At the beginning of 2009 it started in Zaragoza the 1st Aragonese Bagpipe Band
known till our days, composed by about twenty bagpipers and five drummers, coming
from different schools and places from Aragon. It is our intention to give to
know and to promote aragonese bagpipe, a traditional instrument of Aragon that,
even today, is almost in oblivion, since by mid 70ies almost it got disappeared.
The effort and love of several people for this instrument has given it back
to us.
¡Our most sincere gratefulness to everyone that has made it possible!
It is not only question of giving an opportunity to all those bagpipers that
after finishing their studies, probably, they leave their instruments for different
reasons. From this association without profit spirit we bet for the edition
of repertoire books with new compositions of aragonese authors, which would
have more difficulties to publish their intellectual properties using other
ways. A semestral or annual publication informs about any matter related to
Aragonese Bagpipe Band, with articles of any type, always around aragonese bagpipe
world, such as biography of old bagpipers, new compositions, photographies,
new bagpipes and materials for bagpipes, histories, stories of bagpipers, …
Different seminaries and courses complete our bet on the construction, preparation
and adjustment of bagpipe canes, the simple ones and the double tongue-piece
ones, sewing, repairing and waterproofing of bags, covered and charted of wood,
bagpipes in Sol and other tonalities, study of new rythms for band, tunig of
drums, as well as the study and inclusion of other percussions… All this
without leaving at any moment the aragonese tradition.
As you can see the idea is ambitious: we begin in a simple form but we expect to reach a great level in any scope!
After 4 months of rehearsals the band came officially out on 6th june 2009 at
Street Ildefonso Manuel Gil, in zaragozean district of ACTUR. We must be thankful
to many people and to several institutions for having been able to make this
dream of forming an aragoneses bagpipe band come true; for this reason we have
to mention:
• Civic Center Río Ebro and its director Vicente Chueca, good collaborator
in aragonese folklore, for having lent the Arga room to us, where we started
first rehearsals during first winter.
• to Expo Agua, for having lent this park to us where we realized our
summer and parade rehearsals, and to which we call it, affectionately, "Gaitódromo"
(bagpipedrome).
• To City Council of Zaragoza for having lent the Expo South parking to
us for our rehearsals.
• To Club Social de Empleados Municipales from City Council of Zaragoza,
to which we belong
To all of them, ¡thank you very much!.