5 000 bagpipes in Santiago!!

[sillydoll]

FROM ROSINA

Santiago is already a-jumping and full of novel activities: the Italians are reproducing the famous Nativity scene ("Presepio") in the Alameda, the Germans have established their spectacular Christmas markets all over the place, the Austrians have reproduced their breath-taking chandelier-style street illuminations and the 5,000 bag-pipe players are rehearsing all over the city.

The much talked about documentary will commence filming on December 31 by taking-in the festivities.
The Xunta conservatively estimates that during the Holy Year more than 350,000 pilgrims will receive the Compostela and that about 10 million visitors are expected in the City.

 

[Caminando]

Please book places for all the bagpipe philistines!! :wink:

 

[nellpilgrim]

Happy Christmas Caminado and Sil,
5,000 pipers piping now that's something I'd love to see and hear!
Thank you
Nell

 

[Priscillian]

I would have loved to have seen this. But there are bagsmen and there are Bagsmen and this is probably a story about Parental Influence. I want to share it with you. It's Chrismas, after all...

My mother, God bless her Special Soul this Christmas, HATED the sound of Bagpipes. I thought as a child I did too. My mother's opinions were law.

But I think she had never heard the sound of the "Irish pipes" which I heard when I was in my teens and a friend of such geniuses as Finbarr and Eddie Furie of Ireland. I ran an "Irish Folk Club" (The Denbigh Arms Folk Club in Middle England, - Roger Bray and I as "Threshold" even had a minor following in the Midlands. Ralph Mctell used to drink coffee with the "after club group": sitting on an old mattress in my living room, and he wrote the word of Steets of London on a beer mat for me in a Wolverhampton club 'cos I loved it so long before it became a guitar student's standard. Roger and I may have even been the first to sing it on the circuit. At the club we would sing "We are off to join the IRA and we are off tomorrow morn..." until such songs were frowned upon in England. So sad that time. We were a part of the following in the name of "Jasper Carrott": a man who though obviously incredibly talented never knew what was in store for him. (Jasper above with hair, as I remember him!) Jasper's club was called The Boggery in Solihull, near Birmingham. For me, my best memory of Jasper was when he "coaxed " (forced me out of shame: the bastard) on to the roller coaster in Blackpool on a "Boggery Day Out". For ten minutes afterwards I couldn't speak! True story! At the Boggery, many great talents were showcased: Davey Johnstone (who went on to be Elton John's guitarist), Ralph McTell, and the Gaels, Fairport Convention, and there was a duo called Threshold (before called The Candlelight Folk but I won't admit this to everyone, just you guys) Tracy and Roger...gone into the mists of musical history. One at least of my friends of the 60's went on to be a member of the Chieftans. There were others: Magna Carta were special friends of mine. Others are no longer with us: Sandy Denny, Nick Drake. They were heros of 60's folk all..they were my friends of my life long ago.

As to that "Gaellic" sound: I never expected many years later to hear its equal in Galicia. THEN I knew I was home! So many pipers, in my beloved Santiago: Holy Moly, I would loved to have been there. That would truly been the icing on a long layered cake...!

Happy Christmas and a Wonderful New Year to you all and Happy Hogmanay, you Scottish lot!
I originally posted this on Boxing Day and now recognising the perhaps only slight influence of the after dinner brandy have now edited it to make it comprehensible where before it was barely!

http://www.pilgrimagetoheresy.blogspot.com

 

[Rebekah Scott]

I knew there were 5,000 bagpipers piping in Santiago, and this morning, whilst walking through the mist, I could´ve sworn I heard them skirling and squalling on the wind, all this way away east of Leon.

Turns out the neighbors chose this day for the annual matanza. Twasn´t bagpipers. It was just a garden-variety pig-sticking. Oh well. Sounds a whole lot the same to we philistines!

Reb. (whose uncle bob was a bagpiper, but gave it up because it upset the dogs so)

 

[Caminando]

Ooh you sure know how to hurt a guy. How can anyone say they dont like the pipes? Irish, Galician, Breton, Scots - theyre all wonderful. Irish is best of all

Its no good blaming your childhood if beauty passes your ears


It's all pearls before swine for you bagpipe haters... :shock:
:arrow:

 

[Caminando]

I would have loved to have seen this. But there are bagsmen and there are Bagsmen and this is probably a story about Parental Influence. I want to share it with you. It's Chrismas, after all...

