Brìghde Chaimbeul on bringing the smallpipes to a big audience

“It was really cold, windy and wet. I remember being up on a platform just trying to get through the tune,” begins Brìghde Chaimbeul. The Scottish songwriter who sits across from me hugging a cup of hot tea is casting her mind back to performing as the Lone Piper. At just 16 years old, she performed as part of the Inverness Highland Military Tattoo. Almost a decade on from that spotlight moment, the Isle of Skye native has come a long way from clutching the traditional bagpipes in a large Scottish fortress, both physically and musically.

When we meet, the now 24-year-old is fresh from the opening night of Le Guess Who?, a boundary-breaking festival weekender that takes over the canals and creative spaces of Utrecht in the Netherlands each November. Bathed in rays of vivid light, Chaimbeul took centre stage at Janskerk, a towering Gothic church with original stained glass windows. No longer clutching the traditional bagpipes you might associate with Scotland, the songwriter has made a name for herself on the bellows-powered smallpipes. But with a few modern flourishes, as she explains. “I have a granular looper unit going through the chanter (the part of the pipes with fingerholes where the melody is played). It takes a part of what I'm playing, loops it or adds parts.” 

The overall effect lands somewhere more akin to drone-based music with an emphasis on sustained sounds, tone clusters, and relatively slight harmonic variations. It's a style of music that has long been championed by Le Guess Who? who presented a 12-hour drone in a former factory in 2017, only to return last year with a full 24 hours in collaboration with upstate New York cultural behemoth Basilica Hudson. But to understand Chaimbeul’s present, it’s important to recount her past growing up on the northwest coast of Scotland on the Isle of Skye. 

“I started playing pipes when I was probably seven,” she admits coyly. “Before that, I was learning piano for a couple of years. But when I started playing the pipes I was so invested in it. It felt like a chore to go and practice the other instruments but it never felt like that with the pipes.” This commitment was also encouraged by the family’s Greek neighbour who had taught himself the instrument, as Chaimbeul remembers. “I used to go to his house after school [where] he had a chanter laying out. I dedicated my first album to him because he passed just before it was released.”

The album in question, The Reeling, followed a few years after Chaimbeul picked up the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2016, an acknowledgment that she believes was pivotal to her output as a solo artist. “From that moment I wanted to record something, but it was when River Lea [the folk imprint of Rough Trade] signed me that I knew.” This platform also allowed the musician to reflect on another influential figure from her childhood. “That was also the moment I was like, 'I'd love to have Rona on it as a tribute.'” 

South Uist piper, singer, and storyteller Rona Lightfoot was Chaimbeul’s first encounter with the instrument, as she shares fondly. “My mum and dad would say that I was taken by it and after that moment I was asking about wanting to learn pipes.” The pioneering octogenarian performed canntaireachd (a phonetic singing tradition used to teach pipe tunes) on several songs on the 2019 release. Like so much of Chaimbeul’s work, melding these traditional methods into a more modern approach felt important for the evolution of pipe playing, not just of genre but of gender. “She's a very special woman; the songs, the stories, and what she's achieved herself in the world of piping. I have a lot of respect for her.”

Brìghde Chaimbeul at Le Guess Who? in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Photo: Jelmer de Haas

Lightfoot wasn’t the only notable contributor on the record though. Mercury Prize-nominated Lankum vocalist and musician Radie Peat also contributed concertina, after the pair met on visionary accordion player Martin Green’s 2020 record, The Portal. Now living between Scotland and Ireland (where Peat and co are also based), Chaimbeul’s very aware of the countries' interwoven relationship with pipe playing. “Even if you go back to traditional music, it's still connected. For me, the biggest influences are hearing and playing with uilleann pipers. There's a real energy to the players in Belfast. Just top-class musicians.”

The Scottish songwriter has also made a few appearances of her own including contributions to celestial chanteuse Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (something Chaimbeul reprised at Polachek’s sold-out Hammersmith Apollo show earlier this year to rapturous applause). So how do you meld the traditional pipe playing of Scotland with an opera-trained pop star? “I recorded smallpipes and border pipes. Border pipes are an octave higher and have a slightly brighter side so that's the majority of the part in Blood and Butter.” Unlike Chaimbeul’s signature drone, the higher octave slices through the song for that stand-out pipes solo. 

It’s these experimental moments that showcase Chaimbeul’s desire to continually evolve her sound, positioning the pipes out of the glens of Scotland and onto a global stage. Because, as she insists, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. “There seems to be a very strong pairing with the pipes and tartan and kilts. People sometimes ask me if I'm gonna wear tartan but I always say no. I like tartan...” She begins laughing bashfully as she acknowledges the red tartan scarf I’m wearing across from her before picking up her sentence again. “But when I started competing you had to wear a kilt to play the pipes. The two things don't have to go together.”

Despite the awards and the celebrated performances (including Chaimbeul’s moment serenading world leaders at the opening of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021), transitioning from the competitive space of piping to the pop realm hasn’t been without its challenges. “There was a comment from a member of The Piping Society, something like 'I hope Brìdghe doesn't give up on her serious piping. She's too good for that.’ [But] piping is piping.” With her childhood introduction to Lightfoot’s trailblazing work in the Outer Hebrides to embracing the folk leanings of the Irish pipes today, Chaimbeul is forging a steady path forward, miles away from her early days mounted on a wind-battered pedestal. “I've moved away from the competition world. From the moment I started gigging and recording, I was clear about it being my sound. People accept that.”

Given that Chaimbeul’s most recent release, Carry Them With Us, was nominated for this year’s SAY Award, they most certainly do. The record sees her collaborating with avant-garde composer Colin Stetson. Not just famed for his scores (Hereditary; Texas Chainsaw Massacre), but also his work with fellow Canadians Arcade Fire, Chaimbeul believes that Stetson’s multi-reedist abilities built a quick affinity with her work. “He has a connection with the pipes. [Just like] the way he plays with his circular breathing, the pipes are also a constant flow of air,” she explains excitedly. Also behind a series of extended drone works, Stetson and engineer Julie McLarnon were the perfect pairing to push forward Chaimbeul’s vision suggesting an authentic to-tape recording approach. “In tape recording, there are fewer high frequencies. I love boosting the lower frequencies of the pipes because you're getting a more mellow tone and that's the direction I wanted the album to go in.”

After her spellbinding set in Utrecht at the start of November and Christmas back on the Isle of Skye, Chaimbeul is limbering up for a new commission by Chamber Music Scotland at Celtic Connections in early 2024. Rather than a solo pipes performance, the ensemble finds Chaimbeul delivering a piece alongside a string quartet and an Irish electronic composer. Surely a fresh voyage for Chaimbeul? But as with so much of Brìghde Chaimbeul’s works to date, things have a funny way of coming full circle, honouring the past and pushing forward into a bright new future. “When I was at school, I played with a string quartet. We performed Martyn Bennett’s Piece for String Quartet, that's why I ended up getting smallpipes in C which is the particular set I play now. It feels good to return to that.” 

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Carry Them With Us is out now via tak:til/Glitterbeat
Brìghde Chaimbeul performs with The Maxwell Quartet and Linda Buckley at Celtic Connections, The Mackintosh Church, Glasgow, 3 Feb