A red carpet, with an important man wearing white robes walking down the middle, flanked by a double row of bagpipers wearing tartan trousers and military dress jackets and hats.

Post-colonial Bagpiping: Nigeria in context

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Featured image: from article, Jane Flanagan, ‘Skirl of the bagpipes thrills Nigeria’, The Times Feb 29 2020

At the end of last month, the BBC World Service covered the story of a Nigerian entrepreneur, Chukwu Oba Kalu, who is ‘on a mission’ to revive bagpipe playing in Nigeria (Wilson, 2023).  This has prompted Soundyngs to think a bit about the global legacy of the Great Highland Bagpipes, and how they connect with postcolonial identities in different places, and surprisingly, in this west African context.  New Zealand, Australia, and North America all have vibrant bagpiping cultures in places where Scots emigrants settled and where the descendents of these first settlers still live: in those places, this is an obvious ‘roots music’ for sectors of a now long-term settled population and expresses their diasporic identity.  But in other areas with non-diasporic populations, local affection for piping is more complex.

The Highland Pipes in Pakistan and India

Bagpipes, of course, aren’t uniquely indigenous to Scotland.  There are variants of this instrument, consisting of an animal skin bag, a blowpipe and a chanter fingering pipe, in many places around the Mediterranean, Middle East, central Asia and down through the Indian subcontinent; wherever ancient pastoralism spread its musical cultures (see Calvo-Sotelo, 2015).  Not all of these instruments also have the drones associated with the Highland great pipes.  Where the specification in includes not only drones but also be-tartaned bags, the reasonable assumption is that the instrument arrived in the backpacks of Scottish soldiers fighting in imperial British armies.  It might be imagined that when the British withdrew, any remaining Highland pipes might have been ceremonially burned by newly independent peoples. Instead, Pakistan and India today have a thriving performing, manufacturing and global export presence in the Highland bagpiping world (see Goodacre, 2017).  Various articles about the origins of the bagpipes have speculated that the instrument’s similarity to indigenous pipes might have assisted, in this instance, its persistence.  The mashag (variously called also mashac or moshag) found in Northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and some of the central Asian republics has the bag/reed chanter/blowpipe configuration, although not necessarily the separate drones.  However, as Francis Collinson describes in The Bagpipe: The History of a Musical Instrument (Collinson, 1975) the mashag is often played in ways that provide a drone effect for other instruments.  Highland bagpipes therefore sound almost indigenous in practice, and in this part of the world, pipe bands with both Highland pipes and drums are common in military and police parades and ceremonials, making good use of their en masse decibels to coordinate marching.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the movements of Indian pipe bands are simply carbon copies of the Scottish troops of the imperial period.  Watching some youtube videos of pipe bands from northern India and Pakistan (see, for example, Indian Military Pipe Band Award Winning Performance, 2015) suggests that bands in these Indian contexts deploy different choreographies and marching traditions that are local to these areas and not simply reflective of British drills.  And, in addition to military use, North India also has a thriving tradition of display bagpiping bands, who dance while they play at weddings (Alter, 1997/8). This is hugely different from the loan piper at the Scottish Kirk door.  Bagpipes in this context clearly express locally indigenous identities and traditions that run in divergent tracks to any residual British legacy.

Asia

Moving further south and east, in Singapore and Hong Kong, former British colonies, bagpipes are more obviously a colonial legacy.  In both places, research into the complicated relationship between this music and local identities has suggested that in different ways, piping speaks to the complicated, nostalgic relationships between the past and the present.  Andrew Yu, a professional bagpiper working at the University of Edinburgh, has worked on both Singapore and Hong Kong.  In Singapore, Yu’s work has tracked the presence of bagpipers both from Scotland and from Punjabi, Sikh, Malayan and Gurkha forces during the colonial period, and in post-colonial Singapore, looked at the pipes and drums which continued to feature in ceremonial events.  The Singaporean government has in the past supported school pipe bands as training grounds; alongside these, there are Christian pipe bands run by the Singapore branches of the Boys’ Brigade, a youth organisation with British roots (Yu, unpublished conference paper, 2021).  Yu’s research work on Hong Kong, which is currently experiencing a profound period of post-colonial political turmoil, is suggesting that for some of the local population, the sound of British music encodes political values that they find more attractive than their new governance from mainland China (Yu, ‘Colonial Legacy’, 2021). Elsewhere and a little earlier, Nicholas Tapp has written about the kind of nostalgia that might have primed these sentiments (Tapp, 1999-2000).  This is a fast-moving landscape, and we can look forward to Yu hopefully publishing more on this in due course.

Africa

Returning to Africa, the subject of the BBC news story, it why would a continent in which the European presence has been historically so disruptive still (in some places) have a place in its heart for the Highland pipes?

Here, the Highland bagpipes were a distinctly European contribution to the indigenous soundscape, although African hardwoods like ebony and ironwood have long been used by pipe makers around the world to make the instruments, including in Scotland (Jenkins, Oldfield & Aylett, p.8 & 22). This might have been a simple story of European one-way resource extraction – except that it clearly isn’t, again, that simple.

