The tradition & historical record
1 min read · 2 sourcesThe sac de gemecs (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈsaɡ də ʒəˈmeks]; literally "bag of moans", also known as buna [ˈbuna] in Andorra or coixinera [kuʃiˈneɾə], gaita [ˈɡajtə] or botella [buˈteʎə]) is a type of bagpipes found in Catalonia (eastern Spain spilling over into southern France). The instrument consists of a chanter, a mouthblown blowpipe, and three drones. The lowest drone (bordó llarg) plays a note two octaves below the tonic of the chanter. The middle drone (bordó mitjà) plays a fifth above the bass. The high drone (bordó petit) plays an octave below the chanter, thus one octave above the bass drone. 1
Folklore
The instrument figures into the Andorran legend El buner d'Ordino, in which a bagpiper from the parish of Ordino, en route to a festival in Canillo, is chased and treed by wolves, but frightens them off by playing his buna. 1
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Sac de gemecs”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. 1
Sac de gemecs is Catalan bagpipe, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 2
The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 2