Read the latest piping news

For centuries the world of Scottish piping has been a male-dominated affair, a culture handed down from generation to generation of burly men with powerful lungs and ample waists, of whom it was scarcely necessary to inquire what they wore beneath their kilts.

All that is about to change in August, however, when Britain’s only dedicated piping festival will devote an entire day of its week-long programme to the achievements of women skilled in the arcane art of squeezing a large tartan bag, fingering the chanter and tuning the drones. What is more, among those playing at the special event is an Englishwoman.

Kathryn Tickell, the celebrated Tyneside musician whose glamour has been credited with making folk music sexy, plays the Northumbrian small pipes and worked with internationally renowned performers, including Sting, the Chieftains, and also Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Queen’s Composer.

Last summer Piping Live!, which is held in Glasgow, attracted 8,000 pipers from around the world and more than 70,000 fans. This year a special series of women-only concerts has been programmed for the first time.

But piping was not always so accessible to women. A few centuries ago, female performers risked having their fingers cut off if caught playing.

But, despite its macho past, increasing numbers of women are taking up the instrument. Five of the 38 pipers in the National Youth Pipe Band are girls and of the 16 students on the country’s only piping degree course, run jointly by the National Piping Centre and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, three are women.

Margaret Dunn, the only female teacher at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow, welcomed the spotlight on female performers.

Miss Dunn, who has been playing for 20 years, and will take part in the Piping Live! performances, conceded that men might have a bit more puff, but claimed that skill was as important as physical strength.

“Maybe there was an issue before my time, but I think if you are good at what you do, people won’t knock you — no matter whether you are male or female."

Piping Live! is on from August 11 to 17. Girls and Gracenotes, featuring Kathryn Tickell, is on at St Andrews in the Square on August 14.

MAKING MUSIC FOR 3,000 YEARS

—The bagpipe is classed as an aerophone under the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification, meaning that it causes air to vibrate without the use of strings, a membrane or the body of the instrument itself

— Bagpipes date from at least 1000BC and feature in a play from about 425BC by Aristophanes, the Greek playwright

—The Romans were keen players of the pipes and the Emperor Nero is described by a contemporary historian as playing the pipes “with his armpit”

— In the British Isles, the first undisputed written reference to the ‘baggepype' is made in about 1380 by Geoffery Chaucer in the prologue to The Miller's Tale

— There are dozens of variations of bagpipe as it has found homes in many European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries, a diaspora greatly aided by its resurgent popularity within the British Empire

—The best known of all pipes and most associated with the Highland Regiments is Great Highland Bagpipe

— A modern set of “the pipes” comprises a bag, a chanter, a blowpipe, two tenor drones and one bass drone

The chanter is in the Mixolydian mode with a flattened 7th or leading tone

Source: Times database

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