There is a South African style of knifefighting called "Piper." That's their logo above. Much of it, as I understand, is derived from prison-based material, and from actual assassins -- that is, stuff that really worked on the street well enough to get them put away for murder.
Lot of folks get carved up in SoAfrica. Knowing how to use a knife there is a survival characteristic.
It is pretty scary stuff to look at.
Rather than try to explain it here, I'll give you a direct link: Piper Knife Combatives
Go and have a look. You can also get reviews of the system by Mushtaq Ali and Bobbe Edmunds, over in my link list. (Traceless Warrior and Thick as Thieves, respectively). And I'm going to put a link to Piper in my list, too.
I first saw a garage tape of some the senior Piper players back in 2001. It looked nasty, but I saw some holes in it. A couple years ago, when I wrote my martial arts science fiction novel The Musashi Flex, I started the book with a knife fight. One of the fighters used a style called "Peepah," which was based on Piper. He got carved up by my protagonist Mourn, who was a galactic-class fighter and expert in a lot of martial arts.
Peepah/Piper didn't come off in the best of lights. Part of this was that I had seen but one old tape I used as a reference. Part of it was because my protagonist was an expert used to fighting to the death and had managed to survive twenty-five years doing it. (And if he lost, it was gonna be a really short novel ...)
Naturally, the senior students/creators of the Piper system weren't particular thrilled with how their art came off -- especially since they had been getting a lot of crap from traditional martial artists who disdained it. If you want to see really ugly politics and in-fighting, martial arts schools are the places to go. (We all say that there is no one perfect martial art -- but in our hearts, we all believe that whichever one we do comes the closest ...)
I re-visited Piper, saw some more recent vids, and noted that it was much improved from my original exposure. Not perfect -- I still see things I think an expert with a knife could exploit against Piper -- but it looks more coherent, is still evolving, and no two ways about it, has some really bad-ass stuff. A lot of traditional martial arts knife defenses simply won't work against these guys.
So I'm here to point that out. These guys have something, and if they continue to refine it, it's going to be as good a knife system as any, and better than most.
I still think Mourn could win -- he cheated after all, and that's a big part of his (and my) art. But I expect that he'd likely get cut in the doing of it. The old Javanese saying has it: In a knife fight, the loser is ashes, but the winner is charcoal ...
And there is your mayhem content for the day ...
24 comments:
I certainly don't disdain piper. I think it's great, it's very quick and deceptive.
My question is precisely how it's expected to be better than, say, sayoc or pekiti tirsia at its primary gameplan which is to stab someone repeatedly and skedaddle.
What scenario are people talking about? "2 people have knives out?" "1 person has a knife out?" Neither, escalating confrontation and draw?
If it's 2 knives out, between trained people, it's 50/50. Level of training is a poor tiebreaker, and it's a far better tiebreaker than what exact system the other person is heavily trained in.
1 person has a knife out? The other person is dead, no matter what system they're trained in.
Neither? Aside from jams, the first person to successfully deploy wins.
And which is better at fucking up an opponent who's trying to draw, silat, kali or piper?
Great job, Piper guys. Piper will be glommed onto and incorporated into the big amorphous mass that is "real" martial arts, like everything else of value has.
Then what?
I didn't say it was necessarily better than everything else, but it is different.
Yeah, there are only so many efficient ways to move, and sooner or later, any effective marital art will have to examine those ways.
The better arts will have more of those ways down.
Piper guys are looking at it from a different perspective than silat or kali guys, and they have come up with things that aren't exactly the same.
As for being glommed onto, yeah, that is a possibility, but some things are hard to cherry-pick. We get that a lot -- show us a Sera technique we can fold into what we do. Doesn't work very well that way. Without the foundation necessary, the techniques don't function as well. Anybody can watch a vid and copy a move, but without the base it rests on, they won't have it. Like a car without wheels -- gotta have 'em.
Somebody who knows no martial arts at all can fuck you up with a knife. I wouldn't want to fight a butcher or a surgeon -- they know how to cut and where, and they are both comfortable with blades.
Piper is an attempt systemize stuff coming out of cape prisons and mean streets. It starts out with things that people know have worked in real attacks, so it's not so far from the jungle as some of the more "civilized" martial arts.
I say more power to them to keep developing it.
I agree, and I'm not disputing what you say here.
What I'm disputing is the whole "piper is the best knife system around" meme which has been floating around since the Animal list and the Pendekar list. That's right, I remember when people were ricebowl-guarding that video. They didn't know that someone ripped that video and was mailing CDs around...
The reason I dispute the idea that any of these evolved systems are better than the others is because you're looking at the top 5% of the efficiency curve, where differences in efficiency are going to be small and are going to be blown away, statistically, by random factors and practitioner skill.
Like you say, Piper is great stuff but it's not a full system.
It's also not going to be hard to cherrypick. The idea of comparing it to Sera is pretty funny. In terms of quantity, Piper's like a small subset of a silat starter style.
I don't know much about silat and especially little about sera but it looks to me like both mande muda and kali contain most of the Piper material. Much of what they're doing come out of knife sinawalis, and I'm also reminded of movements in the Mande Muda jurus.
I often wonder what "normal" people think when they stumble on exchanges like these.
Well, I suspect that not many normal people come here ...
