The Piper System Blog

The other day I had a piper class at my place, and that white boy, Stephan (the house Guardian), asked me what the name ‘Piper’ meant…again..for the umpteenth time. I then realised that I might as well write about it, since I never did mention the origin of the name.

(flashback time)? Back in ‘96 I worked with a guy called Roy Adams (2nd dan Enshin karate), who had a cousin called Denver, who belonged to the notorious Americans gang (trust me, they fly ‘Old Glory’ for other reasons), who, by the way, had just paroled after serving 15yrs for a double homicide. Now while in prison, Denver was a member of the 27s (a numbers gang specialising in murder), and was extremely proficient in using a blade. So he starts to show Roy some of the’knife drills’ they do in prison, which then got taught to me. Now the drill was nothing new, but it was what they said during the movement that made it unique. You see, during this particular drill they would do a little shimmy, switch the blade from hand to hand and chant “1..2…3…Piper”. Now the word ‘Piper’ in the gang slang (Sabela) means to talk, to communicate, or in other gang circles, to stab or attack.

This made it easier for me to give this ‘thing’ a name, as I realised that calling it Cape knife or SA knife wasn’t being very specific, as my reason for creating Piper was not for worldwide release but for survival on OUR streets in Cape Town. My vision was to train as many martial artists living on the Cape Flats,in this method. Turning this into a controversial topic wasn’t my plan, as I figured Piper was the closest thing to an actual Cape/SA bad guy that one could study without getting stabbed or gang-raped for real. Piper was never meant to have left Cape Town at all, as I thought that it was just our problem. I never realised that it could be of any use to other cultures as well. Also, let us ask whats in a name? Before our initial research, this method had no one name, it was non-specific, no one even knew or believed that it existed. That’s how you keep a secret… you dont give it a name and you shroud its existence in myth. Simple.

Again,you must remember that Piper is the name of the researched material Lloyd, Jason, myself and others are currently practising. Piper isn’t what criminals are directly doing, but it is a physical study of what they do. Its movements and techniques were originally pieced together by myself over a period of 8-10yrs, with Lloyd delving into the criminal behavioural mindset and psyche, while Jason added the Nguni stickfighting element to fill in certain missing elements in the system. Also, it’s important to mention this - we don’t need to codify the knife movements anymore, as has been stated by others on our blogs, it’s been done already.

Piper has been a? teachable system since ‘99. The work we are still doing ,however, relates to developing a more user-friendly grading structure, better than the one I’m currently using. Another very important fact to mention is that Piper has been in the U.S. since 5 February 2001, so please don’t treat this method as if we are just starting our research. Next month it will be 6 years since Lloyd told the world of Piper, and that was purely coincidental (the infamous 7min tape).

Recently, a comment was passed by soemone who questioned the name Piper, saying it as sounded too much like something to do with a pipe or Rowdy Roddy Piper. I think its time he switched to decaf…

I’m not here to fight for Piper’s uniqueness, but to say that Piper is JKD, FMA, Pekiti Tersia and Doce Pares etc. all rolled into one, is ludicrous. I mean how did it get here then? Which guru trained our criminals? If Piper mimics the way our criminal moves, then by definition, our criminals are JKD, FMA, Pekiti Tersia and Doce Pares and Silat stylists. Wow, now THAT’S incredible!! To the genius who made this observation, let’s base our opinions on factual research and actual experience. It’s important to note that Piper’s existence is due to this country’s biggest problem…CRIME !! It exists due to criminal activity in the cities, not South African tribalism in rural areas.

I invite comments and input, but please focus on street crime, as this is my main concern. And let’s leave all rituals at the altars, ok?

Share This

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed