The first time Griffin Hall heard the sound of bagpipes was in a movie theater with his father watching “How to Train Your Dragon.” He still remembers the way the music swelled with emotion, and he was transfixed by the sound of the unfamiliar instrument.
“I asked my dad, ‘What is that sound? I have to have a bit more of a slice of that,’” Hall remembers. “They had bagpipes in the soundtrack and the whole orchestra playing around them was just very dramatic.”
Hall says it was a pivotal moment — like the bagpipes were calling to him.
“That was kind of the hook, and then I became obsessed with bagpipe music,” Hall says.
His passion for the instrument hasn’t waned. Now, Hall is the pipe sergeant for Kansas City St. Andrew Pipes and Drums, a band that’s been around for six decades.
Lately, his reputation has spread beyond his hometown. In mid-August, Hall will travel to Glasgow, Scotland, with one of the best pipe bands in the country. They'll perform in the World Pipe Band Championships, where 190 bands from 15 countries will compete.
Hall says it’s like the Super Bowl for bagpipers.
“It's like a marching band competition,” he explains. “You have a mass of people walking in, doing a formation and doing different instruments, but it's all with pipes and drums.”
Earlier this year, Hall was invited to join the City of Dunedin Pipe Band, based in Florida. It’s one of the top bagpipe bands in the country, and Hall makes a monthly trip to rehearse with them. He says it’s intense.
“It is not, ‘Let's all learn how to do this together,’” he says. “You're coming as a self-sufficient unit, and you need to be ready to play. The two rules are that you show up and you shut up — you just stand and you play.”
An early passion for the pipes
Griffin Hall started taking bagpipe lessons when he was around 12 years old.
“YouTube was a great resource for me as a kid, and I would just listen all the time,” he says. “Come to find out that there is a band here in town that gave free lessons every Tuesday night, so I bought all of the stuff that I needed to start learning, and I started taking lessons.”
Once he got the hang of the instrument, Hall says he wanted to play all the time.
“I was a homeschool kid and I was able to play for six hours a day,” Hall remembers. “So that was really good for me to hardcore nerd out on piping.”
Fourteen years after Hall discovered the bagpipes, he’s making a big impact for the instrument in Kansas City. He’s a popular solo performer around town, he composes his own music and has released three solo albums. On Tuesday nights at St. Andrew’s, Hall now teaches free lessons to a dozen or so players who show up before band practice.
And the sound of the bagpipes still gives him chills.
“People have never been able to put that stamp on what that quality is of piping that makes the hairs come up on their arms,” Hall says. “I think it's something within your blood. I think it really is ancient and ancestral, and it calls back to all of your people who've come before you.”
The Dunedin Pipe Band’s trip will be Hall’s first time in Scotland. He says his ancestors came from Scotland and Ireland, and he’s always wanted to play there.
“Scotland is one of those quintessential places where, I'm playing the national instrument of this country,” Hall says. “So to compete on the world's biggest stage for highland piping is pretty, pretty special.”