A lot of what went on on Animal's list was passing strange, and I consider it a point in my favor that I was eventually kicked off, as well all the silat guys I knew. There was plenty of rice-bowl guarding by the moderator and his lovely wife -- as soon as you stepped away from the eclectic-is-best party line and refused to toe it, you were gone.
Anything either of them have to say, I take with a boxcar of salt.
I see Piper as still in progress, and sure, I see similarities in what we do -- I expect most martial arts will. And I see things I think are less than ideal. I've said as much to them. And I'm going to do a post about knives and traditional martial arts to speak a little more to this.
A big part of any fight is attitude. The fight isn't under the glove, it's under the hat, and if you have attitude and skill, so much the better. If you didn't think what you were doing was gonna work, why would you bother learning it ... ?
Hi
I understand you have your perspectives on the material, and have invested much into learning what you know. But it's one thing to theorise and play armchair quarterback and another to have that sh*t come breathing down your neck. Often those intellectual considerations we've heard people make doesn't seem to translate well in practice. Taking a video clip apart from the comfort of your chair only makes you comfortable.
Piper methods are applied daily, hour by hour, in South Africa. I question how much of that is true in many other "civilised places", like Germany, where the government will shut down forums and websites for even talking about knife combat. A lot of bad-ass Germans have a lot to say about knives and Piper and their deadly arts with lots of intellectualising, but somehow I think they're a little far from the jungle out there.
Now it may seem incomplete with regards to highly developed systems like the Silat varieties, however, how much stuff do you need to win a knife confrontation really?
Why si it the frills and niceties found elsewhere have never been found used here?
If it were so useful or applicable or viable we figured it would have found its way into the body of material we collected. But we didn't find it.
If parries and stripping were all they're cracked up to be then we would have seen it in the Piper catalogue. We didn't.
Sure, Piper has differences and may be seen as 'incomplete' compared to some system some guy created that needs 39 videos from beginner to demi-god level, with all the bells and whistles, but how much of that stuff gets used?
Piper is real. It's murder. As Steve said, how close to the jungle is a lot of the knife material floating around out there? We certainly couldn't make any of it work against guys familiar with Form Style and Piper movement. Maybe a Grandmaster could, but then what about the rest of us?
Sure, some of the good stuff out there is really good, however for some reason our criminal population never picked up on it, don't use t and we aren't facing it - we're facing the animal we call the Piper System.
We know for a fact this stuff works. We know a lot of stuff we were taught didn't.
Everyone was focused on 'solutions' (this art, that art, the other art) - we figured we'd actually study something that was the problem and see what it had in hand.
Quote: "In terms of quantity, Piper's like a small subset of a Silat starter style."
Maybe the "Silat starter style" is overblown? Sure, it might have lots of stuff to keep you occupied, but...
Piper is a full system as it stands. It is what it is.
What anyone who learns it then does with it is his business, they an add the tools of their art to the mix to plug any perceived gas.
Do we need to wear skirts and bow and recite Dojo kun's and stuff to make it complete?
Do we need sweeps and strips and parries? Does that stuff even work in a real situation?
We didn't make it up, we just copied what we saw and catalogued it.
As we have said before, intent and some bad-ass attitude coupled with a weapon for the purpose of carrying out said intent beats a truckload of technique just about any day.
We prefer an incomplete factually sound system to a complete, yet untested, theoretical system that would leave us dead against the thing we're confronting.
Quote: "it looks to me like both mande muda and kali contain most of the Piper material. Much of what they're doing come out of knife sinawalis, and I'm also reminded of movements in the Mande Muda jurus."
Heck, we're getting glommed already.
Thanks for the stimulating post Steve.
Lloyd
Lloyd, understand that I love the Piper stuff and I think it's a great system. What I said isn't intended as any kind of condemnation of the style.
I just think that certain people, mostly here in the states, have hyped the hell out of it. And saying that it's impossible to defend against is also basically true with sayoc or pekiti or any other sort of semi-specialized knife system.
"Do we need sweeps and strips and parries? Does that stuff even work in a real situation?"
How big is a piece of string? It depends on the situation. What if you somehow lose your grip on your knife-- maybe in one of those passes you get jammed or your hand gets cut, you can't make the catch, so you drop the knife.
Then do you need sweeps?
I had my nose busted once by a sweep. Figure that one out.
Essentially, you seem to be discarding a whole pile of material as "useless" and then saying that you can't find anything in there that can defend against piper.
"Heck, we're getting glommed already."
Well, the material from kali and silat was around long before you systematized piper.
Which makes the similarity kind of interesting from a historical perspective, in the sense of where Piper came from originally. It didn't just originate out of nowhere among convicts and street thugs, so that makes me wonder if it has connections to some older african art, and whether that is connected in some way to something from somewhere else.
"Do we need to wear skirts and bow and recite Dojo kun's and stuff to make it complete? "
Well, yeah, if you don't wear a skirt, what kind of man are you? How can it possibly work?
I had a discussion once with the leader of another branch of our art who took me to task for that very question -- he said that if I didn't wear a sarong to class, I was essentially destroying the art.
He and I don't talk any more.
I wear jeans and a T-shirt. When it's cold, I add a long-sleeve wool shirt and sometimes gloves. When it's hot, a T-shirt and shorts.
The idea that one needs the trappings is, to me, just as silly as thinking you need nine-and-sixty ways of dealing with a straight punch. In the end, what you'll use in a set-to is -- unless you are a grandmaster -- going to be the simple, basic stuff that you practice the most.
