Different Sorts of Pipes: The Breton Biniou

The biniou, also known as the biniou kozh is the Breton variant of pipes. It is the least loved by many people, because it has the most high pitching and for some most irritating sound. Also it is the loudest of all types of pipes.

Fact is Bretons are often forgotten when it comes to Celtic music and traditions. Many seek for the Scottish bagpipes, but forget that pipes are actually used in Europe.

If you do not like the pipes, you might not like the spirit of European music, since it is used in many folklore traditions from Scotland to Greece. Even the traditional music of my region, Flanders, had the pipes as a prominent instrument.

So the biniou is a type of pipe that is often used in Breton music. Kozh is the Breton word for old, so you may call it the old pipes.

It is often played together with the bombarde, which sound lower and is some kind of small clarinet. Since you need a strong breath to play it, bombardes often do not play through the entire session, but fall in at certain moments, like in a chorus piece.

It has a long, narrow piece of the bag to where the finger piece is put and one pipe to blow air in it, and another one to release the air.

Here you can see a biniou player together with a bombarde and you can see that the bombarde does not play the entire piece:

Still many bagads or Breton piper bands do play the Scottish bagpipes instead of the biniou, next to bombardes and drums. Many binious together is not really done.

Here you can see the bagad de Lann-Bihoué, or the Breton marine pipers, who also use bombardes, next to drums, but the pipes are bagpipes: