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2000-04-28 / Front Page

Don’t forget your kilt pin at the Celtic Festival

Event features bagpipers in kilts, dancing lassies and heavy athletics

C
hristian Miller, a Scotsman, wrote in the mid-20th century that men in the northern Highlands of Scotland called themselves Scotch and referred to men who wore kilts outside Scotland as damn Scotch.

Using that definition, you might say that hundreds of "damn Scotch" are coming to Red Bank next weekend. But Miller also wrote that foreigners could wear tartan whenever and however they liked. And since most of the performers at next weekend’s event are foreigners to Scottish soil, the term damn Scotch does not apply.

JEFF HUNTLEY Kevin Stone and his son Corey of Fair Haven are members of the Pipes and Drums of the Atlantic Watch.

Atlantic Watch will play next weekend at the annual Celtic Festival in Red Bank. The competition, above, is host to bagpipers and Highland dancers from up and down the coast.

The Pipes and Drums of the Atlantic Watch will host the fourth annual Celtic Festival on Saturday, May 6 with a rain date of May 7.

Held at the Red Bank Athletic Field on Newman Springs Road behind the Volvo dealership, the event is a cultural gathering for bagpipe and Highlands dance competition and is open to all bagpipe bands and individual Highlands dancers.

The competition will be sanctioned and judged by the Eastern United States Pipe Band Association and the Society of British Highland Dancers.

This is one of the only events of its kind on the East Coast.

New to the event this year are the solo piping and drumming competitions. Heavy athletics, which includes the traditional stone and hammer throwing, will also be added this year to round out the event.

At 8 years old, the Pipes and Drums of the Atlantic Watch is fairly young as pipe bands go. However, in its short existence, it has become one of the largest and most recognized bagpipe organizations in the state. The members of the Atlantic Watch wear black-and-white tartans, the military kilt worn by the 42nd Highlanders, along with a sporran made of horsehair that hangs from the waist in front of the kilt.

The uniform also includes a kilt pin that holds the wraparound skirt together.

The kilt pin is a Queen Victoria convention, explained Kevin Stone, a member of the Pipes and Drums of the Atlantic Watch.

"The story is that she didn’t like the way the kilt blew open in the wind," Stone explained.

Attendance at the festival last year ran into the thousands, with at least 20 bands and more than 100 Highlands dancers, all wearing colorful tartan plaids.

Stone, who is a giant of a red-bearded man, wears the plaid-skirted uniform with distinction. It is not hard to imagine him "Hill wandering; offspring of the mist," as Scottish poet Neil Munro wrote in his romantic tribute to the kilt, called "The Kilt’s My Delight."

Stone calls himself a British Isles mutt because he is part Scottish, part Irish, part English and a little bit Welsh.

But, he said, his interest in playing the bagpipes is not motivated by an interest in his heritage. What drew him to the group, he explained, is the uniform and the family-oriented nature of the group.

"We have people of all ages, from 7 to over 70, involved. It’s very inclusive. You don’t have to be Scottish, or Irish, or male. The band is fairly split between men and women," Stone said.

"The band has become successful because we believe in and exemplify kinship and diversity," said pipe major Ernest Lackey. "Our band, unlike many other cultural organizations, spans national, ethnic, racial, gender and cultural contrasts and is dedicated to the teaching of Celtic arts and traditions. The band provides free bagpipe, drum and Highlands dance instruction to its membership."

A Fair Haven resident, Stone joined the band about 18 months ago, along with his wife, Bear Atwood, and their son, Corey Atwood Stone.

"We were at the tree-lighting ceremony in Red Bank when two people wearing the band uniform asked for directions," Stone said. "I thought the uniform was cool, so I said to them, ‘That looks like fun.’ They whipped out a card and told me that the lessons were free and they were held at Red Bank Middle School."

Soon after Stone joined, Corey, who will turn 12 the day after the festival, decided to give it a try. He’s a bit uncomfortable wearing the kilt, but like a much smaller version of his father, he wears it well.

"It looked really fun, and it’s nice to spend time doing it with my dad," Corey said, explaining why he joined the band. "There are also a lot of kids in the group, and the marches are fun."

"It’s something we can do together on weekends — something we both like to do," his father added.

But learning to play the bagpipe isn’t easy, according to Corey.

"At first you play on a chanter, or melody pipe," he said. "I practice on the chanter every day."

"You have to know the first four songs to the pipe major’s satisfaction before moving on to the bagpipe," Stone said, adding that a really good entry-level bagpipe — a reed instrument consisting of a melody pipe and one or more accompanying drone pipes protruding from a bag into which air is blown — costs about $1,100.

Besides bagpipe lessons, the group provides lessons on all sorts of drums. The instructors are people in the band who are good enough to teach, Stone explained.

"We play in a circle when we practice so that everyone can see one another and the marching moves," he said.

Corey, a sixth-grader at the Knollwood School in Fair Haven, added that it is much more difficult playing in a group than practicing at home.

Both father and son recently went to New Orleans with the band for Mardi Gras festivities. They were the only bagpipe band members and were surprised at the length of the marches.

"We marched in six parades, some of which were 7

1/2 miles long," Stone said. "A long parade here is 2 miles."

Stone noted that the band gets paid to march in parades, and proceeds from these events help to further the teaching of the traditional arts to all people from generation to generation.

The Atlantic Watch has performed and won awards, not only in New Jersey, but also in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and Bermuda, as well as in Edinburgh in Scotland.

In August 1995, the Atlantic Watch was one of only four United States bands to march in the great Massed Pipes and Drums of the World in Edinburgh for the Marie Curie Cancer Society, a worldwide charity.

"We have been invited back in August 2000 to participate in what will be the biggest gathering of pipes and drums in the world," Lackey said.

Lackey said that about 15 percent of the band’s performances are for charities. Individual members also perform in churches, hospitals and volunteer organizations, he added.

A portion of the proceeds from the festival will be donated to the William Hunter Brown IV Memorial Fund, which helps equip local pediatric-care units with new medical equipment and personnel.

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