Bagpipery

Zach Silverman and I took a trip to Armagh yesterday. I had heard about an annual piping festival there and immediately put it on my calendar. I was a bit unsure of what to expect from such an event, but I was very curious.

We got to Armagh around noon and caught a lunch music session in a bar. If I had expected anything from the festival it would be that kind of music, with a couple uilleann pipers, a 9-year-old concertina player, and a couple fiddlers doing their thing. As soon as the session was over, we walked outside for a very impressive outdoor concert. The band playing consisted of fourteen highland pipes, about fourteen small French woodwinds, two snare drums, a large bass drum, and a full drum set. I'm no bagpipe expert but their music was unlike any other bagpipe music I've ever heard. The power of that many bagpipes with the strong bassline underneath was amazing and made the hair stand up on my neck, especially when all the bags were inflated and fourteen sets of pipes all stood up at once. It's no wonder they used to lead armies into battle.

We wandered around the town for awhile between concerts. Armagh has two cathedrals, and the Catholic cathedral is enormous. Armagh may be one of the more attractive cities in Northern Ireland because of the hills on which it was built. Some of its streets had been redone recently and gave the town a much fresher look than most others. The theatre and arts centers were also fairly new and were well suited for such an event.

The second concert was much different from the first. Four musicians from all over Europe each played a set. The first was Spanish and played one kind of pipes, the second was from Northumbria in Britain and played the border pipes attributed to that county, the third was Bulgarian and played a kind of pipes from the Balkans, and the fourth was French and played the Scottish highland pipes and the biennu pipes. I had no idea there was so much to bagpiping and that it was so widespread. For some, listening to bagpipes all day may be the definition of a nightmare, but I very much enjoyed it and learned a lot.

Also, while waiting for the bus back to Belfast I was hit on my two girls because of my accent. I've been here more than two months and this was a first. Then again, I might meet a few more girls if I wasn't in the old man pubs all the time. The girls didn't stick around long, so that was the end of that.

As I write this I am only a couple days away from my trip to New Jersey for Noah and Jean's wedding. I am very excited to see most of my family again and to be back on American soil. It won't be Montana, but I'll sure take it anyway. There are two very important things on my to-do list once I arrive: have a REAL cup of coffee, and eat an American cheeseburger.