Continuation of our interview with Alan Forbes (for previous post, see here.)

 

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JDH - To return to something you mentioned early and the question of how to bring new interpretive insights and performances into the recital context: Don Lindsay and I spoke about this together, the question of communities.

The communities around competitions create their own cultural rules and mores. If we can expand the community of pibroch players to include more than just the competition community by finding like minded performers and musicians who want to dig deeper and grow and learn from these old settings and new tunes you are publishing, we can begin to embrace and extend the idea that pibroch is a living tradition.

Finding and creating community roots will be paramount to this.

Now some communities already exist, in Scotland, in parts of North America. I think the Internet could facilitate the creation of (but perhaps not substitute for) new communities. I’m hoping places like the Alt Pibroch Club can become a way in which people can meet one another a create new communities out of which the music can grow organically.

AF - One of the interesting things about what you are saying, and I’m interested in this because of my connection with the Northern Meeting, is that at the same this material has all become available at the touch of a button and is being streamed from top competitions: people who come and actually pay and sit in seats and listen to it are falling off dramatically. Our biggest problem with the Northern Meeting is audience numbers. Our audience numbers have probably halved in the last 10 years. And there’s no sign of them increasing.

Now, we don’t know exactly why that should be: maybe because so much is available so easily at the touch of a button on the Internet that to travel to Inverness and pay for accommodation and to stay for two or three days is no longer the big attraction.

It would be lovely for people to come and enjoy the actual community of it, as well as just simply listening to it remotely.

JDH - The virtual world is a tempting one, the way it can seduce people away from having to go to things in the real world.

One interesting model I’ve noticed that seems to work, in order to address any fiscal consequences of this fundamental shift in communication, is free streaming combined with voluntary contribution to defray costs or (even better) to fund scholarships. We saw that model work at Winter Storm this year in Kansas City, where a significant amount of money was raised for a charitable cause.

But that only addresses the fiscal aspect of diminishing audiences.

How do you people physically there to be a part of the community, as you mentioned? I don’t know. But the entire world loves the idea of it.

AF - But if we stream the Northern Meeting, nobody comes at all!

Now, the thing that you get there that you don’t when you watch a live stream is the chat at the bar, you know? It’s the interaction with people that you wouldn’t get over the Internet, and you would think it would be very attractive.

JDH - Yes, that’s what sustains community and culture. In media theory terms, my thesis advisor called the Internet the “junk food” of communication - it seems tasty, but isn’t really satisfying. The most satisfying form of communication is face to face, hand to hand, being in the same room because it is a full somatic experience. The Internet is, in that respect, addictive because you can never get enough.

AF - I think that if you can generate the funding, that would be wonderful. Glenfiddich, of course, don’t charge at all, partly because it is promotional for them as well. Which is great, from their point of view, because they’ve been superb contributors to piping.

But for the Northern Meeting, it’s a different story. Because: how do you get this wonderful stuff out? I don’t know if you’ve been to Inverness for the Northern meeting, but it is the most comfortable place to listen to piping: there is a big auditorium with comfortable seats, you can sit in them all day. The acoustics are excellent. It’s not too hot or too cold. There’s a bar and a restaurant in the same place. You can spend two days there listening to piping, for less than you’d pay for a football match.

But, people don’t come. And streaming it is difficult to say whether that would help or hurt.

JDH - That would be a risk. I can say, the idea of being required to pay for something isn’t appealing, but the concept of donating tends to work. It did for Winter Storm, and it generally works in America, at least.

AF - I think that’s an American thing. I don’t think it works like that here. People are not used to parting with money. And they are not used to doing it in an a easy way.

JDH - Well, I can only say, the people who viewed Winter Storm came from all over the world: the US, Australia, Canada, South Africa, even South America. I hope the Northern Meeting could find a model that will work for it, because there is so much good music there, and there are so many people who simply cannot absorb the cost of the trek to Scotland to view it.

The Alt Pibroch Society has a roadmap premised on community building by providing occasions where people can bring alternative settings and interpretations or rare tunes. In the future we want to co-sponsor things like that, perhaps through grant funding: I don’t know. But we would love to work together with you and the Piobaireachd Society and others to provide opportunities like that.

