An MJC professor wrote a book about bagpipes. How, exactly, do these things work?
Michael Akard’s day job is teaching English at Modesto Junior College to immigrants from various lands.
In his leisure time, he celebrates his own Scottish heritage by playing the bagpipes.
That notoriously noisy instrument intrigued Akard so much that he has written a book about its history. “Music of the Great Highland Bagpipe” can be purchased online from Dorrance Publishing Co.
Akard, 59, talked about the book, and performed a few numbers, during an Oct. 7 visit to McClatchy Square. The small park provided a bit of a buffer from nearby patrons of the county library and farmers market.
Akard said the book examines the classical bagpipe style, rather than the lighter marches and jigs familiar to most audiences.
“I started asking, ‘What is this music? Where did it come from? Why does it have this sound, which is really so different from the sound of these other tunes?’”
The style is called piobaireachd, pronounced “pea-brock” in the old Gaelic language of the Scottish Highlands. Akard’s ancestors on his mother’s side are from that country.
Bagpipe-type instruments have been played around the world since ancient times. They typically have a bag made of animal skin that fills with air blown in by the player. The air then passes through various pipes to make music loud enough to rally troops on a battlefield.
The familiar bagpipes of today emerged in Scotland in the late 1700s, Akard said. They spread to Ireland and England, and to the parts of the United States and Canada where these Europeans emigrated.
Bagpipes can be heard today at events such as the Central Valley Highland Games & Celtic Festival. It is put on by the St. Andrew’s Society of Modesto, though not this year or last due to COVID-19.
Akard took up bagpipes about a decade ago. He is part of the Emerald Society Pipe Band of Ripon and the honor guard for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department. He has performed at weddings, funerals, parades and other events.
Akard acknowledges not everyone is a fan. The instrument is suited to the outdoors (although a smaller version can be played in churches and the like). And there’s a constant drone in the background from three of the pipes as the melody is played on a fourth.
“It’s either on or off,” Akard said. “There’s no volume control.”
The musician, of course, wore a kilt for the interview on this partly cloudy Thursday morning. The tartan pattern did not signify any Scottish clan, but rather was created as a symbol of unity after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Bagpipe prices start at a few hundred dollars. Akard’s bag is made of leather, covered in cloth. Each pipe is a hollow piece of African blackwood, an especially dense species, and has a reed to amplify the music.
The largest of the pipes provides a steady bass, and two others add a tenor pitch. The melody is played on a pipe called the chanter, which has finger holes that vary the notes.
Two decades of teaching immigrants
Akard teaches in the English Language Instruction program at MJC, commonly called ESL, for English as a second language. It helps people from Mexico, Afghanistan, Iran and other nations prepare for jobs and other aspects of American life.
Akard is an MJC graduate himself and has worked there full time since 2001. He earned a master’s degree in linguistics at Fresno State University in 1990, then taught at Kuwait University for three years. He followed that with jobs at Merced College, Turlock Adult School and the Military Language Institute in the United Arab Emirates.
Akard also plays classical guitar and trumpet, and he enjoys fencing, table tennis and the study of Arabic language and culture.
The 100-page book costs $36 for a print copy, or $31 as an e-book. More information is on the website for Dorrance Publishing, based in Pittsburgh, Pa.
