I think it's even less than that, Jack. When I started playing, about 15 years ago, give or take, the first synthetic reeds were just coming out - the ones with the popsicle stick cane tongue on a plastic body. We've come a long way since then, though I still know how to tie in a hide bag and we have a recipe for homemade seasoning floating around the house somewhere. Chanters have gotten a lot sharper even since then, and there's a big difference from thirty years ago and earlier. Then there's the invention of the high tension snare drum, which changed pipe band drumming, plus ensemble, which changed the general rule that whatever tenor drummers did, they were never to actually /hit/ the drum... It all continues to evolve.

Anyway - I agree that the article is inflammatory - it is the Guardian, after all. It's true - and no great secret - that the Great Highland Bagpipe as we know it is only two hundred years old or so. The second tenor drone was added in, I think, the late 18th Century. Light music is, by the same standard, relatively recent. But the modern instrument is descended from a line of earlier pipes.

And some pipers are tone deaf. ;)