The Bulgarian Gaida: Bagpipes “of or from goats”

Bagpipes, a type of reed instrument related to the clarinet and the oboe, were once found all over Europe. They were invented by shepherds, who used the skins of their sheep and goats as material for the bag. During the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution pushed bagpipes out of the mainstream of musical life in most parts of Europe in favor of other reed instruments, especially the accordion and clarinet.

Today bagpipes play a central role in the musical culture of just a few countries and regions of Europe. Most famous are the Scottish highland pipes, which are a symbol of Scottish identity. The Irish bagpipes are a much-loved part of the very lively Irish music tradition, and in Bulgaria it is still said that a wedding without a bagpipe is not possible.

The Bulgarian bagpipe is called gaida. A friend of mine named Eran Frankel, a trained historian, did some linguistic research and determined that the word gaida may derive from the word gaite, which means “of or from goats” in Gothic, the oldest recorded Germanic language. The Goths migrated from northern to southern Europe in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, followed by the Slavs in the 6th century. It seems likely that these early Slavic people, ancestors of present-day Bulgarians, had bagpipes at that time and borrowed the Gothic name for them 1500 years ago.

The Bulgarian bagpipe is made of a whole goatskin, minus the hind quarters. The shape of the skin resembles a tee shirt with a turtle neck. The skin is cured and preserved by washing it thoroughly in soap and water and then packing it in salt for some days. After the salt is washed off, the skin is soft, pliable, and airtight and stays that way for many years. To make the bag, the skin is turned inside out, so the coat is on the inside. It is then sewn up at the bottom.

Three wooden stocks (blocks of wood with a hole through them something like a spool) are tied into the two front-leg holes and neck hole of the skin, and three pipes made of wood are inserted into the stocks. The blowpipe for blowing air into the bag is placed in one leg hole. A long drone pipe, made in three pieces, is placed in the other leg hole.

Then the chanter or melody pipe (gaidanitsa), with seven fingerholes and a thumbhole, is placed in the neck hole. Single reeds–ancestors of the clarinet reed—are inserted into the top of the melody and drone pipes.

To play it, the bagpiper (gaidar) fills up the bag with air by blowing into the blowpipe. Pressure from the air in the bag starts the reeds, and the player can play the melody and drone simultaneously. When players run out of breath, they take a breath, but the sound doesn’t stop as it would if they were playing a clarinet. The sound continues as they squeeze air stored in the bag over the reeds. A valve in the blowpipe keeps the air from escaping from the bag while they take a breath.

The trick is to keep constant pressure on the reeds no matter whether the player blows into the bag or takes a breath. The other trick is to keep the hand relaxed enough to play the melody while the arm tenses to squeeze the bag. Bagpipes are enjoyable instruments to play, and people seem enjoy listening to them as well.

The gaida has a melodic range of a major ninth: one octave plus a whole step. A pitch in the exact middle of that range is tuned to the drone pipe, which sounds an octave lower. Most melodies have a range of about a sixth, which means they can be played on a number of different pitch centers on the melody pipe. A gaidar can introduce quite a bit of variety in their playing by changing keys, something Scottish pipers, for example, don’t do. Also, a flute or a reed melody pipe with seven finger holes and a thumbhole normally plays a seven-tone diatonic scale like playing on the white keys of a piano.

But an unusual feature of the gaida leads to even more variety. The hole at the very top of the melody pipe is very small; players refer to it as the “flea hole.” When the gaidar lifts up the finger covering the tiny flea hole while covering other holes on the melody pipe, the pitch goes up a half step. That means the gaidar can play a chromatic scale although they typically play just four different scales: major, minor, phrygian (like the scale starting on E on the white keys of the piano), and an “oriental” scale (d | e flat | f sharp | g | a ). Skillful bagpipers use key changes and scale changes to create quite a bit of variety in a single performance even while playing melodies of limited pitch range.

The gaida comes in two sizes, large and small. The smaller size, called dzhura gaida from a Turkish word meaning small, is relatively high-pitched and played in most of the country. The larger size, called kaba gaida from a Turkish word meaning large, is played only in the Rhodope Mountains of central, southern Bulgaria near the border with Greece.

 

The bags for kaba gaida are made from sheep skin, which are significantly larger than goat skin. The pipes of the kaba gaida are also much longer, and so the pitch of the instrument is much lower than the dzhura gaida. The dzura gaida often plays in instrumental combos with other Bulgarian instruments such as the kaval (an end-blown, rim-blown flute) and gadulka (a pear-shaped bowed lute). The kaba gaida is only played as a solo instrument or in combination with other kaba gaidas. Its low pitch is especially suitable for accompanying singing.

In the past the gaida had a deep association with male shepherds, who would entertain themselves, and their herds, during long, lonely days and nights in pastures far from their villages. In the late twentieth century, with the advent of high schools and conservatories that teach Bulgarian traditional music to anyone who wants to learn to play it, girls began to play the gaida. One of them eventually became the principal teacher of dzhura gaida at the national conservatory for folk music and song.

Today the gaida helps to define the sound of Bulgarian traditional music and remains an important symbolic accessory to weddings in many parts of the country.