melody & rhythm

The Bagpipe

by

I

To do a reading on the know-do-people or, the "folk lore" - as the briton say, in what refers to the Music, it's to do a trip to the beginning of the Communication of Masses, to the ancestral times of the tribal needs of the bosses of Clans and its teocratas in the demands of dissemination of the nowledge among warriors, peasants and artisans - th.m., the Communication between Gentlemen and Servants won a mixture among I voice-do-order it and the popular speech of done wisdom.

But, as to raise a connection bridge between some and others? A connection mythical-tellluric existed among who read the Oracles (priestess and priests), some times for you other times for the Servants, but it was a connection that more it inspired fears than relief or hope... The connection could not be so dry, so primary and institutional.

About 3.000 years before the mystic-warlike conquests that had built the it was christian, a people generically denominated Kelt (Celtic) it was distributed in tribes by the area that today knew like Europe - and, that people, of Indo-European characteristic, had a system of life theocratic based in the matriarchy for which the Woman, relegated for second plan starting from the Christian Era, exercised all the main tasks and organization functions foot of equality with the Man.

The Celtic People had, then, an own Culture: it gave the first conceptions of military structure appeared with warring bosses and of legislative structure, soon... and again, the imperious need of a bridge made to feel among the mythical-telluric existence of the Life and the social understanding in each Tribe.

Observing the syllabic cadence of the speech of Priestess in the reading of the Oracle, the Celtic artisans, finally, found the bridge. And alone it could be, actually, an artistic connection. What did they find? The shepherds and the peasants already used and in different part of the Earth rudimentary instruments for they be identified with the flocks - they were Instruments of Blow; there, the artisans conceived the solution with the theologians' help: it was the bridge that would sweeten the arduous Life of those times. Although rudimentarly, developed the Pipe (from gaelic ghaid, w.m. "goat") so that it could accompany in Melody that poetic Rhythm that made repeat the Destiny dictated in the speech of Priestess. It's was born, be said like this, that that was stipulated to denominate as Popular Music (or Folkloric) serving the theocratic system, just as the songs that today illustrate the religious services, in the Occident, and the mantras, in the East.

II

"Druidas, to the they hear the oracles of Voluspa, perceive that these were always contained in measured sentences, in a constant way, bringing gets a certain harmony that varied the theme accordingly, so that the tone in that prophesies her pronounced its sentences it didn't differ a lot of common language. They examined with attention that singularity and, after (...) they imitated the different intonations that heard, they got to reproduce them and they discovered that they possessed coordinates with fixed rules", as teaches us the historian and writer Antoine Fabre D'Olivet (1767-1825), in its work "Philosophical History Of Human Be" (published in 1905, Paris - Fr., for Librairie Générale de Sciences Occultes). This french intellectual, vilely pursued by Bonaparte and for Vatican, wrote works as "The Essence and the Form of Poetry", "Music" and "Considerations About the Rhythm", what guarantees us the deep discussion of this study about the Celtic Culture.

The such ones "measured sentences" they were Lai: the tradition of the Monophonic Music (th. m., for a voice and without instrumental accompaniment) it comes from the Oracular Celtic Song, previous to the Gregorian Song (or Roman), that denominated as Galican Rite. Lai, that Richard Wagner refers in Tristan and Isolda, is that to speak sung of the Celtic liturgies that mentions D'Olivet. Only starting from 14 Th Century it’s that Lai was structured with "12 Verses" in the ambit of a polyphonic accompaniment under control for a metric variety..

It is then, it was during the ceremonial of the cults - I eat I already mentioned: a mythical-telluric rite based in the feminine essence - that the Celtic found the Melody among the constant sonority of the poetic speech of Priestess (or Voluspa), and the Rhythm, among strong and weak times.

In text published in the "Cotianet" and the newspaper "Gazeta de Cotia" (1999, March), under the title "Bagpipe: A Celtic Culture", I remember that in the "(...) old Scotland of 13 Th Century was common to the clans the use of the Bagpipes in the celebration of rites for the fertility, natural and human, and in the good-bye to the dear entities (...) to Bagpipe until today it is as a musical language celebrating the past (...) of Celtic People."

During I Century of the Christian expansion, or the hardened "Catholicism" of the Christianity, and already submitted to the Roman power, the Celtic People went to the few also submitted to the Pope Inquisition, and then, its culture, military and social structure was dispossessed mainly in favor of the new religious person - being the more affected Celtic areas, Ireland, the Iberic Peninsula and Germany; Scotland, that best resisted to the investment of the Celtic cultural values, got to preserve many of its symbols - one of them: the ghaid, or Bagpipe...

III

Why to speak on to Bagpipe if it’s not such a well-known musical instrument below Ecuador, although it's tradition among people of Celtic crossing?

When the conquerors, settlers and portuguese colonizers, starting from 1500 dC, took ownership of Insulla Brasil - as this part of the was indicated "américas" in the map of Bartolomeu de Pareto (and that the physical Master João reminded in letter to King D. Manuel, informed of the one of Bed) -, one of the pieces of its popular musical culture was an instrument of its Celtic past: to Bagpipe.

