Last autumn, my family and I traveled to Pakistan to visit and support girls’ schools in Lahore and its surrounding villages. I brought with me a set of shuttlepipes, a cheap banjo, and my trusty MK low-D. At this point I should mention that I not only sport a healthy beard, but also keep a gun-cleaning rod (with lambswool top) in my whistle, as an improvised swab of sorts. Add to that recipe the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” stamp in my American passport, and you can appreciate why I was pulled aside by security at every single airport to and fro—the MK getting carefully inspected each time (and me frequently getting frisked and interrogated as well… “no sir, it’s not dangerous unless I were to try Ricky Martin tunes on it, and I assure you I would never….”). At any rate, the whistle was very popular among the friendly and handsome Pakistani people. It played a few traditional Irish jigs for school girls, and a favored theme for a large audience at the grand dedication of the Kinnaird Academy. It also dueted with a young woman who sang ‘Amazing Grace’ (in Urdu) at the Naulakha Presbyterian Church. Should I be lucky enough to return some day, I fully intend to learn some traditional Pakistani tunes on the low-D. Though it will probably travel without the gun rod…
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I was sitting at school waiting for my first period teacher to arrive. A friend of mine and another person had brought their guitars. We were back near the band room so there were a lot of musically inclined people there. Two guitars, a clarke C whistle and a couple voices made for great music.
In The early eighties, I was part of a duo that was scheduled to open for the Battlefield Band at the Bermuda Folk Club. As openers, we had neither a sound check nor much if any room on the stage (which was occupied by multiple instruments, all belonging to the headline act). Our first tune was to be an instrumental of “Carrick Fergus” on the whistle and guitar.
As I raised the whistle to the mic and mid way through what should have been a soulful opening refrain, I realized that only three legs of my chair were perched on the stage. Too late, I fell off the stage and plunged my right elbow through the rear end of a custom made guitar that was resting on a stand on the floor. This fine instrument belonged to a very large and understandably animated member of the Battlefield Band (Mr. McNeil). We gently explained to the audience that we wished we were in Carrick Fergus and spent the next five minutes peeling the guitar off of my elbow. We made it out alive, lived to tell the tale and thanked the Bermuda Folk Club for their robust insurance policy.
Davey Armstrong
On recieving my original MK whistle, the pipe band was asked to perform at a Tattoo in South Korea, so as with any gig that i’m piping at, the MK Low D came with me. Performing the festival tune on a Low D with a load of Korean Musicians was brilliant. Shame it never ended up in the show.
D
I decided to climb a water tower. Half way up I started to question my plan; perhaps unsurprisingly ladders always seem to get more difficult as you get higher. I avoided looking down until some locals started shouting at me. I looked up to see how much further I had to go and spotted four or five owls higher up on the ladder where it was enclosed by the water tank. Just at that second a volley of owl shit rained down on me. I laughed at the absurdity of the situation – covered in owl shit and stuck half way up a water tower in Timbuktu – I had just wanted a good view from the top of the Water Tower. In any case it became obvious that climbing back down would probably be a good idea.
Such was Timbuktu – you’ve got to make your own entertainment. Fortunately I had good company; I’d met a French guy Damien on the cargo boat, and had been sharing laughs and hassles since then. Later on I was playing some music – a few tunes on the whistle, out on the roof of one of the village’s mud houses. As it turned out Damien was a really good juggler and there was soon a crowd of people watching us. They stood keeping a distance, watching us like we were some sort of wild animal, until one little boy plucked up the courage to come closer. He walked slowly, stopping every so often until he was up on the roof and a few yards away from us, and there he stayed – mesmerised – while the others dared not come any closer. Although interesting to me at the time, I didn’t realise how much this little experience might influence and inspire ideas in the future.
