In a pitting of the funeral industry, one of the line items was $175 plus travel expense for a (bag) piper.
I’m pretty much a newb to piping, nowhere near good enough to risk botching a family’s final fairwell even if it just Amazing Grace (which is about as simple as pipe tunes come) But know enough pipers to know that this is pretty much the low end of the going rate, and also know that there are no pipers getting rich off that.
First off funerals are normally held on weekdays, during office hours. I’m pretty sure the number of pipers able to “quit thier day job” in the US is around 10 give or take. This means our piper is going to have to take a half day off even for a nearby funeral.
Why a half day for maybe a 10 minute performance?
-Can’t be late, traffic is not an excuse. Must leave plenty of extra travel time.
-Have to change clothes. Highland dress is NOT optional for a piper. . Figure an hour total for two changes, getting everything back on hangers, bagged, etc.
-Must arrive early to coordinate details with funeral director, priest, whoever is calling the shots. This is probably a half an hour waiting your turn for his attention, and about 1 minute of discussion.
-Pipes need to be warmed up so they don’t drift during performance. This requires
piper to find a location shielded from the gathering friends and family. In a graveyard, this typically means walking a quarter mile or so at a pace that won’t leave him winded and sweaty.
-Piper is normally a closer, but it’s bad form to roll up mid-service. Piper has to sit through the whole thing.
Anyway, by the time the piper gets back to work, a half day has been pretty well chewed up…and that is assuming the service goes off on schedual. It’s pretty bad form to hit the family up for extra dosh because Aunt Betty’s flight was late, and it would just be wrong to start without her…So the piper has to smile reassuringly, and say “take all the time you need” and hope they are decent enough to add some extra just on thier sense of fairness, but don’t bet on it, so the piper has to work the averages.
And that is just the time directly chargeable to one performance. Nothing for practice time, learning time, etc. That has to happen before the piper is avialable for this gig.
An adult piper will have invested 2-3 years of learning/lessons/plain hard work before they are skilled and reliable enough to do a funeral. ( the F**n’ kids soak it up like little sponges) There is an ancient saying among pipers that it takes seven years and seven generations to make a piper…and I’m coming to appreciate the truth of that.
And practice: The Great Highland Bagpipe is perhaps THE most physically challenging instrument invented by man. Just the physical conditioning required to make it through a couple of tunes requires several hours a week of maintainance, AND the pipes themselves really respond well to daily play (maintains moisture content at constant level).
By tradition, pipers are always required to play from memory. So if you request
a special tune, be prepared to pay a premium. The piper won’t just have to learn it, he’ll have to absorb it…and unless it was origionally intended for the pipes, it will probably sound like crap. Expect the piper to argue against “Stairway to Heaven” even if it was your loved one’s favorite, and expect part of that argument to be a hefty premium.
The piper probably has around US$3,000 invested in the instrument, and some pipers who do funerals will have a second, backup set of pipes on hand, because shinola happens, and you only bury uncle harry once, and or, you may not want to take the “good” pipes out in a snowstorm.
The highland dress mandated for the piper is not cheap either. $500 will get you a kilt, sporran, and shirtsleeves. If you want the whole feather bonnet (think buckingham palice guards) look, our piper probably is wearing around $2000 in cloathing and accessories. Most of this will require dry-cleaning.
Lessons’ music books, reeds, etc. all add to the pipers expenses.
Expenses get amoritized over ALL the pipers gigs, but consider that for a funeral, the piper gets at most a couple days notice, and often not that. So if the piper is playing a lot of gigs, he’s probably not available on short notice.
Except for the Highland dress, I guess pretty much the same economics would apply to any musician.