I'm not a grandmaster, nor a guru, and I won't live long enough make it that high.
We play with passes, locks, and disarms, but not much, because we don't believe that we are going to be given a chance to use those, save by somebody who doesn't know anything. Sure, if you stick your arm out and hold it there and I can get a lock or arm-break, I'll take it, but we don't go hunting for those because good fighters don't give them out like Hallowe'en candy.
There's no sense in training to defend against bad fighters. If you assume they are going to make stupid mistakes and they don't, you are in trouble. If you assume they are going to be faster, stronger, and well-trained and you can deal with that, then you have something.
When the knives come out, the fancy stuff will get you killed, and that triple pass and figure-four lock only works if your partner cooperates.
A real-time fight is going to be over in a hurry, a few seconds, mostly likely, and there won't be much room for error. The more complicated a technique is, the more likely it is you'll screw it up.
Can a kali or silat or kung fu guy use his stuff when the blades flash? Sure. But I'd be willing to be that what he does will be simple and direct if it is going to work, and not a jumping-spinning back kick to knock the knife out of somebody's hand.
No art makes you invincible. Somebody out there always has a chunk of kryptonite tucked away ...
Golok said: "Which makes the similarity kind of interesting from a historical perspective, in the sense of where Piper came from originally. It didn't just originate out of nowhere among convicts and street thugs, so that makes me wonder if it has connections to some older african art, and whether that is connected in some way to something from somewhere else."
I suspect there are other influences, some formal, some not, that filtered into SA the same way that they spanned other cultures, by osmosis.
People move around, and they bring stuff with them.
Then again, as I pointed out earlier, there are only so many ways to move efficiently. Given our bipedal nature, and the design of a handheld short knife, figuring those ways out needs only an inquiring mind and practice. Give a knife to somebody who has no training, tell him (or her) to carry it all the time, play with it, wave it about, and eventually that person will come up with something that looks a lot like what other people have come up with. It's the nature of the beast.
Some of what they'll discover will be workable, and some of it will get them killed if they try it. If it works, they can keep it. If it doesn't, it probably won't get passed along. The further away one gets from the stuff that worked on the street, the more likely it is that something of it will be lost. I'm one teacher away from a guy who survived real knife fights. If I were ten teachers away, I'd be less confident.
There are only so many ways you can move, and only so many ways to wave a knife. This, that, the other way.
Couple thosee with other hand and footwork, and you start to come up with a system.
It will certainly encompass other things, cultural, social, physical, from the place where it originates. There are dozens, scores of silat styles in Western Java alone, but many of them have a common thread that you can see if you watch carefully.
How well any system works against other systems is decided on a battlefield, which might be a back alley or a barroom.
Piper has evolved into a system. It is the be-all-end-all? No. Do I think it is "better" than what I do? No. But I've put a lot of time and energy into what I do, and I'm comfortable with my system. That doesn't mean that Piper won't work. It's still raw compared to something that's been around for a couple hundred years, but raw can work just fine. You can get killed just as dead with a brand new knife as you can with an antique. (And vice-versa. A guy with a .45 auto pistol is better armed than one with a cap-and-ball .31 revolver, but if the shooter with the old gun is faster and has better aim? So the old-style-doesn't-work argument doesn't impress me, either. Human anatomy hasn't changed in recent history. You snooze, you lose ...)
Arguments about which arts are better are subjective and unwinnable. People who claim to have an unbeatable system are, in my mind, in error.
Great article Steve!
As always you are both thoughtful and insightful.
Being as I am one of the few people here in the States that has some real hands on experience with South African knife, I have to chime in here.
As far as I can tell, there is no real "Piper is the best knife system" meme, at least among people who's opinions matter. There is an understanding that Piper presents a qualitatively different approach to knife combat than that of the South East Asian arts, and that this difference is ignored at one's peril.
The situation reminds me a great deal of the introduction of Brazilian Jujitsu to the States. There were a lot of people who had all manner of theories as to why it was no big deal, and that it was just like this or that art, but the Gracies just kept kicking everyone's asses until people finally accepted that it was a whole different game.
I suspect that it will be the same with Piper, lots of opinions, but the truth of the matter will be seen on the mat.
As to the Mande Muda thing, I am quite conversant with both the original jurus of that art and am familiar with Pak Herman's later jagabia material and I don't really see any similarity at all. Nor do I find any meaningful relationship to sinawali. As a matter of fact, while practicing Piper material with Bobbe last week I had to sacrifice patches of skin on my arm to help him break habits he developed from FMA that were decidedly different than the Cape Town arts.
The whole "Piper is not a full system" thing is a bit of a "Straw Man" argument, or so it seems to me. One would have to actually be conversant in the Piper system, and to define what is meant by "a complete system" to say anything meaningful on the subject. There is less than an hour of video all told demonstrating the art. How could one form a definitive opinion off just that on an an art that took several years to codify. Unless you have trained in the system and have "hands on" experience, how do you make a meaningful judgment?
Just my two cents as someone who has done a little Cape knife.
Good post, Mushtaq.
There is a tendency in martial arts to make things complicated. To differ this art from that, you need for things to look different, and sometimes this goes to extremes. I could cite examples of guys who do this, but better I don't ...
