LA GAITA DE BOTO

What you see here is one of the key pieces that helped bring back one of the most important instruments in the history of traditional music in Aragon: the Gaita de Boto, the traditional Aragonese bagpipe, which had fallen out of use by the mid-1960s.

It belonged to the last bagpiper in Sobrarbe, and one of the last in Aragon, Juan Cazcarra, from Bestué (municipality of Puértolas), who died in 1963.

Around that time, the instrument was acquired by Anchel Conte, headmaster of the secondary school in Aínsa and a councillor on the Aínsa-Sobrarbe Town Council, together with Joaquín Pardinilla, who was then secretary of the same Town Council. It was kept at Conte’s home, awaiting restoration and a bagpiper who could once again play it.