Pipers: A Guide to the Players

Pipers takes the reader inside the world of the performer community of Scottish piping, introducing the instrument itselfand the various different repertories. It also discusses piping techniques as well as information on some of the greatpiping dynasties and individual pipers. Dr Willie Donaldson shows how ‘traditional music’, often assumed to be theanonymous product of a dim and distant past, is the creation of gifted individuals operating in a sophisticated andvigorously ongoing enterprise. Since pipers have often been skilled also on the fiddle, keyboards and small-pipes, or assingers or dancers, their story offers fascinating insights into the whole traditional music and song repertoire of Scotland.Pipers is a well-informed and highly readable account by a prize-winning author who is a piper and composer of pipemusic as well as an internationally recognised historian of Scottish tradition.