Take the knife. It's not rocket science. There are only a few things you can do with it. You can stab. You can slash. You can thump with the butt. You could also hit with the back edge or flat of the blade, but after those, what's left? Conceivably, you could hold it by the blade and use it as a cosh, but once we get past the big three -- stab, slash, or thumb, there is a point of diminishing returns.
There might be nine-and-sixty ways to hold a knife, all manner of jutting between this finger and that, but essentially, there are only a few ways to orient it effectively. Point up, point down, edge forward, edge backward, edge angled. You can mix and match 'em, called them "saber" or "ice pick" or "fencer" or whatever, but ...
As for moves, again, only a few, and limited by the kinetics of a human hand/arm/shoulder/body. Unless you are double-jointed, you don't have any more mobility than the next guy.
Once you start adding in other tools -- hands, feet, elbows, knees, headbutt, sweeps, and the like, the variations start to appear in the combinations, and that's where the rubber meets the road. Somebody jinking and jiving a way you haven't seen before can come as quite a shock, and that might last long enough to get you skewered.
But: The essential ways a human being can move haven't changed in a million years.
In this regard, there simply isn't anything new under the sun. If you are going to move efficently, you are going to have to duplicate moves somebody, somewhere figured out before.
Not all arts will come up with the same patterns, because they'll get to the ones that work and see no need to continue. If it ain't broke, don't fix it ...
"Being as I am one of the few people here in the States that has some real hands on experience with South African knife, I have to chime in here."
Sounds like you have a fair bit invested in this. I don't mean to make you feel that your unique-in-the-states esoteric area of knowledge is being attacked, so please don't take it that way.
"The whole "Piper is not a full system" thing is a bit of a "Straw Man" argument, or so it seems to me. One would have to actually be conversant in the Piper system, and to define what is meant by "a complete system" to say anything meaningful on the subject."
One would have to define what is meant by "meaningful on the subject" before one could say that. :) Your statement's incorrect, though, because experience with Piper isn't required to say something meaningful on the subject of system completeness.
Unless maybe Kurt Godel was a Cape Knife exponent.
Me, I'm just a beginner and not a "Guru." Being a simple guy, I'm just looking at the fact that they've only been "codifying" the system for a few years, as you yourself stated. As well as statements that Lloyd made above as well as elsewhere. And I'm forced to compare those facts to systems that have been going for hundreds of years.
You should also probably look at sinawali again, and different ways that you can use sinawali and pieces thereof. The term sinawali doesn't just refer to heaven six. If you include stabs, redondos, blocks, abanikos et cetera, there are literally hundreds of millions of combinations of movements.
Interesting that you don't find any meaningful similarities to piper in there.
How, precisely, do you find the comparison non-meaningful? Be precise.
As I said, since Piper's comparatively simple, I expect it'll be cherrypicked and similar ideas will start cropping up in knife systems, first probably those closely related to the JKD people because by definition they aren't married to one art or system.
And that will be good.
Sounds like you have a fair bit invested in this.
Why would you think that Jay? I suspect I have less invested than you do in your various trolling activities.
I don't mean to make you feel that your unique-in-the-states esoteric area of knowledge is being attacked, so please don't take it that way
Nor would I want you to think your pontification about things of which you have absolutely no experience is being attacked (laughed at perhaps, but not attacked).
"The whole "Piper is not a full system" thing is a bit of a "Straw Man" argument, or so it seems to me. One would have to actually be conversant in the Piper system, and to define what is meant by "a complete system" to say anything meaningful on the subject."
One would have to define what is meant by "meaningful on the subject" before one could say that.
Which term don't you understand, "meaningful" or "subject"?
Your statement's incorrect, though, because experience with Piper isn't required to say something meaningful on the subject of system completeness.
So you are saying that you can know nothing about Piper and still know whether the system is complete? That's a good trick. Do you also do a mind reading act? You are right though, knowledge of Piper is not required to say something meaningful about "system completeness", it is just required to say something meaningful about Piper
Unless maybe Kurt Godel was a Cape Knife exponent.
Are you suggesting that your skills with systems theory is on par with Godel"s? If so I would be interested to see how you have managed to reduce Piper to natural numbers.
Me, I'm just a beginner and not a "Guru."
That much is obvious. Though from your behavior on any number of forums I suspect that you would very much like people to think you are a "Guru". Perhaps when you grow up.
Being a simple guy, I'm just looking at the fact that they've only been "codifying" the system for a few years, as you yourself stated. As well as statements that Lloyd made above as well as elsewhere. And I'm forced to compare those facts to systems that have been going for hundreds of years.
This of course suggests a couple of questions. first, how long should they work on Developing Piper before they can call it a "complete system" by your standards? Why should we give any credence to the idea that you know enough about any of these systems, Piper of the ones that that have been going on for hundreds of years to make a meaningful judgment. After all, by your admission you are a beginner, and that is the one thing you have said that I am compelled to take at face value.
You should also probably look at sinawali again, and different ways that you can use sinawali and pieces thereof. The term sinawali doesn't just refer to heaven six. If you include stabs, redondos, blocks, abanikos et cetera, there are literally hundreds of millions of combinations of movements.
Interesting that you don't find any meaningful similarities to piper in there.
Interesting that you do. While admittedly I have only started my studies of sinawali about forty years ago, I have learned enough to know that even though there are points where someone who knows no better might think that the two are the same, they aren't.
