Some 2,600 are exported from the Mid East factory each year, mainly to the United States. The camels, draped in scarlet and gold as their musicians sway above them, are particularly appreciated during parades.īut Pakistan’s main affiliation with bagpipes is its mass production of them, though the quality of the instruments it makes can vary. In 2014 it established a camel-mounted bagpipe band attached to a unit of Desert Rangers. The Pakistani military, born out of the colonial British Indian Army, also still has a soft spot for the instrument. The kilt, however, is not de rigueur among the Pakistanis. Proudly he shows pictures on his mobile phone of the band in colourful costumes.įorrest said Pakistani bands put the emphasis on how they look, rather than musical technique, “which is less important to them”.Īt the world bagpipe championship, which is held every year in Glasgow, they are “the most beautifully dressed,” he said. “People love the bagpipe,” smiles Yaser Sain, the leader of a Sialkot trio who play at least two performances each day, he said. Locals seized on the tradition, which remains popular till this day, with dozens of bagpipe bands available for weddings and religious festivals.
“Anywhere the British army went, they took pipers with them,” said Decker Forrest, a Gaelic music teacher at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. A Pakistani worker fixes a component to make a set of bagpipes at the Mid East bagpipe factory in the eastern city of Sialkot. South Asia has had for centuries its pungi, a wind instrument used for snake charming, and shehnai, a traditional oboe.īut the bagpipe had to wait until the mid-19th Century for British colonialists to bring it to subcontinental India, of which Pakistan was a part before independence and partition in 1947. It was like a school, but the teachers were our dads and uncles.” “When we were seven or eight, we would go to the factory. “In my family, all the boys know how to make a bagpipe, step by step,” said Farooq. They are then attached to a bag, and often covered with tartan, a coloured plaid fabric typical of Scotland. The drones – long pipes with a lower tone – follow a similar process. Rosewood or ebony serve as the blowstick, into which players exhale. Workers are busy standing or sitting on the ground.Ĭovered in sawdust, they carve the wood and polish it. The fresh smell of wood floats through the Mid East factory in Sialkot, on the eastern side of Punjab province, where Farooq is one of the managers. Now he is the third generation to take up the tradition in Pakistan, which is thousands of kilometres from Scotland yet sells thousands of bagpipes each year.
How can I begin.SIALKOT, Pakistan (AFP) – Umer Farooq’s grandfather and father made bagpipes. Oh man, How can i describe the way i feel.
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