Thoughts and musings on a dying art form.

Throughout our time in Peru, it has become apparent that most establishments are beholden to “Big Panpipe”, and insist on playing what feels like the exact same album of about 10 cover songs over and over. This, as you can imagine, can get quite wearing… even to the most hardened of panpipe aficionados. Which we are not. Although that’s not to say I had a deep-held hatred for panpipes, I felt they had their place and didn’t mind the occasional haunting toot of the flutes. I would say I was, perhaps, ambivalent towards panpipes. Ambivalent no more! The relentless assault of panpipe covers has put pay to that.

The thing is, they’re not even particularly good covers and are inexplicably heavy on the Simon and Garfunkel. If I hear a panpipe rendition of “Sound of Silence” or “El Condor Pasa” once more I will scream into the void. And I quite like Simon and Garfunkel, especially “Sound of Silence”. The problem with the panpipe productions is that they are uniformly without depth. A basic backing track and the basic melody played in a linear fashion without any of the glorious subtleties of Simon and Garfunkel’s harmonies. It’s devastating. Have no panpipe artists created any new music in the last 40 years? Are there any new panpipe artists or are they all over the age of 60 and really really big fans of Simon and Garfunkel? Or is this just another example of the West’s victorious hegemony over local culture by forcing an entire nation to only produce covers of western artists from the 90s or earlier?

We wracked our brains to think… what would be the equivalent in the UK? Cornish sea shanty covers of ABBA? Morris dancing band covers of Queen? A bagpipe rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” album in its entirety? How long would it fly before, driven mad by the repetitive nature of “Warrterrlooo” in a broad Cornish burr, some local Brit loses the plot and smashes up the sound system with a pool cue? My guess is… not long. Even less time before a Glaswegian might burn down a whole bar after listening to “Go Your Own Way” on the bagpipes more than thrice (and rightly so).

And another thing! During our entire time in Peru, just shy of 2 weeks, we did not actually see anyone physically playing the panpipes. Not once. Not in any squares or public places or side streets or tourist traps. This further confirms my theory that actual panpipe playing is a dying art, having been forced out by “Big Panpipe” and their insipid album of covers, recorded sometime in the mid-90s (I assume). Hence why I have absolutely no photographic evidence of any panpipers. I am convinced they don’t exist or, if there are any younger practitioners of the panpipe arts who haven’t died of old age, they’re off around the cities of Europe making their fortune as buskers. Last time I actually saw one in the wild was Covent Garden. Mind you, that was a good 15-20 years ago.

So what does this mean for the future of panpipes? Will new, younger, modern panpipers come to fill the gap? Perhaps with some original tunes or at least a cover from the last 10 years? I would even welcome a panpipe version of “Trouble” (and I don’t like Taylor Swift). Will anyone breathe new life into this, quite frankly, stale and dying music-form? I don’t have the answers. To be honest there’s no real point to this blog post other than to have a little rant about panpipes and the insistence of Peruvian eating establishments to play the same Simon & Garfunkel covers over and over and over. Maybe Britain should get on board with this notion of traditional folk covers of old songs. Would “I want to break free” really be all the worse for a couple of jingly bells and a few extra “hey nonny nonnies” and clashing of wooden sticks? Probably. And whilst the hauntingly repetitive and reductionist panpipe version of “Sound of Silence” does make me want to scream, it did, at first, provide brief respite from the monotony of reggaeton’s “dun da dun dun dun da dun dun” in Colombia. But let’s not get into that now.