It's like a waltz and a polka. Both are in 3/4 time but if you mistake one for the other you just look the fool.
How, precisely, do you find the comparison non-meaningful? Be precise.
Hmmm..... how can I put this delicately? You have exactly zero "hands on" experience with Piper or any other variant of Cape Knife. You have at best seen about thirty minutes of video clips on the subject. By your own admission you are a beginner. Everyone I have spoken to agrees on this about you, that your skill and knowledge is at best marginal. You obviously have no real knowledge of Mande Muda, and from what I have seen with your posts on various forums your general knowledge of Silat is quite sparse. So, Non-Meaningful in the sense that you don't even know enough on the subject to ask worthwhile questions let alone offer worthwhile opinions on the art. You remind be a lot of that fellow Toohey in Ain Rand's book.
Is that precise enough for you?
As I said, since Piper's comparatively simple,
How would you know if Piper is simple or not? You have never trained in it, you have never even been in the same room with someone who has. You couldn't even tell me the basic principles of the system, how can you arrogate yourself to the position of telling people that it is a simple system or not
I expect it'll be cherrypicked and similar ideas will start cropping up in knife systems, first probably those closely related to the JKD people because by definition they aren't married to one art or system..
And I am sure that you will be claiming that you have "cherry picked" Piper by next week or so, and your videos will be out the week after. They will no doubt be worth as much as your opinion.
Hi all
On the issue of completeness...
Piper has relatively few moves, it is simple. It is not simplistic.It has far fewer than many other knife systems I have seen and been exposed to. But somehow none of those guys in Cape Town and Johannesburg want to come out and play...
With Piper, once you have grasped its core, the combinations are enormous. Other systems have gone and codified techniques in the hundreds. Piper teaches a few, and from those many spontaneous combinations are created in the moment. I know Nigel wouldn't be able to repeat any of those moves he does on the clips, because they were all spontaneous. He wasn't doing "techniques numbers 1 through 10", he made them up as he did them. Ask Nigel on the forum if you want.
I can repeat a handful of the more basic ones, but then I worked on developing a structured teaching syllabus.
Look at any two Piper guys, no one moves the same. There's very little stylistic imperative. The 300-yr old system may be more "polished" than Piper, but Piper isn't pretty. It's pretty ugly. However, does the polish make it more effective?
What happens with Piper overseas is TOTALLY different to what it is here. There, it's just another kid on the block. Here, all the other, er, knife schools aside, it's the only thing.
Now, back to my point. Read this slowly. If you watch the interview series with Nigel, he says Piper has maybe 50 or a 100 core movements. However, he then goes on to say that every guy we modeled only had a small handful of techniques in his arsenal, maybe 3 or 4 techniques. Some I spoke to couldn't even explain what it was they did. So here we have a Cape gangster who only knows 3 or 4 moves, while the rest is spontaneously derived in the moment. Now, excuse my French, but f*ck me if that isn't INCOMPLETE.
(Yet, I'll tell you this, I'd rather face any middle class white guy with 400 techniques than one of *them* with their 3 techniques, any day)
So, just how complete does this method have to be? Piper is a conglomeration of all that we learned from various sources. If it's incomplete, then what about the people we developed this from?
They must barely be able to steal candy from kids.
Hi all
On the issue of simplicity...
If Bill Gates could argue over the meaning of "the" and "and" in court, we could argue for weeks over terminology.
Complexity, as in the sophistication of many of the Asian blade arts, may be an intellectual phenomenon. It's intellectually satisfying, intellectually appealing - but not necessarily practical when things get ugly.
Things are over quickly in a knife assault. Little time is left to implement more than a few very short, rapid moves perhaps. Oddly enough, as you'll gather from previous comment, that's all those moves we put into Piper ever were.
Piper is simple, however perhaps that is its sophistication. It may have distilled and/or retained the essence of combat within its frugal structure.
Piper may be raw, or it may not. It may just be new to you. Maybe the jungle is raw, and raw is polished, and simple is sophisticated. It may be incomplete, or it may have never added many things other arts do because those are intellectual constructs and not practical considerations. And though you call Piper an art, we don't. Kenpo's an art, Karate's an art. Piper... no.
What if it's not raw? What if it is complete? What if it is sophisticated?
What if the "completeness" inherent in these other systems is merely verbosity? Maybe Piper never developed those features, or maybe they aren't there to develop in the first place. Maybe, in the jungle, the bells and whistles aren't to be found... Maybe the hunters never found those elements when they went hunting.
What if some feel a little threatened by this "meme" that's been doing the rounds, and want to differentiate their system from Piper with their style's particular features? You've seen what featuritis did to Microsoft Office, since all surveys point out that 95% of its users only use at most 5% of the features. But it's the best office suite right, it has the most features...
Let's get this straight, we aren't searching for "truth" with Piper. We searched for fact. Piper is what it is, no more, no less. Ask yourself why it didn't develop all the neat, tidy, pretty stuff certain other schools in South Africa seem to have.
FYI, check the interview series and various other writings, we do speak of the Malaysian (historically, it's actually an Indonesian, Javanese influence) influence on the Cape, who brought their variants of BerSilat with them, which filtered into Piper. But please don't start spouting that Piper is now just ripped off Silat.
It is complete as it stands. Perhaps the presentation of the teaching syllabus will become more "sophisticated" and "developed", but its combative core remains what it is.