My mother, God bless her Special Soul this Christmas, HATED the sound of Bagpipes. I thought as a child I did too. My mother's opinions were law.

But I think she had never heard the sound of the "Irish pipes" which I heard when I was in my teens and a friend of such geniuses as Finbarr and Eddie Furie of Ireland. I ran an "Irish Folk Club" (The Denbigh Arms Folk Club in Middle England, - Roger Bray and I as "Threshold" even had a minor following in the Midlands. Ralph Mctell used to drink coffee with the "after club group": sitting on an old mattress in my living room, and he wrote the word of Steets of London on a beer mat for me in a Wolverhampton club 'cos I loved it so long before it became a guitar student's standard. Roger and I may have even been the first to sing it on the circuit. At the club we would sing "We are off to join the IRA and we are off tomorrow morn..." until such songs were frowned upon in England. So sad that time. We were a part of the following in the name of "Jasper Carrott": a man who though obviously incredibly talented never knew what was in store for him. (Jasper above with hair, as I remember him!) Jasper's club was called The Boggery in Solihull, near Birmingham. For me, my best memory of Jasper was when he "coaxed " (forced me out of shame: the bastard) on to the roller coaster in Blackpool on a "Boggery Day Out". For ten minutes afterwards I couldn't speak! True story! At the Boggery, many great talents were showcased: Davey Johnstone (who went on to be Elton John's guitarist), Ralph McTell, and the Gaels, Fairport Convention, and there was a duo called Threshold (before called The Candlelight Folk but I won't admit this to everyone, just you guys) Tracy and Roger...gone into the mists of musical history. One at least of my friends of the 60's went on to be a member of the Chieftans. There were others: Magna Carta were special friends of mine. Others are no longer with us: Sandy Denny, Nick Drake. They were heros of 60's folk all..they were my friends of my life long ago.

As to that "Gaellic" sound: I never expected many years later to hear its equal in Galicia. THEN I knew I was home! So many pipers, in my beloved Santiago: Holy Moly, I would loved to have been there. That would truly been the icing on a long layered cake...!

Happy Christmas and a Wonderful New Year to you all and Happy Hogmanay, you Scottish lot!
I originally posted this on Boxing Day and now recognising the perhaps only slight influence of the after dinner brandy have now edited it to make it comprehensible where before it was barely!

http://www.pilgrimagetoheresy.blogspot.com

Wonderful memories there! Sandy Denny's "Who knows where the time goes' is classic.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

A cousin inherited the Duncan bagpipes brought to America in 1700's. I am sure the Abercromby's (of Stirling) had pipes, and perhaps even the Jacobite exile, Ludovic Grant, had them in 1715, but I certainly have not inherited an ear for them that these ancestors of mine must have had. Ditto a taste for haggis, whether the blood sausage or the critters! Perhaps the Scottish genes are just not strong enough to convey a taste for nine-note cacophony or nauseating food. A brisk walk past the piper in Santiago was enough bagpipe music for me!

 

[Ribeirasacra]

I have missed this. Was it shown on TV Galicia?

 

[Javier Martin]

...How can anyone say they dont like the pipes? Irish, Galician, Breton, Scots - theyre all wonderful. Irish is best of all ...

And don't forget the one from Asturias, just at the east from Galicia.

I only can talk about the Galician and the one from Asturias, and both sounds incredible ... and the best is when you are in the middle of the mountains - imagine it in high mountains in Asturias - and you hear a bagpipe in the middle of nothing, just a fellow playing for himself.

Buen Camino,

Javier Martin
Madrid, Spain.

 

[sillydoll]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSbxKOPuow

Gaiteiro - Santiago de Compostela

 

[Theo]

Hi,

How is it possible not to like Galician music played with a gaita ?

Listen to Susana Seivane here and here ...

... or Carlos Nuñez here and here

Théo

 

[sillydoll]

Another video of a piper playing on the steps as you walk into the Obradoiro Square.

http://celticworld.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... ompostela/