"An instrument

of great occasions."

Not everyone

agrees with Kent McVay's description of bagpipes, but the timeworn phrase,

"You either love 'em or hate 'em," should probably be downgraded

to cliché status.

In recent years,

the keening of pipes playing "Amazing Grace" has become as much

associated with service-related funerals as a bugle playing "Taps."

And in Fayette

County, McVay is the piper you're most likely to hear. He is the official

bandsman of the Fayetteville Police Department, and will add poignancy

to several of this week's commemorations of an event no American now living

will ever forget.

"It's

an instrument of great occasions," McVay says again. "You'll

see it at weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs occasions that have meaning

for people. It is remembered for its emotional impact."

Bagpipes have

long been associated with Scotland, and according to the World Book Encyclopedia

have survived virtually unchanged over thousands of years. Old Testament

references to "pipes" probably mean bagpipes. The origin of

the instrument is unknown, but it has existed with slight variations in

Mediterranean cultures as well as in the Scottish Highlands where it is

actually regarded as an instrument of war.

The Great Highland

pipes are what the public sees and hears at official parades and programs,

McVay says. When he plays his in public, he wears his "police kit"

or uniform, which includes kilts in the Shaw tartan, by special permission

of the Shaw clan. Its colors are similar to the well-known "Black

Watch."

"The Southeast

is a hotbed of piping," says McVay, chuckling at the disbelieving

guffaw that follows his statement.

"It's

true," he says. "Piping has probably tripled in the last eight

years. It's alive, doing well, and moving west.

"It used

to be that Scotland was the home of the great players in the world, and

it still is, but we're starting to develop in the United States and Canada.

A number of people are manufacturing pipes who never did before, and bands

that used to have 30 players now have 50."

That would

include the John Mohr MacKintosh Band, much in the public eye during the

1996 Olympics. Named for Gov. Oglethorpe's "number two guy,"

McVay says, the brilliant-red tartan-clad band paraded around Olympic

Park, leading the Budweiser Clydesdales through blocked-off streets.

Unlike conventional

bands, in which flutes, tubas and saxophones provide a mix of harmonies

and textures, a bagpipe band consists of only two instruments: bagpipes

and drums. And while there may be several drums snare, tenor, bass the

pipes are all the same. The instrument "consists of three drones

real large pipes plus two smaller ones," the piper continues. "The

tenor drones are one octave higher, but they always play A.

"When

you hear the pipes [in a band], they're in unison, all playing the same

thing at the same time," McVay explains. "Occasionally seconds

will play a contrapuntal line throughout the song, but essentially you're

going for volume.

"When

[WSB-TV anchor] Monica Kaufman interviewed Braveheart Mel Gibson,

we played for that too," says the piper, then moves on to describe

his favorite event.

"We play

for the [state's] police memorial service every year," he says, his

voice growing softer. "They used to block off streets around the

capitol in May and parade the riderless horses by. The families [of fallen

officers] would come to hear the governor speak."

The ceremony

has been moved to Forsyth in recent years, but it's not the same as it

was on the capitol steps, he says. The pipers used to stand facing the

bereaved families, McVay says. He pauses, then adds only that it was difficult:

"You don't get callous."

***

Not surprisingly,

the tune most requested of pipers for solemn occasions is "Amazing

Grace." How did this old hymn, long found only in certain Protestant

hymnals, find its way into the bagpipe repertoire and become de rigueur

at military funerals and memorial services?

There seems

to be no clear answer.

With words

melody (it's labeled with five different names in five hymnals), the hymn

crossed over from church-music to the popular realm when country and pop

singers adopted it 25 or more years ago. It became one of the secular

world's best-known hymns. Sooner or later, someone played it on bagpipes,

someone else followed suit, it was used for a funeral, then another, and

soon its inception was lost to history.

***

Did McVay say

he plays for weddings too? "Scotland the Brave," next-most-requested

bagpipe tune, would work for a wedding, although McVay says he was asked

recently to play "The Wedding March" for an anniversary party.

He has also

played in Carnegie Hall, in New York City. No, really. The South Fayette

Middle School band was participating in a festival there, and "Amazing

Grace" was one of the pieces.

McVay had played

in their assemblies and so was invited to go along. "I got to solo,"

he says but he also got to chaperone. That's all right. He admits that

he's on a mission to stimulate an interest in the pipes, especially among

the young.

His own career

began when his mother gave him "an old set of family pipes, and I

planned to pass them to one of my kids."

Wait a minute.

His mother just happened to find bagpipes in the attic?

It helps to

understand that McVay, 53, is thoroughly Scottish, his mother a McConnell

and his father's family from a region southwest of Glasgow.

McVay and his

pipes moved east with Western Air Lines; he now works for Delta. His oldest

child is 26, "in the computer business and self-sufficient."

His younger son and daughter are at North Georgia College. His wife, Rosalie,

a math teacher at Fayette County High School, pointed out that if McVay

was going to inspire the kids to play, he'd better learn to play them

first himself.

He studied

under Jerry Finegan, then of East Point. Finegan, who now lives on the

north side of Atlanta, is pipe major of the Atlanta Pipe Band.

The unwieldy

instrument is harder to play than observers might think. Because there

is no correlation between breathing and phrasing the player's lungs merely

refill the bag which is squeezed steadily to provide air for the pipes

it's a little like trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same

time, McVay says.

It take perhaps

six months to two years to learn the pipes, he estimates, whether or not

the student had prior musical training which McVay did not. Growing up

in a Los Angeles suburb, he says, he was too busy surfing to play a more

conventional instrument in his high school band anyhow.

"I play

the banjo," he says, as though that somehow explains it all, and

he listens to NPR.

McVay has also

played for schools and church events he's a parishioner at St. Andrew's-in-the-Pines

Episcopal Church in Peachtree City and for organizations like the Veterans

of Foreign Wars. He does not charge for his services, but requests that

a donation be made to a police department charity, consistent with his

conviction that the police should present a positive image in the community.

He will play

for the Sept. 11 memorial service at Fayetteville's First United Methodist

Church at 11:45 a.m. The event is open to the public.

Bagpiper McVay

also will perform at the Peachtree City commemorative service on Sept.

11, 7 p.m. in the Frederick Brown Amphitheater.