Lloyd
Gaaahh
And here I was preparing a four page dissertation on this subject. Good thing I took the time to sober up from my birthday boozing to check out everybody’s posts.
I want to start by stating the blindingly obvious: NONE of us on this blog has the authority to speak with insight on the Piper system outside of the South Africans, least of all me, the newbie in the club.
Having said that…
It’s no secret that I love knife fighting, anybody who knows me knows that. It’s like saying I’m trapped in the body of a white man, blindingly obvious. I don’t (in my untrained in piper opinion) see Piper as anything like a “Complete System”, nor have I ever heard or seen written from Nigel and the boys anything alluding to that. I see Piper as a METHOD, as an approach to knife use. It’s DIFFERENT, I’d go as far as to say different than anything else out there…Not better, but definitely able to stand on it’s own & peer with other styles and systems. I definitely see this as an irritant to the more “Traditional” systems. Want to know why? I see it as ----- distinct elements
1: Piper is new, but effective none the less
And I think this, above all else, stirs jealousy from other “Traditionalists”. Who are these upstarts with no lineage tracing back hundreds of years to Japan? No forms?? It hasn’t been combat tested in the days of Ghengis Khan? What do you mean there is no “Honor” and character-building in Piper? Something just invented by three guys in a garage?!?! What the hell are we talking about, a knife system or Apple Computers?
2: Piper only does one thing…They just do it EXTREMELY well.
What, no ground fighting? No “Piper Jiu Jitsu” method? What about MMA? If Piper is so effective, why don’t we see it in the ring? (To this last one I might add “If MMA is so effective, why don’t we see it in the street?”) Isn’t murder ILLEGAL? (Funny how nobody ever mentions how illegal it is for THEM to murder YOU).
3: The Animal List
Y’know, just because a no talent has-been blowhard says “This is so because I been down that hard-assed road and you ain’t” doesn’t make it true. I have always stated that Mark starts his arguments well and about halfway through, they turn into rants, with unrecoverable loss of reason and logic. That video they were passing around wasn’t “The Secrets of the Piper System” it was a home vid of some guys doing a little demo for the fans back home. I’m trying to think of a good analogy involving books, their covers, and judgment. Steve, you’re the learned author among us, perhaps you could assist with a dollop of wisdom for a youth such as me? I haven’t made quite so many trips around the block as you have.
>”I don't know much about silat and especially little about sera but it looks to me like both mande muda and kali contain most of the Piper material. Much of what they're doing come out of knife sinawalis, and I'm also reminded of movements in the Mande Muda jurus.”<
Okay, to address this “Piper looks like Mande Muda” comment: I don’t know who you are Golok, but I am not only a Jagabaya under the late Pendekar Herman Suwanda, I am one of the highest ranking Guru’s under his younger brother Bambang. As to the Mande Muda Jurus, Piper looks nothing like them, and I KNOW THEM ALL. I would be interested in where you got your information from.
>”My question is precisely how it's expected to be better than, say, sayoc or pekiti tirsia at its primary gameplan which is to stab someone repeatedly and skedaddle.”<
…And, Piper’s gameplan is different HOW, exactly? As far as my eyes can tell, that’s exactly what THEY’RE doing as well. You show me where they aren’t.
>”What scenario are people talking about? "2 people have knives out?" "1 person has a knife out?" Neither, escalating confrontation and draw?”<
That was never specified, and I truly don’t think Piper can be confined to such narrow perspectives. It a system of MOVEMENT, not a system of SCENARIOS. Personally, I’m much more attracted to it because it doesn’t have “64 angles of attack” or whatever. Like THAT would really save your ass. What if the attacker knows 65?
>”If it's 2 knives out, between trained people, it's 50/50. Level of training is a poor tiebreaker”<
I beg your pardon, but it’s NOT. Level of training is everything. I have more than a few examples to prove it.
>”and it's a far better tiebreaker than what exact system the other person is heavily trained in.”<
No one said it isn’t that’s another myth.
>”1 person has a knife out? The other person is dead, no matter what system they're trained in.”<
Yer starting to drift, pard. Nobody is disputing this, although intent plays a bigger part than you’re giving it credit for.
>”And which is better at fucking up an opponent who's trying to draw, silat, kali or piper?”<
Isn’t that a BIT like saying ”who would win in a fight, Superman, Mighty Mouse or Kato?” Such scenarios are fantasy, you can’t hope to compare the butcher’s bill by a few stories from ANY given system of success or failure.
>”Great job, Piper guys. Piper will be glommed onto and incorporated into the big amorphous mass that is "real" martial arts, like everything else of value has.
Then what?”<
There has to be a game plan? Who made that stupid rule? I have already said, I don’t think Piper will be assimilated by mainstream American martial arts anytime soon, it’s WAY too different and only advanced martial artists will “get it”. It’s a lot like Scott Sonnen’s stuff, it isn’t high school level kung fu, this is collegiate/doctorate level stuff. If you have no mastery of any other system, this one will elude you completely.
Oh, and about this:
>”I had a discussion once with the leader of another branch of our art who took me to task for that very question -- he said that if I didn't wear a sarong to class, I was essentially destroying the art.”<
But, But…STEEEEEEEVVEE! That’s what they do in Indonesia! If you don’t throw on something pretty real soon, why, there may be no art left! YOU’RE DESTROYING IT!!!
