By Merlin Zimmerman
Early in the school year, I spent several days in Estes Park, Colorado. I used to live just 50 miles north of there in the low valley of Red Feather Lakes, but I was not in Colorado to visit friends… or to make them.
I was there to win! I was there to tear out the hearts of the competition, climb to the top of the heap of vanquished bodies and shout, “We are the rulers, and we have conquered!” That’s right, I was there to play in a bagpiping contest.
I don’t play pipes. I’m a drummer. Now understand, without a drum corps of 7 to 10 drums playing with them, a bunch of pipers is just a bunch of pipers. Along with drummers, however, they become the award winning Minnesota Pipes and Drums. (website: www.mnpipesanddrums.org)
[Editor’s Note: I left the website in the article as it was written but did not make it an active link because it’s been shut down. The group is still active and can be found here.]
We were invited for the second year in a row to go to Estes Park to perform and compete in, arguably, one of the most beautiful pipe band competitions in the country. As we played our competition music we were looking up at Rocky Mountain National Park and the several rain squalls that were snaking down the passes toward the front range. The mountains were wonderful, and in my cabin I could look out the living room window at Long’s Peak, one of the highest points in the U.S.
We took second place at the Estes Park Highland Games. These games are the same type of festival as the Scottish Country Fair held every year at MacAlister College in St. Paul (where MP&D has competed for dozens of years, now). We also performed three nights at the Military Tattoo, a locally televised concert of military music and drill teams in the county fair arena.
I have always played drums, but it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I began playing in a pipe band. I have no Scottish blood in me at all, but there is something about the sound of the pipes and of the drum we use, called a Highland Side drum, that chills me and those like me.
I’m trying to develop some music classes for Mini-School. I wonder how MHS would enjoy a half dozen beginning pipers and drummers practicing in the halls. We might have to look into this.