BY JEANNIE CAMPBELL MBE.
Following the recent publication of the new edition of my Highland Bagpipe Makers book I was made aware that a blind piper, Michael Kazmierski Dunn, in the USA had, for many years, wanted to read my book but I had no contact information for him and no idea how to make the book accessible.
At the Northern Meeting I met an American piper, Ryan Praskovich, from Columbus, Ohio. Ryan is a B-grade competitor, piping teacher, and keen student of piobaireachd and piping history. Since then we have been exchanging emails on the subject of piping history. I mentioned Michael’s problem to Ryan and due to his help and expertise we have been able to come up with a solution. Ryan was able to trace Michael and make contact, finding out some details about him and what type of document would be accessible.
Michael is located in Rockford, Michigan, USA and his love affair with the bagpipes started in late 2004 when listening to a Christmas album which had the Nashville Pipes and Drums playing Highland Cathedral with the Nashville Symphony. The solo piper at the beginning caught Michael’s ear which he shared with his parents that he wanted to learn the instrument. For Michael, options were plenty, but the bagpipe caught his interest as the instrument plays multiple notes at the same time from the chanter and the drones. That year, when leaving school for Christmas break, he told classmates to tell Santa that Michael would like a set of pipes for Christmas. Michael was gifted a set of practice pipes for Christmas that year and has been playing since, creating communities like the “Iain Dall MacKay Society of Blind Pipers Worldwide” on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1092851665096992, and wanting to learn deeper about the music and the history behind the players, the pipemakers, the bands but has had difficulties as most books available aren’t in readily accessible formats and articles online are scattered and difficult to connect together into one conclusive story.
From the various formats which Michael suggested to Ryan, the only one familiar to me was a Word doc. I had the text in this format from before it was set for printing although I had to make a few corrections as there had been some changes and additions at the proof stage. But the illustrations were still a big problem. This was solved by Ryan who has kindly offered to describe the pictures for Michael from a printed copy of the book. So the book is on its way to Ryan and Michael has received the Word doc. His response on receiving it has made it all worthwhile.
However, I would like to emphasise that this was a one off arrangement and I have no plans to make the book available in a digital format.
Michael wrote: Hi Jeannie, thanks a lot for this accessible version of your amazing book! I hadn’t even started reading it yet when I first got it, because I wanted to do some initial testing with my screenreader to make sure it was actually going to be usable for me. And yes – it is PERFECT!
I can navigate through the text, read the chapters, and actually get at all of the historical information without having to fight with inaccessible formatting. That is such a huge deal for me, and I really appreciate you taking the time to make this possible.
And now that I’ve confirmed that it works, I’ve started diving into the book properly. OH MY GOODNESS! I’ve already gone down a HUGE rabbit hole with some of the makers and their histories. I had no idea there were so many connections between the different makers, pipers, workshops, and musical traditions.
One of the things that’s been especially fascinating to me is realizing how much more complicated the Henderson story is than I originally thought. I had always thought of “Peter Henderson” as one continuous Glasgow tradition, but your discussion of Peter Henderson of Edinburgh and Peter Henderson of Glasgow completely changed that picture for me. And then getting into Donald MacDonald, William Gunn, the Glens, Donald MacPhee, John MacDougall Gillies, and the Henderson workshop has been absolutely fascinating.
I’m especially interested in the way the book lets me see these makers not just as people who manufactured bagpipes, but as musicians, craftsmen, teachers, apprentices, and members of a much larger piping community. That’s exactly the sort of history I’ve been trying to understand.
And of course, being me, I’ve already started thinking about all of this in terms of internal bore geometry and how particular makers may have developed their characteristic sounds over generations. I’m definitely going to have a LOT more to say once I’ve gotten further through the book!
So thank you again for making this accessible and for sending it to me. It means a lot to finally be able to read a major source on bagpipe-making history myself instead of having to rely on scattered bits and pieces that happen to be accessible.
I’m having an absolute blast with it!
Michael Kazmierski Dunn 🙂