Renfrewshire Bagpipers participate in Piping Live down Buchanan Street

A group of young pipers in Renfrewshire marched down Buchanan Street earlier today, playing Scotland’s national instrument to crowds and shoppers.

Transcript

00:00 There's no kind of instrument like it. You either love it or you hate it and I have those days as

00:04 well as everyone but on the whole you can't really beat the bagpipes on a well-tuned instrument and

00:09 if it's played properly. My name's Keith Bowes, I'm the Pipe Major of the Renfrewshire Schools

00:13 Pipe Band. We're here to take part in Piping Live so we're a group of young people from

00:18 across Renfrewshire and yeah this is our first time performing as part of Piping Live. My own father,

00:24 my grandfather, my uncle all play the bagpipes so it's a kind of family tradition and most of

00:30 the young people in this band started just with the opportunity to learn in school time so

00:35 there are one or two that have members in their family that are pipers but for the vast majority

00:41 of them it was just an opportunity to learn in school. The bagpipes have become cooler and cooler

00:45 and events like Piping Live, festivals like Piping Live and Celtic Connections have helped kind of

00:50 give pipers and drummers the platform to perform and then kind of you know the general public come

00:56 out to support it and then with the build up to the World Pipe Band Championships it's you know

01:00 these young people are very proud to play their national instruments and represent the our national

01:05 instrument. These young people represent all the many schools in Renfrewshire and we have like a

01:10 weekly band practice throughout the winter and then that moves up to like two practices per week in

01:15 the summer. We've been out competing all over Scotland and they were successful at the Scottish

01:20 Championships a couple of weeks ago and then we were out competing at North Berwick as well.

01:24 We were playing at the cycling event in George Square last week so they're well rehearsed and

01:29 then hopefully today goes well and then Buchanan Street and outside the concert hall and just good

01:34 preparation for the World Pipe Band Championships on Saturday. Yeah it's always well nine times out

01:39 of ten it's a positive response. The young people are just getting kind of opportunities after

01:43 Covid to go out and play in public so as a band we're doing more and more public events and we've

01:49 always been received really well.