The Old and New World Highland Bagpiping by John G. Gibson

Description

This stimulating and controversial book provides a comprehensive account of pipers and piping in both Highland Scotland and Gealic Cape Breton. The result of over thirty years’ oral fieldwork among the last of the Gaels in Cape Breton, as well as an exhaustive research of Scottish archival sources, it traces the shift from tradition to modernism in the old world through detailed genealogies and biographies. Focusing on how the social function of the Scottish piper changed and step- dance piping progressively disappeared. It also shows that traditional community bagpiping in the Old and New world Gaidhealtrachdan was, and for a long time remained , the same and that changes were introduced by the tendency to interpret the written record from the perspective of modern, post-eighteen-century bagpiping.

‘Gibson’ is a voice which deserves to be heard on the History of the Highland bagpipe. His passion for the subject shines through on every page and there can be no denying his knowledge of the sources for piping history, in Gaelic as well as in English and other languages…a book of great learning’ – David Waterhouse, University of Toronto.