ABSTRACT
Using the ethnographical account of the traditional production of a Mallorcan xeremies bagpipe bag as a starting point, this chapter will focus on the ecology, sociology, and technology of Mallorcan bagpipe production throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Initially Mallorcan bagpipes were a product made from local animal and natural resources, but musicians pushed for the use of innovative techniques and new materials introduced to the market to counter perceived defaults in the instruments. With varying degrees of success, materials such as rubber, Gore-Tex, or plastic were reimagined for musical consumption. Seeking increased precision and the modernization of the instrument, musicians started to look beyond their borders and found bagpipe-making expertise in Galicia, Asturias and Scotland, where they exported part of the production, learned new skills and from where they imported new materials such as custom-made hybrid bagpipe bags. As they internationalized the production process of the instrument and used the technological advancement from other fields, the local musicians controlled the modernization and internationalization processes by continuously striving to retain the local particularities and variations of the xeremies.
What emerges through the production chain, whether in earlier or more recent times, is that the bagpipe- making process is a collective activity, using the know-how of a diverse range of people: from goatherds to mattress makers in the 1950s and 1960s to reed makers and shoe factories in the 2000s. This diversity, which I call patchwork manufacturing, tends to be orchestrated by one or two people who claim ownership over the instrument-making process, thus problematizing recognition for the work carried out and complexifying the identification and origin of specific instrument parts.
With the instrument at its centre, this article pulls together its social networks (musicians, instrument makers, product providers) and its ecology (from local resources to exotic woods and synthetic materials), both marked by technological advancements and international influences, driven by the will to create an instrument with a musical and social identity.