I decided to climb a water tower. Half way up I started to question my plan; perhaps unsurprisingly ladders always seem to get more difficult as you get higher. I avoided looking down until some locals started shouting at me. I looked up to see how much further I had to go and spotted four or five owls higher up on the ladder where it was enclosed by the water tank. Just at that second a volley of owl shit rained down on me. I laughed at the absurdity of the situation – covered in owl shit and stuck half way up a water tower in Timbuktu – I had just wanted a good view from the top of the Water Tower. In any case it became obvious that climbing back down would probably be a good idea.
Such was Timbuktu – you’ve got to make your own entertainment. Fortunately I had good company; I’d met a French guy Damien on the cargo boat, and had been sharing laughs and hassles since then. Later on I was playing some music – a few tunes on the whistle, out on the roof of one of the village’s mud houses. As it turned out Damien was a really good juggler and there was soon a crowd of people watching us. They stood keeping a distance, watching us like we were some sort of wild animal, until one little boy plucked up the courage to come closer. He walked slowly, stopping every so often until he was up on the roof and a few yards away from us, and there he stayed – mesmerised – while the others dared not come any closer. Although interesting to me at the time, I didn’t realise how much this little experience might influence and inspire ideas in the future.
We might all have known it, but the world’s oldest musical instrument is a whistle. Discovered earlier this year by archaeologists in the Hohle Fels cavern in South West Germany, the end blown flute, or whistle, has been dated at an astonishing 35,000 years old. What is perhaps even more astonishing is that it’s rumoured the whistle still works (we did try and get ahold of it for testing but they were slightly touchy on the matter).
Made from the wing-bone of a vulture the whistle was the best preserved of a clutch of instruments found in the cave – other’s being made from mammoth tusks. Researchers suggest that the find shows that music was widespread much earlier than previously thought – with it already being quite far advance at this stage, some forty thousand years ago. They go to to say that the art and culture that emerged at the time would’ve contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, which might have given humans evolutionary advantage over the neanderthals, with whom humans co-existed at the time.
I recently welcomed a fresh set of hands into the workshop – and a steady pair of hands they are too. Nik Powell will be a very welcome addition to operations at Mk Music and I’m sure with the addition of his skills we will be able to get on top of things to bring the waiting times for instruments down.
It would of course be impossible to go back and track all of the developments of mk music since it’s inception in 2000 on this blog, but I did think it would be worth mentioning my motivations for starting mk music in the first place.
I would certainly never have come to be a musical instrument maker had it not been for the musical hertitage of the place where I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland, which remains strong to this day. As kids we were encouaged to play music by our parents – Dave and Helena – and the community at large, where music intertwinded with rag-tag characters, wild nights and the local culture. As well as myself, music still forms a large part of both my brother and sister’s life – John and Mary. After short spells trying to play various instruments – the piano, guitar and mandolin – it was the whistle which had been sitting on top of the piano, a generation high D costing probably something like two pounds, which caught my imagination. There was no decision involved, it was just something that happened.
Perhaps by a stroke of good luck, our teenage years conicided with a resurgence in Scottish Music – bands who were pushing the boundaries in creating new sounds which took in elements of Funk, Rock, Techno and D&B amongst other things. Bands and musicians like Wolfstone, Shooglenifty, The Peatbog Faeries, Capercaillie, Rock, Salt & Nails, Bongshang, Mystery Juice, Mouth Music, Salsa celtica, Burach, The Iron Horse,The old blind dogs and Martyn Bennett, formed a cultural movement which had few equals in terms in quality. Our contribution to this, Croft No. Five, started out as a school band, and ended up touring through Europe and North America. But even so it was returning to the Village Halls in Scotland, which had been well oiled by the likes of Wolfstone and Shooglenifty which made for the wildest nights.
We might all have known it, but the world’s oldest musical instrument is a whistle. Discovered earlier this year by archaeologists in the Hohle Fels cavern in South West Germany, the end blown flute, or whistle, has been dated at an astonishing 35,000 years old. What is perhaps even more astonishing is that it’s rumoured the whistle still works (we did try and get ahold of it for testing but they were slightly touchy on the matter).
