When it came time for a musical demonstration of the bagpipe maker’s finest product, the player wasn’t wearing traditional Scottish highland dress but rather Pakistan’s national outfit, a salwar kameez and sandals.
The piper produced a wince-inducing series of squalls and sharp honking sounds. “He needs more lung power,” joked Naeem Akhtar, chief executive of Halifax and Co., a musical instrument maker in this manufacturing city in northeastern Pakistan.
Bagpipe playing is largely a lost art in Pakistan, a remnant of its colonial past, but bagpipe manufacturing is not. Sialkot claims to be the largest exporter of bagpipes outside of Scotland.
Halifax’s small factory makes musical instruments — African-style drums and Irish folk harps among them — and wholesales them to countries around the world, but it all began with bagpipes.
Thirty-eight years ago Akhtar’s father started making reeds for the bagpipes. It is a family affair; he has two sons who are already in the business.
The signature Scottish wind instrument harkens back to the country’s imperial past. Prior to 1948, Pakistan was a part of British India. British regiments stationed in Sialkot included soldiers’ bands that played bagpipes they had brought with them from Scotland.
To avoid the costly and time-consuming process of sending a broken instrument back to Scotland to be repaired, one British soldier brought his bagpipe to the local market where Akhtar’s father was working and asked if the artisan could fix it. One week later, in Akhtar’s telling, his father made an exact copy of the bagpipes and challenged the soldier to pick out which one was the original.
Bagpipes made in Scotland are expensive to produce and are geared toward professional bagpipers. The ones made in Pakistan cost far less and are marketed for tourists and casual bagpipe fans. Halifax also makes toy bagpipes for children.
Sialkot is a bustling manufacturing hub where the per capita income is reportedly nearly double the national per-capita income.
Akhtar and other businessmen say it is a model of privatization and entrepreneurial initiative.
Rather than relying on government funds, local businessmen joined together to construct an international airport that boasts 32 flights a week — three for cargo. Operating since 2007, it is the first international airport in the country built by private citizens and a measure meant to boost business.
Successful industries in the region include those that manufacture medical and surgical instruments, leather jackets, martial arts equipment, soccer balls and of course, bagpipes. The reeds are all made from cane imported from France. The tartan cloth is domestic Pakistani stock.
Today, 65 to 70 people work in the Halifax factory, which makes more than 200 different items.
It is smaller companies like this that may suffer most if there is a mass exodus of Western retailers doing business in the region as some fear. The Walt Disney Co. has instructed its vendors and licensees to begin transitioning out of “high risk countries” like Pakistan and Bangladesh over fears of unacceptably low safety standards.
Disney’s decision came as a result of a fire in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi last September that killed 262 people and another fire in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, in which 112 people were killed.
Two weeks ago another devastating blow: A factory in Bangladesh collapsed and more than 500 bodies have been removed from the rubble so far. Dozens of people are still missing.
But Halifax proudly gave a tour of its facilities and insisted its workers are treated well.
The local factories have more jobs than employees, factory owners say, so they recruit in other communities and they train workers as young as age 15 to take up the trades.
“Everyone has money in Sialkot, even the factory workers,” CEO Akhtar said.
But daily power blackouts known as load-shedding have plagued factories for the past three years. Outages in the industrial city currently last about 16 hours a day and the increased costs have been bad for business owners. Once a price is listed in a catalog or agreed upon with a client, it’s impossible to raise prices, businessmen said, so factory owners absorb the estimated 10 percent profit loss from energy shortages.
“Everyone in the export business is facing the same problem,” Akhtar said.
There isn’t much demand for bagpipes here — the only players are ceremonial players in the Pakistani military or private band members that play at weddings or other occasions. The wedding players are all retired army men, he said.
The instruments Halifax makes are not meant for local markets, said Akhtar.
“You can’t buy bagpipes in Pakistan.”
