When Bonnie Langille first heard the droning of the bagpipes it was not just a sound ? it was a calling.

She was just 12 years old and she knew it was something that she just had to do.

?When you hear them for the first time ? some people say it moves them, but for me I almost became obsessed with it ? well that? s a bit extreme ? but it was not just that I had to listen to it ? I had to do it.?

Although of Scottish descent and though she had never heard her grandfather play, she said: ?It was not an inspiration. It was more like a calling.?

Young Ms Langille was born in Tatamagouche, a town in Nova Scotia, and the family moved to Ontario when she was two but several times a year the family went back to visit relatives.

?At the border, in the summer time, there was always a piper as a touristy kind of thing and I was totally drawn to it,? she said.

?So, when I was 12 I said, ?daddy I want to play bagpipes? and he was thrilled. He found a band for me that was wanting new members and offered lessons.

?I was with that band for two years and I had just got my uniform, my pipes, did a couple of minor gigs with them and we moved back to Nova Scotia.?

This move overwhelmed the young musician and in her angst she refused to play again.

?I was devastated, because when you are with a pipe band it becomes like a second family.

?So, I quit playing when I was 14 in the heart of bagpipe country. I was a teenager with an attitude who wasn?t going to do it anymore because you made me leave my band.

?I had to give back my uniform and everything. It was the thing that I wanted most in the world and I doing it and it was taken away from me.

?I was kind of shy in those days so to join up with somebody new....?

But little did Ms Langille know she would hear her first calling once again when she moved to Bermuda 12 years ago.

?I had no idea that there was a pipe band here,? she said, ?I was walking down the street one day and I heard them. My ears went up as if I was a dog.

?I heared them and I thought to myself ?I know I am not imagining things?, because sometimes you think you hear something and that drone sound carries a very long way and sometimes it could be something else.

?So I followed the sound and there they were on the other side of town Beating the Retreat. I thought, ?I need to get back into this I still have my pipes from when I was 14 in storage somewhere?. So I said, ?you mark my words a year from this day I will be in that band playing with them?. So that is what I did.?

She ran into one of the Bermuda Island Pipe Band members, Keith Stuart, at a wedding and she began studying under his father, the late Denis Stuart.

?He ended up being my very good friend and mentor for many years,? said the only female piper in the band.

?I had to learn how to read the music all over again and I have never looked back.?

She was with the band for six years before returning to Canada.

?When I went home to Canada I joined a band there and we were competing at a Grade Three level when I left.

?There are five levels and Grade One is the best of the best and it goes to Grade Five which is beginners. We were three which is kind of in the middle.

?I was with them for five years.?

She then decided to return to Bermuda and has been back on-Island since February.

?I was very happy to pick up right where I left off,? she said.

?I have had to learn a bunch of new tunes, because they are changing things. There are some tunes that I was playing with the other band, but the settings are different, so there the odd note is different.

?You have to relearn to play the tune because with the bagpipes you don?t have the music in front of you and you have to play it over and over until you memorise it.?

Most of us have heard the sound of the bagpipes, but how does one play?

?How?? she looked at me as inquisitively, ?You blow! she said laughing and then explained.

?Initially the bag is empty and you have the mouthpiece and you fill your lungs with as much air as you can and you do that at least three times to fill the bag because it has to be like rock-solid.

?You then put a certain amount of pressure on it and the drones (the three pipes that are on your shoulder) will sound. You squeeze a little harder and the chanter will sound.

?It is all a very precise thing because you don?t want to sound the drones too soon because you are usually following the drum beat to introduce. So, you get the three-beat rolls with du, du, du, du, du da ? du, du, du, du, du da ? du, du, du, du, du da.

?Then its pipes up, you hit the bag because it is already full, the drones will sound and a beat later you usually sound off with an E, which is usually the first introductory note and then you play the tune. And you have to remember to march.?

She said learning to play and to march is a gradual and sometimes frustrating process.

?First you learn to play on the practice chanter, which is a much quieter version of the bagpipe and it is where you learn your fingering,? said the Bonnie piper.

?You learn the tune on that, because if you learned on the bagpipes, you will be making some horrible noise and very, very loud, so if you are making horrible noises then you want them to be quiet.

?Then you get your pipes and you start without any drones, because that is another thing altogether. It is a very finicky instrument and any number of things can go wrong and they do at the most inopportune moments.?

