When Martin Gallen offered a lift to a traditional Irish music tutor, it opened up a whole new career path and led to the creation of Banba Design
When Martin Gallen stopped to offer a lift to a neighbour back in 2009, he had no idea it would be the beginning of a passion project that would evolve into a successful and unique business. Martin, from Strabane, Co Tyrone, now makes traditional Irish bagpipes – called Uilleann pipes – and has customers all over the world. But 14 years ago, he simply had an ambition to learn how to play the pipes and was delighted to discover that his passenger was a tutor. ‘I grew up around the trad music scene,’ explains Martin. ‘My father was in a trad band called Cunla and I played the flute and the whistle as a boy. I spent many happy childhood summers in the late 1970s and early 1980s driving round Donegal in the back of a van with dad and his bandmates.’
Humble beginnings
Martin laughs as he remembers his woodwork teacher in school telling him, ‘It’s a good job you’ve got a brain’. He explains: ‘Believe it or not, I was never very good at working with my hands.’ After a stint in the civil service, Martin studied building and engineering, and worked as a design coordinator and in Health and Safety on a number of large-build school projects. But when the recession hit in 2008 the projects dried up, and by the time of his chance meeting with the Irish music instructor, Martin was bouncing from job to job, taking whatever employment he could. ‘The instructor lent out a beginner’s set of pipes for the first year, but then you had to buy your own,’ he says. ‘At that time I was struggling for regular work and just didn’t have money to spend on pipes, so I decided to try making my own.’
Luckily Martin had a friend nearby who was involved in the trad music scene and made pipes as a hobby, so he showed him the ropes. ‘I started with the reeds,’ he explains. ‘A full set of pipes has seven reeds, and I was advised that I should be making reeds for a good six months before even thinking of trying anything else.’ Martin says he had ‘literally £5 to my name’ when he bought his first curved chisel and adapted it to suit his needs. He sold his first reed to a musician in a local piping club and reinvested the proceeds straight into buying more materials and tools. He began to see it as a business opportunity and his wife Leona supported him. ‘I’ll never forget my first proper sale via Facebook,’ he says. ‘I sent some reeds to a guy in Rio, Brazil, and that was a mad feeling. It was amazing to know that what I was making was good enough.’
‘When you’re self-employed you have to be self-motivated, and when I look at [the Guild] crest it reminds me of the quality I must always be striving for.’
A unique product
Martin founded his business, Banba Design, in May 2011, and has remained a sole trader ever since, with a workshop near his Strabane hometown and another over the Irish border in Letterkenny. He is ‘completely self-taught’ and chuckles when he remembers the words of his old woodwork teacher. ‘These days I have loads of different skills – making a set of pipes involves woodwork, metalwork, leather work and soldering. I work with a range of different materials.’
For those not familiar with traditional Irish folk music, Martin explains that uilleann is the Irish word for elbow. ‘You have the bellows under one arm and an airtight leather bag under the other,’ he says. ‘There are chanters, drones and regulators, and you’re playing seven pipes.’ Martin imports a number of specialised materials, including responsibly sourced African blackwood, for which he needs a permit. He also uses brass to make the keys, high-quality imitation ivory from a manufacturer in Germany, and a Spanish material called arundo donax, which is a kind of cane used to make the reeds. ‘Tonally these materials are really important – they help to make the right sounds,’ he explains. Martin can produce a basic practice set of pipes, suitable for beginners, in a few weeks, starting from £800. These pipes can then be modified as a player progresses, adding drones and regulators.
A full set of uilleann pipes suitable for an accomplished or professional player could take Martin around a year to make, costing upwards of £4,000, and he currently has a waiting list of around 18 months. ‘My customers are happy to wait for the quality,’ he explains. ‘I have clients all over the world, in places like Australia and America. There’s a huge trad community in Switzerland. I joke that I could travel the world and never need accommodation because I know people everywhere now.’
Professional approval
Martin is proud to say he has now worked for some of his own musician heroes, including Paddy Keenan, Liam Ó Maonlaí and Finbar Furey. ‘Paddy Keenan gave me one of my big breaks back in 2011,’ he explains. The musician, who was living in America at the time, had put a set of his old pipes on Facebook with a post offering to donate them to a fan who might like to restore them. ‘I jumped on that straight away,’ laughs Martin. He spent a year restoring the pipes to full working order, and then met Paddy at a gig in Derry to give them back to him. ‘He’s still a close friend and supporter now,’ says Martin. ‘He comes to visit my workshop, and we have been known to run out of Guinness during our evenings together.’
Martin has picked up 16 business awards along the way, including being named Business of the Year by the Strabane Chamber of Commerce in 2015 and Craft Industry of the Year in the North West Business Awards in 2018. He’s also featured in the media, including on an episode of the BBC’s Countryfile. Martin joined the Guild of Master Craftsmen in summer 2023 and says the crest hangs in pride of place in his workshop. ‘When you’re self-employed you have to be self-motivated, and when I look at that crest it reminds me of the quality I must always be striving for,’ he explains.
Striking the right note
When he was starting out, Martin admits that he worked all hours, but now he strives towards a better work-life balance. He has two young sons, Tiarnan, two, and Cillian, three, who loves to play in his dad’s workshop. ‘I don’t play the pipes socially anymore – it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday,’ he admits. ‘But obviously I do play them as I’m making them to make sure I’m getting them tuned up right.’ The business is successful and Martin has been able to support his wife’s ambition of opening her own craft shop. ‘For me, the most satisfying thing is seeing a customer starting off with their own practice set of pipes, then coming back to have modifications made, for a half-set and then a full-set as they improve,’ he says. ‘I have one young customer who first came to me when he was eight, and we were modifying the bag and bellows of his first practice set because it was too big for him. Now he’s 16 and winning awards. I’ve made all his pipes along the way and his dad sends videos of him playing. I love following my customers’ journeys and hearing what the pipes can do.’
BANBA DESIGN
www.banbadesign.co.uk | @martingallen
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