Call of Dudy

Last Sunday I had the chance to see something you don’t get to see too often, a concert and documentary about the Czech bagpipes that they call the Dudy. We have the National Czech Museum right here in Cedar Rapids and the group was on a tour of Midwest Czech communities promoting the film. These pipes are a lot like the Scottish smallpipes and also similar to the Northumbrian small pipes, although they are a little simpler functionally. Decoratively, they hold their own however.

Czech Dudy made by Pavel Cip

The concert consisted of the piper, Michael Cvach and his partner, Alice Janatova, Cvach playing the dudy and Alice accompanying on the violin. Occasionally she would put the violin down and do a folk dance to the tune. Both of them sang along with the music from time to time. In the middle, a screening of the documentary about the annual international bagpipe festival in the Czech Republic was shown. The show concluded with more of the concert. Now and then Alice would let out a very high pitched squeal. It was surprising at first. In the question and answer period she was asked about it and said it didn’t mean anything, it was just an expression of fun and was pretty standard in this type of music.

After the show I got a minute to talk to Cvach about the construction of the pipes which was particularly interesting to me.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette photographed portions of the event and put it up on YouTube. There are a couple of places in this clip where Alice’s squeal is captured so for those of you who are not faint of heart, here is a link to the video…

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One Response to Call of Dudy

  1. Wendy says:

    This sounds like a divine evening of fun for you! We liked the video. Wyatt especially enjoyed the woman’s dancing and her twirling skirt, while I liked her screech!

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