Simon Cooper

I play anglo and I live in Edinburgh. There are also some good anglo players in Glasgow. Playing pipe marches means that you may khave to learn to play in the key of A. As far as I know none of the modern tutors give any help on this but you can work it out. Most pipe marches contain a flattened 7th (G natural) because the pipe scale does not contain a G#. On instruments such as the fiddle, pipe tunes are sometimes played with a G#. It is up to you. If you play the tune with a G natural it effectively ends up in the key of D which fits well on the anglo.

The first tune in the set is a march called The Headlands composed by the late great Ronnie Cooper from Shetland (no relation).

Apropos John's comment,the Salvation Army used to run a school at Likoni in Mombasa where they had a concertina band. There is a photo in one of Neil Wayne's Free Reed magazines. As far as I know, the concertina has not taken off in Kenya. Perhaps it is because it is too expensive and not suited for the many styles of Kenyan music. The guitar on the other hand has been adopted widely. By the way, although not really relevant to this discussion,Idi Amin used to play melodeon. Simon

I may be wrong, but I think Noel may have played in a band called Blasket Sound who made at least one record in the 80s.

I would just like to add my three ha'pence to the above. As a first timer, I thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the event. All the talks were interesting ( I especially enjoyed Dan Worral's) and the sessions were great. My thanks to Mark and the guests for a great weekend.