AF - There may be an opportunity to do it at Piping Live, for example. The Piping Center runs Piping Live in Glasgow, and of course it’s a real hotbed of piping with pipers from all over the world attending the Championship. There is a community there. The Piobaireachd Society do participate in that and have made up performances in the last two or three years. But there may some creative way to be found to create more of a pibroch community at it with more of an expectation that people will be playing things that are different or experimental or interpretational rather than the usual things. But it’s quite difficult to get people to come out and listen to these things. It’s quite difficult to know how to position it so that you can really appeal to people.

JDH - I think bagpipers and bagpipe music generally want to sequester themselves in to more closed musical communities, but I think pibroch is the bridge to other musical traditions.

AF - I think it can be. I think it definitely has the potential to do that. But you can’t present it in the way we do at the moment, I don’t think. I think we’ve got to be more creative about how to appeal to a wider audience.

JDH - It’s been my experience that, every time I’ve seen a recital or heard a more public performance at which a pibroch tune is about to be played, the piper feels the need to explain it. Almost apologetically: Here’s a pibroch. It’s an old setting It’s a theme and variation, with variation of increasing complexity.

Just play it. No one goes to a concert violin recital and hears the violinist explain the pieces in between. The music just gets played.

Simon Chadwick told me when he does a recital, he sticks a pibroch in the middle of the concert (generally thinking it’s the safest place to put it) without comment, and people regularly come up to him and say, “What was that lovely long piece you played in the middle?”

AF - We have the same experience. We have a small recital in Edinburgh every year during the festival of pipe music, and we stick a pibroch in the middle. And the audience is invited behind the scenes afterwards for a dram, to hear what they thought about it, and you’re right: a large number of them come and say, “I really like the pibroch”.

I think there’s space for it, for sure.

But I think we need some more creative thinking about it.

JDH - I think, after talking with all the people I do, and have, I am convinced that we are going to hit a critical mass. A lot of people want pibroch to succeed at being the exciting art form we all know it could be. And the competitors may be afraid of changes, but, you know what? Change is good. Yes, it’s hard. Maybe you tried to change and it didn’t work this year, but there’s always next year.

AF - I think the message needs to be taken at a serious level to the judges as well. That is also very important. We have routes through which to do that, but that is a difficult obstacle as well.

I find we have a lot of judges who are open minded, or who want to be open minded, or who think they are open minded, but perhaps when it comes down to the bit, sitting and judging a competition, conservatism takes over again.

So, you need the willingness to accept these things on both sides of the competition fence.

JDH - And patience. This is all new. And there are going to be mistakes. But it is the intention behind it that represents, to my mind, a hope. And don’t let the screw ups set you back.

AF - Another idea I have is: the judges are there essentially as a proxy for the audience. That’s what they should be there to do. They shouldn’t be there to nit-pick this grace note or that grace note. Basically they are there to say, “This is what we, as an audience, think about that piece of music.”

To take that on to the next stage may mean, perhaps, introducing non-pipers to judging benches! Experienced musicians.

JDH - Perhaps from within a highland music idiom, but outside the competition system, perhaps even outside of piping.

AF - Could be folk music, could be classical music.

JDH - Of course, competitors might balk at the idea, esp. if there is any hint at amateurism or the sense of a lack of experience. But what needs to be considered by competitors is: music is a form of communication. How you choose to communicate has much to do with what your audience is expecting from you. If you assume your audience is a group of former competitors who are going to nit-pick technical ability, you will play that way.

But if your audience is broader and includes experienced musicians from other fields and idioms, then your performance is going to have to take them into account.

That’s true of all musicians everywhere. We are not alone in this. And by building bridges to other musical communities will not only help us grow, but will help us learn from them (and they from us) as we all struggle to keep our music alive.

AF - I think it’s happening to some extent. Maybe not so much in pibroch as in light music: the folk music influence, the Breton influence and all sorts of other things. People are looking for new ways to do things and different combinations of instruments and different ways to present it.

But it’s not gotten stuck into pibroch. I suppose it’s because it’s not alive in the same way as these forms of music. I think people look on it as archaic and something from the past, which it doesn’t have to be.

JDH - Thank you so much.

AF - It was lovely to talk to you, David.