#SCOTLAND THE BRAVE BAGPIPE HOW TO#

In skilled hands, though, those parts coalesce into something absorbing, even graceful, and undoubtedly one of a kind. To the uninitiated, the sport with stones and brooms and the instrument with a bladder and a tangle of reeds can appear unwieldy and baffling. Yet even beyond those cultural ties, playing curling and playing the bagpipe also seem like kindred endeavors. The sport and the instrument are bound by a shared history, one that reaches back centuries to the frozen lochs of Scotland. A big air slope was built in a former industrial park, a bobsled course was carved into a mountain and, of course, bountiful artificial snow was needed for a region that gets very little precipitation in winter.Īnd curling competitions demand bagpipers. In a way, the band’s formation reflects the sprawling challenge that confronted Chinese officials in hosting the Winter Olympics in a nation with little background or familiarity in the events that would play out. “We just like bagpipes,” the leader of the pipers, Zhang A Li, said after one of their pregame performances - a staple of curling tournaments whether in China or Chicago, “and we all just came together.” And the band needed that help since their teacher, the only one they could find in China, had recently left the country.

#SCOTLAND THE BRAVE BAGPIPE HOW TO#

But the anthem is also sort of a default tune for the instrument tutorial videos on how to play it were easy to find online. The steady squeal of “Scotland the Brave” held its own against the din of the arena - the selection a nod, no doubt, to curling’s Scottish roots. But they were dressed as though they had just arrived from the Highlands: red plaid kilts adorned with the little pouches with long tufts of horsehair known as sporrans, all part of the uniform they had ordered from abroad. The musicians are self-described amateurs mostly from Beijing. A band of bagpipers marched in almost like a vision from another time, or at the very least, another continent. BEIJING - The curling arena darkened and strobe lights blotted the ice.

Scotland the brave bagpipe