The Bagpipe Society

Review: Se Vrativme: Macedonian Dances, by Orkestar Grupa “Pecalbari”

Arle Lommel

The experience of listening to Se Vrativme: Macedonian Dances, by Orkestar Grupa “Pecalbari,” was an unexpected burst of pure pleasure for me. I found it to be like discovering an old mixtape from a long-lost love hidden in the glovebox of an old car and popping it in a cassette deck. It is a love note from the past that brings up long forgotten joys.

In my case, my first real exposure to non-Scottish bagpipes was about thirty years ago, when someone gave me a bootleg copy of some archival recordings of Macedonian gajda made in the 1960s and 1970s. Sadly, I no longer have that cassette – nor even a cassette player – but something about the hiss and pops of magnetic tape and low-fi recordings takes me back to the magic of that recording. Every time I hear these types of archival recordings, made in a time before everyone could record high- fidelity sound with something pulled out of a pocket, I get a shiver down my spine. For me, this is the sound of authenticity, and nothing says it more than when it is a gajda I am listening to.

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