Friday, October 15, 2010

Here's one for Six-Bells John

If you were going to guess, where would you say the world's biggest bagpipe museum was?

Would you believe Scapoli?

Yep, traditional Italian music isn't all about that annoying accordian guy playing the Godfather theme next to your table at lunch. ("If I give you twenty Euros, will you go away and spend an hour rethinking the direction of you life?")

The Museo della Zampogna is in the small town of Scapoli about three hours drive from here, in the provice of Isernia, the southern bit of Molise.

And when the Italians do bagpipes,

they don't mess around.



~

1 comment:

John said...

They're an interesting piece of business. Quite the tradition in Rome for Christmas, so I'm told. If you look at some of the few engravings available of the old Irish war pipe, the shape and placement of the bag is identical. Related? No one knows. No example of the old Irish pipe has survived. (What's called an Irish warpipe these days is a Highland pipe with one less tenor drone.)

The double chanter appears elsewhere, too. My friend Richard Cook plays one of Julian Goodacre's Cornish double pipes. It gets some lovely harmonies. You can hear a sample on his webpage here: http://www.celticpiper.net/instrumnt.htm#Cornish Double Pipes

I've never heard a zampogna in person. The youtube examples are quite nice.

Did you ever see "The Wrong Box"? It's Ralph Richardson, I think, that plays The Most Boring Man in the World. I remind myself of him when one of my topics comes up. Nothing seems to help.

Cheers,

-John-