think that the term 'new age of piping' is an interesting one (and it may well be that I am putting a different meaning on it here than intended by the original poster Eric... but humour me for a moment if you will). I think it is fair to say that generally we are in a new era of piping. Here's how I define what I see (again generally) as a new 'movement' or interrelated set of 'movements' (in the truest sense of the word in that there are changes of direction afoot albeit not entirel co-ordinated ones):
1. The 'internationalisation' of the instrument. On one hand the instrument's popularity has soared worldwide, on the other it has become disassociated to an extent from it's stylistic histories. This is of course as much to do with the pressures of commercialism/ changing popular tastes as it has to do with geography. There is a sort of hobbyist movement emerging internationally where the instrument is being enjoyed on different levels and in different ways, people are being attracted to it for it's relative mechanical complexity as much as for it's tone (something like buying a very complex and expensive Airfix model!) others just enjoy the playing challenge and are happy to be able to play a few tunes and not take it too seriously while socialising a bit. There are as many emerging playing styles (and emerging 'lack of styles') here in Ireland as there are abroad, but I think that the UP's emergence as a 'world bagpipe' (albeit one with recognisably Irish roots) is important in how the instrument is percieved at the very least. Which leads me to...
2. An amalgamation of (or if you like a disregard for/ indifference to) more distinctive classic personal styles and less involvement with developing personal style resulting in more standardisation of playing. Critics of this change might humourously refer to it as the 'Mid-Atlantic Style/s' where the style/s can certainly function for the tunes played in a group or extraneously accompanied context but may not be particularly distinctive, personalised or imaginitive and/or conducive to the instrument played solo in all it's glory (all bits working and being played). I think that it is fair to say that in general earlier generations of pipers had more distinctive styles and a more personalised rapport with their self expression on the instrument, they made their own style on their own terms more if you like, there wasn't such a set idea of 'modern piping style' being presented to (/inflicted on?) them through mass media. Again this has as much to do with changing popular tastes, social factors, commercialism and communication as it has to do with individual musicianship although their ingenuity is still only rarely equalled at best IMHO. Socially there wasn't the same prevailence of large group playing expected in the past, the instrument played solo seems to have been encouraged by it's place of great affection in the Irish psyche. The figure of 'the piper' was a respected (if sometimes quaintly romanticised) single functioning entity.
I think personally that balance is needed in they way that the pipes are approached and promoted in this world were everything is for sale and where art is more widely judged on it's price tag than on it's honesty of expression or singularity. The instrument's popularity is only as valid as the way that it is being played IMHO. The balance as far as I can hear is tipped away from the utilisation of the great stylistic resources that exist AND the idea of the instrument as a thing of great possibilities for personal expression through exploration and development of personal style, traditional style and just as importantly, traditional musicianship. Oddly we don't seem to be using the resources available to us through the growing mediums available to explore style prefering instead to emulate (or just copy, there is a difference I think) one pipers style. It all seems very 'safe'. Technology is only as good as it's user of course, a stack of CD's, the internet, a pipeplaying robot will never replace a headful of tunes and 10, 20, 50 years of learning technique, exploring, enjoying.
I hope that the work being done often selflessly on all fronts of piping research will balance out and will be used widely, that people will retain a value of something other than money on the old and good material and that we will continue to internalise and interpret the great music that went before where the pressures may be to perform to the lowering common denominator or to the latest intellectual fad.
Regards,
Harry.
ps. And yes, it is a bloody mad club.
Dear UP Community,
)
I think you're all helpful, just a little shell (pipe) shocked.
"Welcome to the mad club" is how it was said to me. Certainly the start of a "new age" for anyone! 
does that make me a "true hero of this New Age of Piping" 