Concepto · Concepto
Gaita de fuelle
The Iberian family of double-reed bagpipes. In Asturies it's called “gaita de fuelle” (fuelle = the bag, the air bladder); “gaita de fol” or “de fole” is the Galician-Portuguese variant of the same name. The Asturian gaita, the Galician gaita and the gaita de fole share this common trunk within the Atlantic arc.
Gaita de fuelle is the Asturian name for the double-reed bagpipe (fuelle = the bag, the air bladder). In Galician and Portuguese the same instrument is called gaita de fol or de fole. Here the term names the family shared by the Asturian gaita, the Galician gaita and the gaita de fole of Sanabria, Aliste and Trás-os-Montes.
This isn’t saying “they’re all Celtic”: it’s a family with a shared organological logic and a real geography, within which the Asturian branch has its own identity. The three branches come from a single trunk that gradually diverged —the gaita de fole “can’t be explained without the Galician or Asturian gaita”— and share a common root: the double reed and a diatonic scale in non-tempered tuning, even though each branch later evolved its own way (the Asturian one, toward temperament).
Its place within the Atlantic arc
The gaita de fuelle is the Iberian branch of the Atlantic arc: it links the north-western Iberian Peninsula with the bagpipes of Scotland, Ireland and Brittany without being confused with them. Against the Scottish bagpipe —the best-known bagpipe in the world—, the gaita de fuelle family keeps its own sonic and technical profile.