Jazzy bagpipes (no kilts in sight)

[Steelkilt]

Ignore the dancing!

https://youtu.be/8RbVuDuCYMY

[California Highlander]

This clip has been making the rounds of all the Scottish themed Facebook groups and I love it! Crazy jazz dancing--with bagpipes!

[Brian Rose]

Reading the comments section lead me to Rufus Harley- jazz on the Great Highland Pipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmaicurzPb0

An appearance on "I've got a Secret" in 1966.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnvAu3C0Gb4

[OC Richard]

This clip has been making the rounds of all the Scottish themed Facebook groups...

Which is odd in a way because it doesn't have anything to do with anything Scottish (or Irish or Celtic).

She's playing "Continental" pipes, the sort that survives in Limousin and Auvergne and has been revived in the Low Countries and also in Germany to some extent.

The Central French chanter can jump the octave, giving usually around an octave and a half, and can give chromatic notes through crossfingering.

In short, the Limousin/Auvergne/Belgian/Continental chanter has more musical possibilities than the Scottish Highland chanter, as can be seen there.

Here's the indigenous music for those bagpipes. Playing Scottish music on them would be just as alien as playing jazz, perhaps more so!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tKnO66Bx10

[OC Richard]

Rufus Harley- jazz on the Great Highland Pipes.

The problem with his piping- especially on his first album when he had just got his first pipes- is that his lack of technical command of the instrument doesn't allow his full musicality to be heard. He was an excellent and successful sax player before taking up the pipes, and the difference between what he's capable of doing on the sax and on the pipes is night and day.

Sure part of it is the limitations of the pipes. But supremely good pipers like Gordon Duncan proved that the Highland pipes are capable of doing most of the expressive things Harley was doing on sax. Harley can't do them on pipes because he never had the thorough training that Duncan had.

The same can be heard with Roland Kirk, who when he's playing sax or flute can do amazing things, but on oboe is limited. (There's no substitute for "face time".)

[Steelkilt]

I didn’t know there was an instrument resembling the bagpipes, thank you! How are these pipes fed (I didn’t see him blowing or any other manual inflation)?

Which is odd in a way because it doesn't have anything to do with anything Scottish (or Irish or Celtic).

She's playing "Continental" pipes, the sort that survives in Limousin and Auvergne and has been revived in the Low Countries and also in Germany to some extent.

The Central French chanter can jump the octave, giving usually around an octave and a half, and can give chromatic notes through crossfingering.

In short, the Limousin/Auvergne/Belgian/Continental chanter has more musical possibilities than the Scottish Highland chanter, as can be seen there.

Here's the indigenous music for those bagpipes. Playing Scottish music on them would be just as alien as playing jazz, perhaps more so!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tKnO66Bx10

[imrichmond]

I didn’t know there was an instrument resembling the bagpipes, thank you! How are these pipes fed (I didn’t see him blowing or any other manual inflation)?

Bellows operated by his right arm. You can see the right arm movement quite clearly in the video. This is very common with all types of smallpipes.

[Joshua]

Which is odd in a way because it doesn't have anything to do with anything Scottish (or Irish or Celtic).

She's playing "Continental" pipes, the sort that survives in Limousin and Auvergne and has been revived in the Low Countries and also in Germany to some extent.

They look quite similar to Bulgarian bagpipes called "gaida" (or a close approximation depending on where they are from), which you see in parts of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, and Greece... except the most common are very simple compared to highland pipes with just a small drone. One of my friends plays and has three sets of pipes, two have a very small drone and the third is very similar to the one she is using in the OP's video. This is likely in appearance only, I don't remember seeing so many holes in his chanter and the sounds it makes is markedly more "Eastern" sounding.