In Houston, a unique initiative called Pipes for the People teaches piping to individuals with cystic fibrosis.
HOUSTON — Music fills the hallways of a Bellaire home centered in Houston. Listen for an eight-count, a well-known music counting trick, and you might recognize the song being played.
You might start nodding your head, putting together the notes that are forming a song. You might hum to yourself, “The stars at night are big and bright.”
“You wanna give Deep in the Heart of Texas a try,” Keshav Harpavat says to the computer screen in front of him at his parents’ kitchen table.
Deep in the Heart of Texas is being played twice over on a chanter, a training instrument for the Highland bagpipes. This night, the home is filled with the Moe Bandy song that has become a well-known fixture at Houston Astros games.
After Harpavat plays a few notes, they are echoed back through the computer screen.
“It goes from an F to what?” Harpavat asks. “Um, a D,” Jiya Parekh responds.
“Why don’t you just play the first line?” Harpavat tells her as they go back to playing Deep in the Heart of Texas.
Another two or three eight-counts pass as Jiya plays the notes of Deep in the Heart of Texas.
Harpavat started Pipes for the People in 2023.
The goal is to teach piping lessons to students around the world.
The idea came after playing the instrument and his bagpipes while healing from a respiratory infection.
“Over time, I felt my breathing become easier,” Harpavat said.
So he wondered if this instrument could help others.
“It basically started with a cold email to one Dr. Mann,” Andrew Zhao said. “From there, basically launched our system of connecting with clinics.”
Zhao is the group’s Vice President and Harpavat’s lifelong friend.
“We started playing together. We stood next to each other in the pipe band circle,” Zhao said.
Now the duo help run the group and are two of the nearly 20 instructors who teach people fighting cystic fibrosis.
“We reach out to a whole bunch of hospitals and CF clinics around the world,” Zhao said. “Patients that attend that clinic will hear about our program, go to the website, and hopefully enroll with us.”
That’s why their lessons are virtual.
“Individuals with CF … they’re not able to interact with each other,” Harpavat explained.
So, through a computer screen, each student learns how to play a chanter.
“A lot of the treatments that individuals with CF and lung disease have to go through … it requires measuring breath flow, a lot of instruments like that. So, by playing an instrument, we try to naturally replicate that,” Harpavat said.
The teenagers teaching others can be traced back to Nick Hudson.
“They say the only thing worse than a bagpiper tuning is a bagpiper not tuning,” Hudson said while showing how to tune the bagpipes.
Hudson is a professional bag piper who KHOU 11 meets at St. Thomas Episcopal School, where he teaches.
The song he chooses to play when we first start listening is Deep in the Heart of Texas.
The song is familiar to anyone who Hudson has taught.
Count among his students nearly every single one of the instructors for Pipes for the People.
“Were you surprised to find out how influential you are to these students?” KHOU 11 Reporter Amanda Henderson asked.
“It’s cool, cool to see that they wanna continue this and they wanna pass it on,” Hudson said. “Makes it all worthwhile, you know.”
Now those inspired students are the teachers.
“I’ll log the breathing test. One second,” Harpavat said. “We have you around eight seconds, which is really great.”
A great way to pay it forward by teaching the healing power of music while deep in the heart of Texas.
“That’s kind of it for today, and I’ll be in contact with you because we’ll be meeting Sunday like normal,” Harpavat said.
Harpavat and Zhao tell us they are working with medical professionals to see if playing the chanter helps their students’ lung capacity over time.
Meantime with new grant money, they hope to expand the program later this summer for anyone fighting a lung disease.
The teens are also working with Dr. Daniel Weiner at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Weiner is a prominent Pediatric Pulmonologist with his specialty areas including Cystic Fibrosis.
Dr. Weiner said they worked to design a protocol that uses existing clinically obtained lung function tests for Cystic Fibrosis patients enrolled in Pipes for the People. The protocol was submitted and approved by the University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board.
After obtaining consent from the students or their parents, the team studying the protocol will look to work with CF care teams to obtain lung function data. Dr. Weiner says right now their hypothesis is that the bagpipe training will improve lung function. They will ultimately compare lung function before and after starting with Pipes for the People to determine their study’s final results.
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