The pipes, the pipes are calling — and they’re coming from some of Colorado’s youngest bagpipers
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SEDALIA, Colo. — The Colorado Scottish Festival, which spanned the green grasses of the Denver Polo Ground this summer, buzzed with the toe-taps of Highland dancers and the squeals of adventurous eaters trying haggis.
Under this hummed a distinctive drone audible from the Festival tents and the parking lot.
The bagpipers owned the airspace, as bands including the Colorado Youth Bagpipers — the only youth bagpiping band in Colorado — breathed life into the festival’s bagpiping competition.
“They’re loud… it’s definitely a noticeable instrument,” said Carson McConnell, a piper who has been playing with the band for about six years.
McConnell first became interested in the bagpipes at a church service. He was taken with their “solid sound,” and considering his cultural background as a “McConnell,” (a historically Scottish and Irish surname) he joined the Colorado Youth Pipe Band to get started.
After years of solo practice in isolation during COVID-19 and training with a Colorado Youth Pipe Band coach, McConnell joined the competition team, which he now enjoys more than playing on his own.
“When you’re playing and everyone else is playing the same thing, there’s so much more sound that comes out of it, and it’s cool to see people that are really excited by that,” he said of the band, which also includes Highland dancers and tenor, snare and bass drummers.
McConnell now plays with the same church piper that first inspired him at age seven.
Cora Delaney, a more recent newcomer to the pipes, emphasized how fun and how exhausting it is to play the pipes in competition.
“It can be a lot of work — at least for me — to push [the bag] and blow at the same time… so it’s tiring, but nice,” said Delaney.
To play the bagpipe, the player blows into a blowpipe that inflates the attached bag, which is usually made of sheepskin.
The player then squeezes the air out of the bag and through the chanter, a small tube with finger holes that resembles a recorder. This allows the player to create different notes, which come out through one of three drones (the pipes extending out of the bag).
The three drones — the bass, the two tenors — can be tuned to play different notes.
Delaney is also a Highland dancer and came straight from a dance competition a few tents down to prepare for the bagpiping competition.
She and her brother, who also played in the youth band, performed the bagpipes at their grandfather’s funeral.
“I really enjoyed doing it,” said Delaney. “It’s really nice to see how you can come together and do something respectful for your life with this instrument.”
Bagpipes, which are now commonly labeled as a Scottish national instrument, are thought by some to have originated somewhere in the middle east or northern Africa. Some accounts cite the 400 B.C. “pipers of Thebes” who were described as blowing bagpipe-like instruments made of a dog skin bag and bone pipes.
The instruments, then called “warpipes,” are believed to have arrived in Scotland around the 14th century, where they were often used as rallying instruments at war.
Warpipes originally only consisted of the bag (where air is stored), blowpipe (where players blow the air), the chanter (the smaller pipe dotted with air holes that players cover to create notes) and one drone (the pipes emerging from the bag that emits the air, and thus the notes).
Over the centuries, they gained one, then two more drones to form the three-drone shape that the more well-known bagpipe in the U.S., the Scottish Highland Bagpipes, have today.
However, there are dozens of bagpipe variations that exist throughout the world with varied positioning and numbers of drones.
Tunes gradually shifted from just battle marches to songs appropriate for “family gatherings, martial salutes and laments,” and “piping families,” clans and communities of the same last name renowned for their bagpiping abilities, began to emerge.
Today, bagpipers play at funerals, graduations and at other community events.
And, in Colorado, in the hands of the about fifteen six-to-eighteen year olds playing in the Colorado Youth Pipe Band.
The band began in 1989 with, “two snare drummers, one tenor drummer, a bass drummer and four bagpipers,” with the goal of introducing the instrument and fostering the next generation of Highland musicians.
Since its inception, members of the pipe band have competed at a number of competitions both within Colorado and beyond, including the 2000 World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland.
More recently, they were in full form at the Colorado Scottish Festival, where they participated in a” two-day games,” which are held over a weekend and include events such as the Quick-March Medley.
Competitors in the Quick-March Medley play a continuous set of three different songs, starting with a march in, continuing with a circular march in the middle of a ring drawn in the grass and finishing with a march out.
Spectators sit on the edges of the field cheering on the performers. Tripp Bishop, the Colorado Youth Pipe Band coach and a piper himself, sits front and center.
“We do well,” said Bishop, talking about his youth pipers, “but kids have this annoying habit of getting old and turning into adults… so we get a lot of turnover. But we are often really competitive.”
Because bagpipers in Colorado (and the western United States in general, according to Bishop) tend to be fewer and farther between, the level of competition tends to remain a bit lower. Most Colorado competitions are Grade 4 or Grade 5, on a scale where Grade 1 features the most elite players.
Colorado’s dry climate makes it a less than ideal location for pipers. Bishop said that the wetter atmospheres of places like Scotland help retain moisture within the bagpipe bags. In Colorado, these tend to dry out much more quickly, requiring pipers to continue wetting their instruments between playing.
Climate conditions aside, the Youth Pipe Band still attracts a few new young pipers to participate each year.
The band’s next competition is at the ScotsFest Longs Peak Scottish and Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park on September 7th and 8th. Spectators are welcome and encouraged.
