Firefighters To Learn Bagpipes

Firefighters Society To Host Saturday Fundraiser

ROGERS — Tonight is their first bagpipe lesson, but the invitations to play events started last year.

Firefighters with the Northwest Arkansas Fraternal Order of Leatherheads Society hope to have a pipe and drum corps performing soon. First they have to learn their instruments and raise money to outfit the group.

At A Glance

Fundraiser

The third annual Natural F.O.O.L.S. Crawfish Boil will be 4 p.m. Saturday at Bentley’s, 911 S.E. 28th St., Bentonville. Tickets are $30 at the door. Advance tickets are $25 and are available at www.naturalfools.com or by calling 479-871-5272.

Source: Staff Report

Firefighters in the Natural F.O.O.L.S. Pipe and Drum Corps come from Rogers, Bentonville, Bella Vista and Springdale, said Scott Mendham, vice president and founding member of the corps and a Rogers firefighter and paramedic. Mendham said he is surprised no one has tried before to start a group.

“I know there are other guys in Rogers who are interested,” he said.

Three restaurants asked the group to play St. Patrick’s Day this year and other requests have come in.

A crawfish boil Saturday at Bentley’s in Bentonville will help raise money to outfit the group. Pipers from Little Rock and Fort Smith will join the group. A silent auction held in conjunction with the boil will raise money for the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter.

Funerals, parades and civic events are common requests for the Fort Smith Firefighters Pipe and Drum Corps, said Tery Graves, battalion chief with the Fort Smith Fire Department and corps’ pipe major. Graves has even played a few weddings.

Learning the bagpipes is hard, Graves said.

He tried to learn the bagpipes on his own before the Fort Smith group formed in 2009. After a fellow firefighter died in a head-on car accident, his friends brought in pipers for the funeral. That moment spurred firefighters in the department to form their own group. They made weekly trips for lessons from the Fayetteville-based Ozark Highlanders and played their first gig in 2011, Graves said.

At A Glance

'The Pipes'

Bagpipes are a class of musical instruments known as aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uillean pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes have been played for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, the Caucasus, around the Persian Gulf and in Northern Africa. The term "bagpipe" is equally correct in the singular or plural, although in the English language, pipers most commonly talk of "the pipes" or "a set of pipes."

Source: The Book of the Bagpipe, Hugh Cheape

“If we didn’t do anything else we’d do funerals,” Graves said.

When the last notes of taps fade and the bagpipes start “Amazing Grace,” it is an emotional moment, Graves said.

The Northwest Arkansas group also will take lessons from members of the Ozark Highlanders.

JoAnn Tyler, president and band manager of the Highlanders, said it takes more than a year to learn to play the bagpipes. Beginners don't start on the bagpipes, but learn to pipe on a chanter, a long-stemmed instrument. With the chanter they can practice fingering, learn the notes, learn to read music and learn several tunes. There’s no way to flip through music during a parade.

“You can’t play looking at the music. You have to have all the tunes memorized,” Tyler said.

Players learn doubling — increasing the sound of the note through multiple moves and embellishments — or adding more finger movement for emphasis. Once they spend six to nine months practicing on a chanter, then they will be ready for the bagpipes, and that requires a little more air, Tyler said.

“It jumps the skill level,” she said.

Because the firefighters are starting as a group it will help them, Tyler said.

“You have to be fairly obsessive about it to do well,” she said.

The Natural F.O.O.L.S. Pipe and Drum Corps members know it will take time, but they want to play, Mendham said. They have already received a donation of kilts. After they learn to play their chanters they hope to buy used bagpipes and be playing soon.

“We’re hoping to be able to play something by the end of the year,” Mendham said.

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