GAAAAAHHHHH! Higher functions failing!! My art is disappearing! So is everything else! I’ve forgotten how to sapu! Steve, quick! Put on one of Dianne’s dresses! AAAAGGHH! There go the piano lessons…! I can’t remember mom!
Gaaahh
And here I was preparing
I love debate. I think it's a great way to explore the ways people look at the world, to exchange ideas, and maybe even get to some kind of resolution.
However: Past a certain point, the signal-to-noise ratio starts to make it less than a debate and more a shouting match.
I wasn't kidding when I said that if you want to see nasty politics, you should get involved in martial arts. There are long-running feuds in silat that go back lifetimes. Most of what they do is vent a lot of hot air, and serve nobody.
Me, I kinda like to mix it up now and then, because as a keyboard warrior, I'm a fair hand. But reasonable discourse is the way. Once it starts to tip over the edge into ad hominem attacks, it ceases to be a debate.
There are a whole bunch of arts that claim to be the most effective, the deadliest, the best. Obviously they can't all be, and pracatically-speaking, none of them can be. Those Black Belt Magazine ads that claim a little old granny can walk into a biker bar and clean the place out after but watching this one tape for sale have made several people rich. It's astounding what people will swallow.
That kind of hyperbole tends to obscure the fact that there are good, workable systems out there. Some of them are old, some are new, and age is not the way to judge how effective something is. New stuff can work terrifically well. Old-style can, too.
I am not a fan of sales hype. I know folks who have some wonderful material to offer, but because the way they put it forth has the smell of Dr. Feelgood's Miracle Snake Oil, I think they are making a mistake. Better to say a thing is good than the best-there-ever-was; the second I hear the walk-on-water claims crank up, my bullshit detector starts to scream, and I lose any interest.
Because I see somebody do it differently than I do doesn't mean how they do it is wrong. I might believe that, but it isn't necessarily the case. If I point out where I see a flaw, based on my experience, it needs to be done in a civil manner, and -- I hope -- will come across as constructive criticism. If I ask, "Why don't you do this?" I hope that my question sparks something other than a
knee-jerk, uh-oh-an-attack! response.
Defending when you haven't been attacked is a waste of energy.
It seems to be the nature of people who get into martial arts to be contentious and convinced that what they study is the best. I admit to this myself. And it isn't just in the U.S. -- I've heard some silly examples from the rest of the world. Somebody holds up one Tjimande master in the village as a paragon of virtue, somebody else in the village calls him a liar and drug fiend ...
My teacher tends to avoid all this as much as possible, and when pressed, says, "I'm comfortable with my skills." That's probably a better way to go.
I think we are pretty much done with this discussion. But in the interests of free exchange, anybody who wants to get in a closing statement -- a civil one, please -- may do so. I know most of the posters by name, and while I understand there might sometimes be a need for screen-noms, I'd prefer that posters offering opinions based on experience offer what that experience is. If you don't want to post your real name, that's fine, but I'd like to know why what you say should be given weight. (The truth is true, no matter who says it, and authority by itself isn't necessarily valid -- but "I've been there." resonates more with me than "Well, that's what I heard ...")
It's hard to come up with anything worthwhile that Steve, Mushtaq and Bobbe haven't already hit pretty hard. It's hard to resist throwing in two cents, so I'll give it a go...
1) 'Simple' doesn't mean 'easy' or 'trivial'. The important things are almost always simple. The simple things are seldom easy. And the easy way usually leads through a minefield, but that's a separate discussion. What little I've seen of the Cape knife work on film or from Mushtaq is, indeed, simple. That's one of the things that I find attractive about it, just like the simplicity of Sera (and Krabi Krabong and Araki Ryu). The things that work are the simple unadorned ones, basics raised to a high level and executed with great skill and deep understanding.
2) When the Sera guru Steve and I study with was looking for a Silat teacher his grandmother only had one question. "Stevie, can he fight?" If he couldn't, he wasn't worth talking to. If he could, well now, that was a whole different thing. From what I've seen and heard these guys can. That puts them several hundred light years beyond most people.
3) The snide little comment about Mushtaq having a lot invested in this is a smarmy bundle of horseshit and splinters. He worked out with some guys back in Tanzania for a few months. He's been in touch with Lloyd, Nigel and the rest. He's also poked into a lot of other strange corners of the martial world for at least as long and has dismissed what he saw, tried it a while and rejected it or said "Kewl!" and adopted it.
4) Everyone else here is pretty upfront about who they are and what they do. I know I'm posting under a (somewhat) humorous synonym. But everyone here knows who I really am and what I do. You seem to be the only one trolling around in smug partial anonymity. Try being honest, and maybe someone will take you seriously. As far as it goes, Mushtaq, Bobbe and Terry (who has yet to put in an appearance here) all have some basis for an opinion rather than reflexive prejudice. I also know for a fact that they are competent, practical and have all been and done and come back when others wouldn't have. Steve here claims to be from Louisiana, but I'm convinced he's lying. That "Show me" attitude could only have come from Missouri. If he's willing to say "Interesting. This stuff could be useful," it's probably the Unholy Ichor of Great Cthulhu Himself sprinkled with Magic Pixie Dust.
All of these are good reasons to give it a second or third look.
