Photo by Alisha Durosier | The Crow’s Nest
By Alisha Durosier
Evenings at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg are quiet. By Bayboro Harbor, one can get a glimpse of students working inside the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library, see others stroll along the harbor, hear the quiet movement of the trees, water and possibly the skirl of a bagpipe.
Freshman biology major Finn Kellam is responsible for the sound. Kellam is a member of the grade one City of Dunedin Pipe Band, one of the two grade one pipe bands in the U.S. In preparation for the upcoming competition season starting in January, he spends some evenings of his week playing the bagpipes by Bayboro Harbor.
“I grew up in Dunedin, as a little kid. So, they do Highland Games every year and they have like hundreds of bagpipes coming through. So, I’ve always heard it since I was a kid. So, it’s kind of exciting being able to continue, you know, playing with that and contributing to it still,” Kellam said.
Highland games are events celebrating Scottish and Celtic culture. In Scotland or in countries with large Scottish populations, the Highland Games take place throughout spring and summer. Dunedin hosts an annual Highland Games and festival, featuring the pipe band.
Pipe bands are a representation and significant part of Scottish culture, it’s an ensemble of Great Highland Bagpipes, Scottish snare drums, tenor drums and bass drums. Pipe bands are ranked by a grading system determined by ability. It ranges from grade five, the lowest ability level, to grade one, the highest ability level.
“I joined the grade one band about a year ago … it’s really exciting because I haven’t been playing for, you know, decades, like a lot of the other members in the grade one band. I’ve only been playing for five years,” Kellam said.
He only started learning how to play the bagpipes during his freshman year of high school, through a bagpipe program implemented at his school.
However, Kellam has always had an interest in music. He learned to play the saxophone in the 7th grade. As he progressed through school, he was a section leader, a band captain and was the first chair in the Florida all state orchestra by his senior year.
“There’s a lot of stereotypes like, you know, old Scottish people and Kilts. I mean, that is still a real thing, but I just think it’s a lot of fun. It’s really rewarding,” Kellam said.
Kellam finds that learning playing the bagpipes is much more gratifying than playing the saxophone.
“I think what’s so rewarding is that it’s a lot harder to play. It’s a lot of stamina. It’s a very, very physical instrument and I have to play it every few days to keep it in tune. If I just let it sit, it’s so sensitive to humidity and temperature that it can really go out of tune really quickly,” Kellam said.
The bagpipes consist of a bag or bladder full of air, three sticks known as drones which allows air to leak out producing a constant hum-like sound, a chanter, which is responsible for creating the melody and a blow stick, which the player blows into.
“So, there’s four reeds that you’re operating at once,” Kellam said. “A bagpipe can only play nine notes in a specific scale pattern and it’s tuned in between, it’s not tuned the same way that instruments like a piano or a saxophone are tuned. It’s at a different frequency. So, it takes a lot of ear training.”
The sensitivity of an instrument like the bagpipe, can make participating in a high-level performance band challenging.
“Playing in a grade one band is pretty stressful … you can’t really hide a bad bagpiper. You can in a concert band or in a marching band because the bad players will just play quietly. But you don’t have that option,” Kellam said. “It’s just a high stress environment sometimes, but that’s what makes it enjoyable.”
Alongside individual practice, the band rehearses twice a week, with members who don’t live in Florida rehearsing via zoom calls. Once a month, everyone, including those who live out of state, meet in Dunedin for a full rehearsal.
“There is a lot of discipline in it. So, just like how someone would go to the gym or do a sport, or really anything. It applies to everything I’m doing in class. I was so, like, involved musically in high school. I never really thought about how much it would transfer over to how I do my work in school and how I function in a team environment,” Kellam said.
Even amongst the high stakes and demands of being in a grade on pipe band, Kellam’s love for music outweighs any sense of pressure or burden.
“I definitely don’t see it as an obligation for the most part. But I think just playing music, no matter what it is, is just something that makes me feel satisfied at the end of the day, it’s just like any hobby,” Kellam said. “I think doing music is something I’ll always do … I think I’ll always do it for sure whether it’s saxophone or bagpipes. But so far, I think I’ll just stick with bagpipes.”
