As Jenny Armstrong tells it, she was destined from birth to play the bagpipes.
”I was born the night the Black Watch Bagpipe Band was in Chicago-Oct. 9, 1957,” explains the folk singer and storyteller, daughter of longtime Chicago area folk artists George and Gerry Armstrong.
”My father had played bagpipes since he was 12 years old, and he was looking forward to the concert. But my mother was very pregnant and was feeling a little funny. Daddy debated skipping the show, but Mother told him to go.
”So he did, but he called home every 10 minutes. He ended up leaving the concert at intermission to take Mother to the hospital, and I was born right before midnight.
”I heard that story over and over as a child,” recalls Armstrong with a smile. ”It was as if my birth had been heralded by a bagpipe band, and destiny was calling. I had to learn to play the bagpipes.”
So Armstrong, who learned guitar at age 5 and fiddle at age 8, started taking bagpipe lessons from her father when she was 13. Friday night, when she marches down the aisle of Mandel Hall to open the annual three-day University of Chicago Folk Festival with a skirl of piping, she will be carrying on an Armstrong family tradition-George Armstrong was the U. of C. Folk Festival piper for 30 years.
Jenny Armstrong officially took over for her father last year on a joyful note, with her parents and her two daughters watching proudly. This year, the pride in family tradition initially was mixed with pain.
”My dad went into a nursing home with Alzheimer`s this summer, and I almost turned down the invitation to play this year`s festival,” Armstrong says.
”It was a tough, painful decision. I kept thinking about how much my dad had to do with my playing the bagpipes as a child. It was a way of connecting with him, and I felt if he couldn`t play anymore, I didn`t want to either.
”But then I realized that my playing is really a tribute to him,” she adds. ”I realized that I`m part of a larger rhythm that keeps going on. Once I understood that, it felt OK.”
Coming to terms with life cycles and treasuring family traditions also play a large part in Armstrong`s other current projects. The singer has two recordings due out soon; one features songs about the ”Wheel of the Year”
and the other is a compilation of material performed by Armstrong family members on radio station WFMT from 1957 through 1985.
Larger life rhythms also figure in ”WomanSong,” an autobiographical one-woman show that she will present March 7 at Hogeye Music in Evanston.
(Reservations required; phone 708-869-4418.)
”Piping threads the whole show together,” says Armstrong, who also plays and teaches banjo, fiddle, guitar and dulcimer. ”I hadn`t realized, until I started writing `WomanSong,` how much bagpipes have to do with my feelings about tradition. They`re a very organic instrument. When you`re playing, it feels as if they are an extension of your body, because you`re breathing through them.”
Playing bagpipes can also be a very humbling experience-at least in the beginning.
”It`s a real pain to learn,” Armstrong says. ”It looks easy, but it`s not. It takes more stamina than most instruments, and it requires a tremendous amount of practice.
”You`ve got to synchronize your breathing and squeezing the bag, and it`s a struggle. When I started, I would get headaches and my whole mouth would hurt.”
In addition to taking lessons from her father, Armstrong studied for three summers as a teenager at the Invermark College of Piping in upstate New York. Around this time, she acquired the instrument she now plays and treasures for its historical associations; she is almost certain that it was played in John F. Kennedy`s funeral procession.
”The Air Force Pipe Band played at President Kennedy`s funeral, but President Johnson disbanded the group shortly after that, and all of their bagpipes went into pawnshops,” Armstrong says.
”A friend of mine bought 10 sets of bagpipes in a pawnshop for $10 each, and this is one of them. So I`m assuming that the piper who owned my pipes played in the president`s funeral procession. The band played a slow march called `The Mist Covered Mountains,` a tune that my dad and I played together quite often.
”Even now, when I play that tune, I get a sense of history.”