Pakistani bagpipe business a throwback to colonial times
Pakistani bagpipe business a throwback to colonial times
Incoming: The biggest movies due out before summer 2026
- From Baby Yoda’s big-screen debut to the return of Miranda Priestly, here are some of the biggest films heading our way in the next few months
‘Project Hail Mary’
Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Huller, Lionel Boyce
Due out: March
MGM paid a reported $3 million to acquire the rights to this 2021 sci-fi novel by Andy Weir (author of “The Martian”), which has now been adapted for this blockbuster starring Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace. Grace wakes up on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or why he’s there. He gradually works out that he’s the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti solar system hoping to find a way to fix the results of a “catastrophic event” on Earth. Fortunately, it turns out Grace is kind of a science genius. Equally fortunately, it turns out he may not have to save the world all on his own.
‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’
Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Pena
Due out: January
After its premiere at Fantastic Fest last year, Variety described Verbinski’s sci-fi action comedy as “an unapologetically irreverent, wildly inventive, end-is-nigh take on the time-loop movie” with a “hyper-referential script … full of inside jokes for gamers.” The guy stuck in that time loop is Rockwell’s man from the future, who’s on his 118th attempt to save the world from a rogue artificial intelligence. To do so, he needs to convince just the right mix of misfits from the late-night patrons of a diner in Los Angeles to undertake what could well be a suicide mission.
‘Wuthering Heights’
Director: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau
Due out: February
Fennell’s latest feature is billed as a “loose adaptation” of Emily Bronte’s 1847 Gothic classic —the story of the ill-fated passion shared between the well-to-do Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a young man of low social standing and uncertain ethnic origins, in the moorlands of Yorkshire in northern England. Warner Bros. are playing up the love-story side of Bronte’s layered and often troubling novel, setting a Valentine’s week release.
‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’
Director: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic
Voice cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day
Due out: April
Critics were not especially kind to 2023’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” but that certainly didn’t dissuade audiences, who made it the second-highest grossing film of that year, behind only “Barbie.” With the same team returning to helm and voice the movie (with the additions of Benny Safdie and Brie Larson to the cast), chances are that “Galaxy” will have much the same reaction from the two groups as the eponymous Brooklyn plumber and his brother Luigi head into outer space with Princess Peach and Toad to take on Bowser’s son, Bowser Jr (Safdie).
‘Michael’
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Miles Teller
Due out: April
The biggest biopic of the year will likely be this feature about one of the most culturally significant music stars in history, Michael Jackson — aka The King of Pop. It depicts his journey from child star in the Jackson 5 to global superstar in the Eighties, and reportedly does not whitewash the allegations of child sexual abuse that dogged the singer for years (with producer Graham King saying he wanted to “humanize but not sanitize” Jackson’s story) — although Michael’s own daughter, Paris, has described the script as “sugar-coated” and “dishonest.”
‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’
Director: David Frankel
Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt
Due out: May
With all the original stars returning (despite the reported initial reluctance of Streep and Hathaway to do so) along with the director and main producer, this sequel to the acclaimed 2006 comedy drama about aspiring journalist Andrea “Andy” Sachs (Hathaway), who lands a job as PA to an absolute nightmare of a fashion-magazine editor — Miranda Priestly (Streep) should be a guaranteed hit. If it sticks to the story of Lauren Weisberger’s “Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns,” then we’ll find that Andy, a decade on, is now herself the editor of a bridal magazine and planning her own wedding. But she’s still haunted by her experiences with Miranda.
‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White
Due out: May
The latest feature from the “Star Wars” franchise builds on one of its most successful TV spinoffs, “The Mandalorian.” It sees bounty hunter Din Djarin (aka The Mandalorian) and his one-time target-turned-adoptive son Grogu — the Force-sensitive infant from the same species as the Jedi master Yoda — enlisted by the New Republic to help them combat the remaining Imperial warlords threatening the galaxy after the collapse of the Galactic Empire.
