The Ian Sturrock band also takes a step outside the norm with the Flam Fatales, their all-female drum corps. “The pipes tend to get looked at as a cultural artifact and not as a living, breathing instrument,” Morrison said. That’s how I found myself at Buck Mulligan’s on a Friday night, listening to Morrison play with Jasper Coal, a local band that plays Scottish and Irish jigs and reels “but we punk it up a little bit.” It was a performance that had very little in common with the traditional rendition of “Amazing Grace.” “We have tried to be cheeky,” Morrison said. Morrison said while the band does play and practice more traditional bagpipe pieces, they’ve also adopted more modern ways of playing and new compositions that bring a different flair. “I am the Bizarro world bagpiper,” Morrison said. While you’ll see the band’s pipe major, Ryan Morrison, sporting a kilt when he plays, it’s paired with a bright blue head of hair. The Ian Sturrock Memorial Pipe Band, which has its own practice space on 11th Avenue South, is also trying to build its numbers back up to compete again. Alabama Pipes and Drums is trying to build its membership back up to begin competing, and its Monday practices at Sequel Electric in Southside are often small. It’s hard to explain just exactly what it was, like there was electricity in the air,” MacRae recalled of one of his visits to Scotland.īut bagpiping doesn’t hold quite as much popularity here. It gave you a tingling feeling when you’re playing. “The sound that day absolutely just gave you chills.
Hearing hundreds of pipers and drummers performing together is something he’ll never forget.
He has even played at the Scottish World Festival in Canada and competed in the World Championships in Scotland five different times. MacRae began piping in college in 1961 in Pittsburgh, and continued to play for many years across several northern states. “People either like them or hate them,” said Jim MacRae, the pipe major of Alabama Pipes and Drums. Though the two groups have different styles, they can definitely agree on one thing: people underappreciate the pipes. One preserves the traditional heritage of the pipes the second looks for a more modern edge. This city’s a long way from Scotland, yet there’s not one, but two different bagpipe and drum bands practicing in Southside. You can add the phrase “punk bagpiper” to the list of words I never thought would be paired together.
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