What do we know about you and your background? By your own admission you're ignorant and only slightly trained. Either we take that at face value and discount whatever else you say on the subject or we are forced to conclude that you are a liar. Your choice. Neither one really does much to convince me.
What do you have to bring to the discussion? So far it's just bile and innuendo. Just about the only other thing that goes innuendo is a suppository, so I figure they must be related.
bugger. "pseudonym", not "synonym". damned spell checker.
For the record, I am not Golok.
I don't have as much to say usually as say, Bobbe, but here is my observation.
From what Mushtaq shared with me about Piper last March, my understanding is it's about the way we move versus a technique.
Granted, as Lloyd points out, there are core and don't students need some point of reference on which to build and practice?
If the opportunity came up, I'd investigate Piper more from a personal interest to see what my mind grasps.
This has been an interesting read, regardless.
Take care,
Jay
Greetings all...Hello Mr. Perry..I have heard good things about you sir.
I see PIPER has come out to play on your blog as well, I to wrote a small snippet on my blog www.sunkete.blogspot.com (a shameless plug, forgive me).
I am no expert on PIPER but I do have a vast amount of training in the Filipino Fighting Arts as well as Silat...I studied directly under Tuhon Leo Gaje for a long period as well as his top guys in Texas and received instructor ranking in the system....I now represent Master Yuli Romo of the BaHad Zu'Bu Mangtaas Baraw system and I have a Silat background in various Malaysian and Tausug (Southern Pilipino) methodologies, all in all 25 + years of training. I do hold that knowledge dear but what I hold more precious is the real life experiance of being on both ends of the blade i.e. having been stabbed and having stabbed someone in combat as well as seeing the elephant on more than a few occassions where life and limb were on the line.
I have seen the PIPER system only from the clips via their site, from my perspective I see something vastly different in terms of movement but strangely similar in the intent factor. I do not for the life of me see any signs of Sinawali as Mr. GOLOK says and to be honest with you I do not believe Mr. GOLOK truely understands sinawali, if he did the word redondo would not have entered into the quote he uttered (while sinawali and redondo share the same path they are two totally different entities with different purposes and intents)in other words redondo is not sinawali, as Master Yuli says " Sinawali is for someone who likes to clack sticks together"
Back to PIPER...personally I like it...I see a methodology that has merit, it is short, simple and brutal..3 things relevant to knife combat (combat not fighting...fighting has rules and regs & is a tit for tat exchange).
Until people have seen the elephant and done the deed in real time they need to tick a lock....it is easy to talk shite and act like a bad ass but it is a different story when the shite hits the fan. Like my friend Mushtaq said to me last night on the phone " most people in the FMA and SILATS like to talk a good game and write about how good they are". I do agree there is a vast amount of blow hard and wanna be bad asses wearing their cammo BDU's playing commando but when it comes down to violence they don't have the gumption or the MANA to go for broke...all of a sudden they have to much to loose...so they hide behind their key boards and theorize about someone elses methods. Sad but true...I know many of these idiot's in some of your more popular FMA's and Silat's...they have alligator mouths and Skeeter asses and would shite their DEPENDS if ever confronted with the truth of combat (not fighting).
Okay I feel better now...Nice chatting with you all..I need to go now it's time for an OREO cookie break ...peace all.
Michael Blackgrave
BaHad Zu'Bu Mangtaas Baraw www.bahadzubuwest.org
Hello, I was mentioned, so here I am.
First, Jay, KSMAJay, Mushtaq was not referring to you at all. Info given to me says that Goloks name is Jay, but it has also been traced to a couple different names that are known for trolling as well.
I truly do believe that Piper is a very effective system, and one of it's only problems is it's biggest asset when viewed through the prism of US martial arts. It's movement style is foreign to us here. Even with practice, and being able to execute the movements, it is not natural for the way we in the west have been taught to move for our entire lives.
Having only seen the clips, and just now starting to break it down into learnable patterns, it is one of the scarier methods of knifing I have seen. It works on the intent, and grows the technique from that, from what I see and have read.
As far as the trouble caused here by trolling behavior, if someone is well known for crapping wherever they go, we shouldn't be surprised when they stink.
Terry, my name's not Jay. I think you're thinking of someone else here. If you're talking about people who crap wherever they go, you should probably look a little closer to home. That's all I have to say on that subject.
Mushtaq, I'd like to apologize, I didn't intend to piss you off (if I even did). I've read your writing for years and you're someone I respect for other reasons than your extensive MA experience.
In general (Not specifically you, Mushtaq) y'all might consider the reason for your heated reaction.
I'll restate my position one last time before bowing out. It's really simple.
First, piper has not been around for very long, comparatively.
Second, for years, people have been pumping it to be the Second Coming of Sliced Bread, and saying that it destroys systems that have been around for far longer than that.
This strikes me as odd. And that's all.
If any of you, Terry, Mushtaq, whoever, have a problem with my stating my opinion, on that subject or anything else, I guess that's just something you're going to have to live with.
Now, have a great night and a great week. All of you.
Final comment... This is on www.selfdefenseforums.com:
Golok
08-01-2005, 09:15 AM
Yeah, there was a video clip of this floating around a while back. It's not really a system, just a way of moving with extreme fluidity and speed. Which automatically makes it superior to 95% of stuff out there, sad to say. Try doing tapitapi on a piper guy and you'll be Edward Sashimihands.
http://www.selfdefenseforums.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-11861.html
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