Nigeria experienced over 100 years of colonial rule from Britain (1861 to 1960), which has left cultural and economic markers on the region.  It is a huge, complicated, multi-ethnic state, which in all probability would not have been a single nation without this being colonially enforced.  Since independence, it has experienced a troubled history of inter-group violence sparked by both ethnic and religious differences.  In this instance, the state has to work hard to present itself as a unifying source of authority.  Music could be part of this governmental process, and perhaps a case might be made that non-indigenous music might have a claim to be a more neutral music than one drawn from one of several potentially competing local traditions.  The Nigerian armed forces, like many other post-colonial military organisations, were more likely to field European-style brass and silver marching bands than bagpipes (see youtube list, and Herbert & Sarkissian); but bagpipes now seem to have a new kind traction in the post-colonial soundscape.  As an indigenous tradition, it would appear that bagpiping is relatively new, although in his recent June 2023 interview for the BBC, Pipe Major Chukwu Oba Kala remembered being inspired by hearing a police pipe band playing in his youth.  His personal enthusiasm reflects that of the former President of the country, President Muhammadu Buhari (see featured image).  Whether the new president elected in May 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinabu, shares this enthusiasm, I do not know.  The BBC article possibly reflects a desire to continue the movement as the guard is changed.

In Nigeria, even before the recent BBC story broke, local news channels have been reporting for the past couple of years a new interest in military and presidential bagpiping associated with the reskilling of the Nigerian military under President Buhari.  In 2019, Nigerian TVC news coverage of the latest graduates from the Nigerian Airforce included an item on the contribution made by a music more generally to the armed forces, newly upgraded to a full Directorate, and highlighting a new pipe band course as part of this military training.  Filmed as he delivered his speech to that year’s cohort of graduating cadets, the Chief of the Airforce encouraged his forces to support this music, highlighting bagpiping because of the ‘beauty and royalty it adds to parades and ceremonies’ (TVC, 2019). The airforce band seem to have their own blue tartan, reflecting airforce uniform colours.

The Nigerian-based ‘Daily Trust’ newspaper reported on June 19 2021 that President Muhammadu Buhari had just approved a Presidential Pipe Band, running under the command of the Guards Brigade (Daily Trust, 2021).  In that piece, the same enthusiast covered by the BBC, Pipe Major Chukwu Oba Kalu, suggested that bagpipes helped to build ‘team work and harmony’, and could be used as part of royal funerals, weddings, international events, military ceremony, graduation parades, and so forth.  And, for the player, he reminded readers that bagpiping can be remunerative – the article quotes the fee that a piper playing for a function might charge: “a youth who learns the pipe can accumulate monthly earnings that is [sic] higher than a paid job.”

The interview goes on to suggest that bagpipes are a “music of peace” – song titles such as ‘We are no more about the war’ and ‘Amazing Grace’ should be heard as a call for peace, alongside other solemn music that “stabilises the emotions” (Daily Trust, 2021). This is, for a Scottish reader, a quite extraordinary claim to make about the céol mhór repertoire drawn from military piping, and it is probably the case (else, why make the counter-argument) that for many African listeners, pipe music is more likely still to be associated with warmaking than peacemaking.  But the claim is so startling it invites us to think about it further.

Pipe Major Chukwu Oba Kala himself runs a pipe band, “Scottish Power Nigeria”, that will play for weddings and funerals, or any other public event that needs stirring music, and the BBC interview, he recalls his grandfather’s time in the British army.  He also suggests that the pipe has affinities with the Nigerian ojà pipe; investigation of that shows that this is not a reed instrument, and in design has very little in common with the bagpipe.  It was, however, played for Igbo ceremonies, including for young men reaching adulthood – so perhaps some overlap of ceremonial use might be imaginable (Lo-Bamijoko, p.30-1).

The Daily Trust interview tells us that the Nigerian presidents’ office has for some time had a pipe band in its retinue – started under President Umara Yar’Adua, who had been inspired by a trip abroad, and continued first under Goodluck Jonathan and now Buhari, who is piped to the podium when he speaks.  It’s repertoire includes Christian songs, but also, says this interview, Islamic ones.  Cited is a performance with the Nigerian Air Force Pipe Band of ‘Sadiq Baba’, and both Hausa and Islamic songs, alongside Yoruba songs ‘Omotomo’ and ‘Iyanowura’.  This, therefore, is a bagpipe movement that is attempting to create a new repertoire of music across all ethnic and religious boundaries.  It may not succeed, but it is fascinating that the former instrument of colonial armies is being deployed to assist with this kind of state-building.  Reporting on the 2023 elections suggested that Nigerian politics are currently very unsettled (Mr Bola Tinubu gained only 37% of the vote, and no clear majority), so if the music in any way helps to build bridges, good luck to the players and their audiences.

How astonishing.  If readers can find online recordings of this, please post!

Elsewhere in Africa, you can find local traditions of piping associated with former mission schools, and historical evidence of continuous performance associated with these and other institutions whose foundation reflects European cultural modelling (see the Churchill School of Zimbabwe, for example, in the Youtube links).  But for understandable reasons, seldom is the instrument as keenly embraced as it seems to be currently in the Nigerian context.

Something unique is going on in the Nigerian context.  The historical difference between the west African and the Asian experience suggests that this is indeed, as the BBC story suggests, an odd cultural moment, and one to watch. As a good journalist might say, more (historical) research needed, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight in another 10 years time.

And for anyone curious about how Scots respond to African music, using it to create their own version of African-Highland hybrid identity, there are many Youtube recordings of pipers and west African drums performing in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, and Princes Street, Edinburgh.  We borrow from others, don’t we, something that we wish to have in ourselves.  Even if just as a way of exploring quite what that evolving identity might be becoming.

Further Reading

Youtube – accessed 5 July 2023

Africa

East and SE Asia

Indian Subcontinent

Scotland / African Fusion Bagpiping

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