BBC video on the bagpipe business in Pakistan

[Dale-of-Cedars]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20876096

I must say that to my (tin) ear, the pipe band in the video seems tuned to the higher end, matching the other Indian music in the background. Sort of a tonal cultural drift?

[EagleJCS]

There are a lot of derogatory comments made about piping in the Middle East, but I'll try to avoid making any here.

Those pipes are definitely on the higher end of the tonal spectrum. That's possibly due to the choice of reed materials and/or the altitude at which they're playing. (The pipes are very much subject to atmospheric conditions - temperature, humidity, barometric pressure - for tuning.) They also don't appear to be using the 'standard' pipe tuning - maybe some Eastern scale? It was difficult to hear, but I don't think there were many drones being played, either.

The appearance of the pipes themselves was also quite different from what Western eyes expect to see. The wood was definitely not African blackwood (the most common wood used for pipes in the West).

The smaller set of pipes that were boxed up in the video appeared to be one of the toy sets I've seen marketed at some Highland Games here in the US.