THE JOURNALS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LOWLAND AND BORDER PIPERS.

The North American Association of Lowland and Border Pipers was founded in 1989 and it publishes for its members a JOURNAL “to provide information and music pertaining to the bellows blown pipes of Scotland and northern England”.

These lively journals are very well produced in A4 size with card covers and plastic ring binders (just right for reading in the bath!). The issue of September 1993 is their sixth. They have so far published approximately 230 pages of articles, photos (one issue had a page of colour photos), music, reviews, news adverts and much more. My hasty calculation shows that since the first issue came out in July 1990 they have published one A4 size per 5.4 days!

The Association also organises meetings of pipers in the USA and is run by an executive committee of four (Alan Jones is Overseas Advisor). I suspect that the main driving force is Brian McCandless, the Chairman and seemingly tireless Editor who, apart from editing the Journal, researches and writes many of the articles, plays a variety of pipes and also has started pipemaking. .

I believe he also has a “day job” which makes me wonder if he ever sleeps. Perhaps there are more than 24 hours per day in Maryland. There have been several contributions by Alan Jones and pipemaker Mike MacHarg regularly writes on reedmaking and maintenance of pipes.

Enthusiasm for all types of pipes appears to be unbridled in North America. Several writers have bravely attempted to sort out the confusion about the names of our various bellows pipes. Considerable interest is being shown in the Pastoral/Union pipes, which have not yet really been embraced by our Society.

There are often articles on pipes other than the bellows pipes - issue number 6, for example, has a very inspiring interview with Rik Palieri, who has researched and now plays a variety of Polish bagpipes. He has studied piping in Poland from some of the very few remaining pipers and this interview gives an exciting insight into what our culture has lost. It is well worth reading.

I think the North American Association of Lowland and Border Pipers is doing an excellent job and that both Societies should have as much contact with each other as possible. For more information write to Brian E. McCandless, 243 West

Main Street, Maryland 21921, USA.                                                               Julian Goodacre