There's an old Estonian saying about the sound of the bagpipe: ten men play while a baby cries.

It seems to describe the instrument's particular mix of urgency and frolic. Like a clown with a car alarm.

That spirit's captured by the young Estonian bagpipers Sandra Silaama and Catlin Jaago. Here's a traditional tune from their debut album. It's called the Shepherd's Polka.

The group is called Ro:Toro, a blend of the Estonian words for reed and pipe. Just as the group mixes two bagpipes and occasionally saxophone and drums. It's an odd combo...but Sandra Silaama and Catlin Jaago are used to charting new paths. After disappearing from Estonia's music scene for decades, the bagpipe is rarely played today, especially by women.

27-year-old Jaago is now a professor of bagpipe and music theory at the University of Tartu in eastern Estonia. She's come a long way since she first picked up the pipe as a teenager.

JAAGO: "Some men said that no no it's not nice that you play bagpipe. We had to...(says estonian word)"

SILAAMA: "Prove it."

JAAGO: "Prove it, yeah."

SILAAMA: "Yes."

Silaama, who's 21, had a kinder introduction to the instrument. She started playing bagpipe eight years ago with Jaago as her teacher. Silaama says you can hear their personal connection in their music.

SILAAMA: "Because we have played together so long it's actually if you hear us playing it's actually as if one person is playing. Like we feel each other like when I know Catlin is playing something then I change and she change - we just listen very much to each other."

This tune is a good example of Ro:Toro's approach. It's hundreds, maybe a thousand years old. Jaago and Silaama learned the song and all their repertoire off old reel to reel tapes.

SILAAMA: "We spent a long time with the archive recording. We just took it piece by piece and just really tried to imitate everything that the old guy played. "

Each note, each trill, says Jaago, is faithful to the old recording. But because Ro:Toro plays the music as an ensemble, their arrangement has an original feel of call and response.

Bagpipe music has no chord progressions. The songs build through repetition and variation of melodic lines. The music lends itself to extended improvisations and jazz interludes by saxophonist Marco Magi, and percussionist Silver Sepp.

The percussion is original - a set of metal bowls upended in water. The technique is actually African, but the bowls are from Sepp's family sauna. Saunas are common in Estonia. It was the closest thing to a national drum set the group could find.

SILAAMA: "He kind of started the tradition."

JAAGO: "Yeah. Haha."

REPORTER: "and these are the bowls you would use to..."

JAAGO: "Wash yourself."

SILAAMA: "...or clothes."

JAAGO: "...or clothes."

This song Varska Karmoshka is another old Estonian melody, but with a modern rhythm. The women say that by mixing all these elements, they hope to make Estonian bagpipe music cool for a new generation. This song was Ro:Toro's biggest hit this summer at the Viljandi folk festival, in Central Estonia. Even the way they performed it had a rock 'n roll flavor. Jaago and Silaama stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the front of the stage, their movements almost synchronized. Each held the bag under her left arm, and their pipes pointed straight out toward the crowd.

For The World, I'm Gregory Warner.