Pipes in the past were made of numerous different products, but she said, nowadays the bags are made of everything.

?I was strictly addicted to the hide because I was familiar with the feel of it,? she said,

?What a lot of people swear by is the sheep?s stomach because it is a very stiff material, but it is tough to tie in because it has to be absolutely airtight.

?And then the traditional is leather. But they have now come up with Gortex and hide. The bag that I have now is the one that I was competing with in Canada when I was with the 12 Wing Sheerwater Air Force Pipe Band.

?It was Gortex on the inside and hide on the outside so that you got the weight and feel of it. It also had this zipper and that is just a phenomenal thing because drone and chanter reeds will drop into the bag and you are out of luck and it is horrible when it happens.

?Because when a reed drops in ? it just totally affects everything and when the chanter reed drops you are completely out of it and if a drone reed drops it just lets too much air out.

?The air goes through the reeds to make the sound and if it isn?t there then it is like shhhhhh through and you can?t get a consistent pressure to even play the chanter properly.

?So, with a zipper you can just unzip, grab the reed out and stick it back in. I mean there will be a delay of a few seconds, but at least it is not a delay of a few minutes. Because otherwise you will have to take the stalk out and know where the reed out because you have to shake it out through a little hole.

?And you get a lot of moisture in the bag and with the zipper you can just let it out.?

Ms Langille said the thing that is most hated about the leather bag is that you have to season it from time to time because it has to be supple and not dry out and crack.

?The seasoning stuff is so gross,? she said.

?You have to boil it until it gets to a certain temperature and then you have to squeeze it all around to make sure it is all throughout and you have to hang it out for awhile to make sure the excess drains out. The stuff that comes out of there will make anybody squeamish.?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Bermuda Islands Pipe Band and they are looking for new and old members.

?First of all the Pipe Band is always looking for new members and we welcome anyone,? Ms Langille said.

?The lessons are free, the uniforms are free, but you pretty much have to get your own set of pipes, but they will probably provide you with a practice chanter to start with.

?How fast you learn depends a lot on the commitment and don?t let anyone tell you that it is easy. It is not as easy as it looks, we just make it look easy.

?You have to practice every day and initially it can be a bit frustrating because you have to learn to play the scales and learn to play certain notes a certain way and you have to get them down before you can play an actual tune.

?But if you are really committed and you are looking at the long picture you are here now and later you will be over there playing with the rest of them and be as good as or better than anyone else.

?But you need to be really committed because you have to practice a lot, especially at first and all the music is memorised. It is not easy, but it is very rewarding and they are just the best bunch of guys ever.?

The band will be celebrating the anniversary over a four day period.

?They are so excited,? said Ms Langille.

?We are having reunion committee meetings every two weeks and they last about three hours and about a third of the band is on the committee.

?Everyone has their little jobs and it is going to be huge. There are people coming from all over the world there are so many people. I did an RSVP list and more than 100 people have committed to coming to the reunion already and the maximum capacity that we can have for the banquet is 150 and we are still a few months away ? it is going to be good.

?Over the years there have been so many people that have come and gone from the band ? some were there for short periods of time and some long periods of time, but every single one of them will have the fondest of memories like when I was in the band. I am so happy to be back. We are all family and they are all my uncles and my big brothers.?

Where does she see her piping going in the future.

?At one time I was thinking that I would like to live in Scotland, but I am getting to the point where I am getting a little more settled,? she said.

?I know that I can?t live here forever even though I would love to. I am always wanting to improve, but I don?t think that I will ever be as good as I want to be because you can get into some really technical stuff.

?The pipe band here play at a medium range and some of their tunes are a little on the tricky side, but there is a lot of regular standard stuff that they play that every pipe band in the world knows.

?But I really liked competing and that requires an even bigger commitment, because you need to practice every single day and not just on the practice chanter ? you need to be on the pipes every day.

?You have to have complete control, because when those judges are slowly pacing around the circle behind you they pick up everything even with the volume and the number of pipes playing they pick up every little thing.

?My Pipe Major hears every little thing and if he hears you making too many mistakes during practice ? after weeks of practice you get cut.

?I have had the discomfort of being cut and it does not feel good, but when you are out there playing and competing and you win, it is a feeling of huge accomplishment.?

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