Wednesday, September 4, 2002
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Wednesday, September 4, 2002 |
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Fayette bagpiper provides poignant ambiance for memorials
By Sallie
Satterthwaite
"An instrument of great occasions." Not everyone agrees with Kent McVay's description of bagpipes, but the timeworn phrase, "You either love 'em or hate 'em," should probably be downgraded to cliché status. In recent years, the keening of pipes playing "Amazing Grace" has become as much associated with service-related funerals as a bugle playing "Taps." And in Fayette County, McVay is the piper you're most likely to hear. He is the official bandsman of the Fayetteville Police Department, and will add poignancy to several of this week's commemorations of an event no American now living will ever forget. "It's an instrument of great occasions," McVay says again. "You'll see it at weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs occasions that have meaning for people. It is remembered for its emotional impact." Bagpipes have long been associated with Scotland, and according to the World Book Encyclopedia have survived virtually unchanged over thousands of years. Old Testament references to "pipes" probably mean bagpipes. The origin of the instrument is unknown, but it has existed with slight variations in Mediterranean cultures as well as in the Scottish Highlands where it is actually regarded as an instrument of war. The Great Highland pipes are what the public sees and hears at official parades and programs, McVay says. When he plays his in public, he wears his "police kit" or uniform, which includes kilts in the Shaw tartan, by special permission of the Shaw clan. Its colors are similar to the well-known "Black Watch." "The Southeast is a hotbed of piping," says McVay, chuckling at the disbelieving guffaw that follows his statement. "It's true," he says. "Piping has probably tripled in the last eight years. It's alive, doing well, and moving west. "It used to be that Scotland was the home of the great players in the world, and it still is, but we're starting to develop in the United States and Canada. A number of people are manufacturing pipes who never did before, and bands that used to have 30 players now have 50." That would include the John Mohr MacKintosh Band, much in the public eye during the 1996 Olympics. Named for Gov. Oglethorpe's "number two guy," McVay says, the brilliant-red tartan-clad band paraded around Olympic Park, leading the Budweiser Clydesdales through blocked-off streets. Unlike conventional bands, in which flutes, tubas and saxophones provide a mix of harmonies and textures, a bagpipe band consists of only two instruments: bagpipes and drums. And while there may be several drums snare, tenor, bass the pipes are all the same. The instrument "consists of three drones real large pipes plus two smaller ones," the piper continues. "The tenor drones are one octave higher, but they always play A. "When you hear the pipes [in a band], they're in unison, all playing the same thing at the same time," McVay explains. "Occasionally seconds will play a contrapuntal line throughout the song, but essentially you're going for volume. "When [WSB-TV anchor] Monica Kaufman interviewed Braveheart Mel Gibson, we played for that too," says the piper, then moves on to describe his favorite event. "We play for the [state's] police memorial service every year," he says, his voice growing softer. "They used to block off streets around the capitol in May and parade the riderless horses by. The families [of fallen officers] would come to hear the governor speak." The ceremony has been moved to Forsyth in recent years, but it's not the same as it was on the capitol steps, he says. The pipers used to stand facing the bereaved families, McVay says. He pauses, then adds only that it was difficult: "You don't get callous."
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Not surprisingly, the tune most requested of pipers for solemn occasions is "Amazing Grace." How did this old hymn, long found only in certain Protestant hymnals, find its way into the bagpipe repertoire and become de rigueur at military funerals and memorial services? There seems to be no clear answer. With words by a converted slave trader and a tune that was probably a Southern folk melody (it's labeled with five different names in five hymnals), the hymn crossed over from church-music to the popular realm when country and pop singers adopted it 25 or more years ago. It became one of the secular world's best-known hymns. Sooner or later, someone played it on bagpipes, someone else followed suit, it was used for a funeral, then another, and soon its inception was lost to history.
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Did McVay say he plays for weddings too? "Scotland the Brave," next-most-requested bagpipe tune, would work for a wedding, although McVay says he was asked recently to play "The Wedding March" for an anniversary party. He has also played in Carnegie Hall, in New York City. No, really. The South Fayette Middle School band was participating in a festival there, and "Amazing Grace" was one of the pieces. McVay had played in their assemblies and so was invited to go along. "I got to solo," he says but he also got to chaperone. That's all right. He admits that he's on a mission to stimulate an interest in the pipes, especially among the young. His own career began when his mother gave him "an old set of family pipes, and I planned to pass them to one of my kids." Wait a minute. His mother just happened to find bagpipes in the attic? It helps to understand that McVay, 53, is thoroughly Scottish, his mother a McConnell and his father's family from a region southwest of Glasgow. McVay and his pipes moved east with Western Air Lines; he now works for Delta. His oldest child is 26, "in the computer business and self-sufficient." His younger son and daughter are at North Georgia College. His wife, Rosalie, a math teacher at Fayette County High School, pointed out that if McVay was going to inspire the kids to play, he'd better learn to play them first himself. He studied under Jerry Finegan, then of East Point. Finegan, who now lives on the north side of Atlanta, is pipe major of the Atlanta Pipe Band. The unwieldy instrument is harder to play than observers might think. Because there is no correlation between breathing and phrasing the player's lungs merely refill the bag which is squeezed steadily to provide air for the pipes it's a little like trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time, McVay says. It take perhaps six months to two years to learn the pipes, he estimates, whether or not the student had prior musical training which McVay did not. Growing up in a Los Angeles suburb, he says, he was too busy surfing to play a more conventional instrument in his high school band anyhow. "I play the banjo," he says, as though that somehow explains it all, and he listens to NPR. McVay has also played for schools and church events he's a parishioner at St. Andrew's-in-the-Pines Episcopal Church in Peachtree City and for organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He does not charge for his services, but requests that a donation be made to a police department charity, consistent with his conviction that the police should present a positive image in the community. He will play for the Sept. 11 memorial service at Fayetteville's First United Methodist Church at 11:45 a.m. The event is open to the public. Bagpiper McVay also will perform at the Peachtree City commemorative service on Sept. 11, 7 p.m. in the Frederick Brown Amphitheater.
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