The luso-Brazilian Culture life had great development in the Rio de Janeiro in 1800 years, but already in to São Paulo of 1700 years the captain-general D. Luiz António (Morgado de Matheus) made to appear the saraus (artistic encounters) and te deuns (religious songs - or, religious rites) us which one of the instruments...besides the flutes, violins and violas, it was the Bagpipe. Reports to 1700 years also tells us of its popular and ceremonial use in villages of Paraíba and of Minas Gerais... that's to Bagpipe, for a lot of people's fright!, already had its moment in the luso-Brazilian Culture.

IV

Bagpipe

the water that is slippery of me

when arriving the eagle nest near

it reflects a past and a future

which runic stone

that beats in mine to be with crystalline sound

my shade as that a clock-of-sun

it points for it’s worth it greenly

wild steeds between drums and pipes

and here near the eagle nest

I loved in the pleasure of living

and here knew about the love the hymn

that the gods in us inhabit

gods flutter

cosmic sound

yesterday a good-bye

today the party

my desires

another song

the gods speak

of the blow the hymn comes

the gods in us inhabit

in mine to be the crystalline sound

wine in telluric chalice

my runic fate near the eagle nest

bagpipes explodes in me

(Gerês - Port., 1979)

V

The Celtic artisans found Ghaid as its first musical instrument for support of the Melody that they found in the Oraculac Speech Poetic; later, and tends Ghaid practically as chanter, arrived to the conception of Bagpipe.

How was it?

The musicians needed, also them!, of a bridge between the blow and the longer musical execution. The idea was removed of bellows-of-blacksmith, instrument of one of the artisans more notables in Celtic time: to adapt a leather bellows to a perforated tube and with a palheta (of the type "free") - the Air enters for a superior tube blown by the bagpiper and a valve impedes its return; the bagpiper compress the bellows with the arm for of the pressure of air and to do to vibrate the palheta... Then, they adapted two three tubes... It’s then, to Bagpipe it won names as Galician Pipe (in the Minho-Galaic Culture), Cornemuse (among gaulish/frenchmen) and BagPipe (among Irishmen, breton ones and Scotsmen).

From 14 Th Century the Bagpipe is a martial instrument among the Scotsmen: already among the Irishmen, is also martial (said War-Pipe), being activated by the mouth and more social (said Union-Pipe), activated by the bellows, and for events in interiors; in the English as like Northumbrian-Pipe, activated (or blown) with bellows; and, in India, the Bagpipe it's made of bamboo with a palheta and an arrested bordoun to an odre of goat skin.

Another instrument built under the same beginning of the leather bellows as intermediary piece is Street Organ (actually, a portable organ).

As it’s of general knowledge, the Music is studied, genericaly, through the modal segments (in which registers the mythological and community type, therefore, folkloric - or, the musical action in its emphasis popularly festival and less learned), tonal (the polyphonic type that it took to the musical erudition, still during the medieval period of Europe) and, as some researchers they defend today, serial (the unfolding of the musical praxes in radical forms, as the jazz, the rock'n roll, the punk, the blues..., besides the mix between the folkloric and the erudite). In this brief note on to Bagpipe interest us the modal segment - that in that a Fixed Tonic assures the flow of the popular musical language and, sometimes, as among Celtic Clan, it creates an unit community. In the spectrum of the History of Music it’s here, in this segment of studies and practices, that locates the Bagpipe.

All the great historians, of great Heródoto to chinese Sima Qian going by arabic al-Tabaric, roman Tito Lívio, and the most recent, like italian Maquiavel, french Antoine Fabre D'Olivet and brazilian Mário de Andrade, among many and many other, they speak to us about the use of musical instruments of blow wants in tribal rituals and palaces wants in battles. Columnists' Aristófanes references and Plato remind us that the Bagpipe was already appreciated even among Greeks and Egyptian, demonstrating the great Celtic cultural dispersion once again that mentions D'Olivet. And, in imperial Rome, this instrument was denominated as Tíbia Utricularis: here, the Bagpipe it also won the imperial sympathy and popular.

The Bagpipe became, after the Fall of the Roman Empire and the fights in the "British" islands, the Scottish national symbol par excellence, what took writer Walter Scott to write that "twelve highlanders and the bagpipe make the rebellion". And it is in Scotland that has presence musically more strong the Bagpipe, today: artists compose popular pieces type (ceol-beag), as marches and dances, and of the learned type (pibroch or ceol-mor), as ballads for contemplation and rituals.

Historians of the musical art, like Câmera Cascudo, José Miguel Wisnik and Mário de Andrade, in Brazil, or Michel Giacometti (a corso rooted) in Portugal, put the Bagpipe as a type of instrument musically special.

Of the minho-galaic encounters of which I participated I remember, and it is difficult to forget..., the continuity of the serious note that leaves of the bellows while it's fingered the flute. It is a "I release blow", as myself tried to define, in 1979 (La Coruña, Galiza-Esp.), "that besieges us, makes us to notice the (ours) ground." Perhaps that, the Bagpipe it served the Celtic armies and it serves, still, the Scottish army.

(Finishing, I remind the telluric and cosmic presence of Bagpipe accompanying the invasion of Normandia that put an end to the hitlerian barbarism... It was as that a collective appropriation of the earth under that releases blow.)