About Us
On joue souvent dans les eglises. c'est un melange des instruments orgue,cornemuses,chant ,flute a six trous et flute irlandaise, accordion, guitar .
We often play in churches . Organ, belgian bagpipes, vocals - tenor,english bagpipes, irish whistle and wood flute, guitar and accordion............................. Andre rulens - guitar et accordion. Steve Laird - chant - tenor, orgue, cornemuse belge, flute et bodhran. Wim Poesen - cornemuses belges, flute irlandaises et whistles.
makers of our instruments.
fabricants de nos instruments.
Remy dubois, Olle Geris pipes - cornemuses
Belgium -Belgique
Jon Swayne , pipes - cornemuses, irish flute - flute irlandaise
six holed flute - flute a six trous
England - Angletere
Patrick Olwell, irish flute - flute irlandaise
USA - Etats unis
Origins of bagpipes:
Probably they originated from the area which is now modern day Iraq.
The first historicaly recorded piper was the roman emperor Nero who was a player of the Sumarian bagpipes an instrument with 2 drones.
The romans probably introduced the sumarian instrument to europe and it is also know that in britain it was a roman infantry marching instrument. Did they introduce this instrument to the celts ? this is not yet sure.
The second wave of bagpipes would have been brought to europe with the returning crusaders who brought all sorts of instruments from the holy land like the bagpipes and dumbek ( drum ) and versions of shawms ( reed instrument ).
It was in france that the bagpipes were developed and some into very sophisticated instruments such as la musette du court ( court of Louis 14 ). There are some 16 different bagpipes that come from france and they spilled over into belgium.
So if there would be a country we could safely call the land of the bagpipes it would be France where all 16 pipes are still played today in the regions for folk dancing groups.
In England like in Belgium the pipes were played all over the country and was the principal instrument used to accompany the dancing at village fetes.
In England they probably died out at the begining of the the industrial revolution when people moved from the villages into the towns thus living in close proximity with others did not provide an ideal environment to play such an instrument with out having problems with neighbours.
Although the english bagpipes ( english great pipes ) is a softer instrument than the scots pipes its still quite loud.
In belgium the instrument died out when the Belgians invented the windband for dancing ( la fanfare ). The last know piper of belgium Alphons Gheux who lived in the region of Hainaut , village of Arc Ainieres. He died in 1936 but stopped playing his instrument ( la Muchosa - local dialect word for bagpipes ) in 1912 because he accidently broke the chanter and there was nobody anymore who could repair it.
His great grand daughter Pascale Gheux is helping to re establish the belgian piping tradition in the Hainaut region and encouraging young people to take up this instrument.
Pioneers and makers of the belgian instrument , Remy Dubois, Herman Dewit , Hubert Boone, Jan Soete, Arie de Keyser, Luc Verstockt, Victor Nerinckx.
English makers - Jon Swayne , Dominic Allen , Sean Jones , Julian Goodacre , Cristopher Bailey , David Marshall - deceased.
