Bagpipes are 'in'

I like bagpipes. I do. I play them myself and even wrote a fan-piece on them a while ago for a zine (which you can read here). But something's been bothering me recently; their apparent new-found popularity in Latvia.
As you may know, or will find out if you read my zine article, the bagpipe is native to most, if not all, Indo-European cultures. Although you may (no...probably definitely) associate the instrument with Scotland, the history of the bagpipes among the Celtic peoples is in fact relatively fresh. So don't even try to imagine the Latvian manifestation of the bagpipe to be like the Scottish version; it's different. Anyway, after bagpipe playing (and making) traditions all but died out in Latvia, the last several decades have seen somewhat of a revival.
Bagpipes, bagpipe playing, and bagpipe music were, for a while, pretty much strictly confined to folklorists, neo-folk geeks and the like but sometime in the last year, or maybe two, bagpipes have squeezed (get it?) their way into the public eye.
I don't have a television at home but when I do find myself at a friend's house I like to indulge in a touch of guilty box-watching. If it's not an old Russian slap-stick film or an incredibly boring Latvian fishing show it's usually a terrible concert with families singing together or pseudo-pop stars. During these small windows of weekend television viewing that I've managed to enjoy (I'm so glad I don't have television at home) there have been many a concert where bagpipes have been the instrument of choice in accompaniment to either a single vocalist, a band, or even a large combined choir. At first I enjoyed hearing and watching these performances (even though most of them are singularly forgettable). This was because I was glad to see traditional bagpipes being played to a wider audience - on television no less! But after a dozen or more of these performances and seeing posted videos on YouTube, I was tiring of it to be honest. I wasn't tiring of the bagpipes themselves, but the way they were being used; they'd become 'just another instrument', like the guitar or saxophone playing in the backing band. I now sigh, and cringe just a little, every time I see a performance with bagpipes. It's almost become the 'in' thing to have bagpipers, or several, accompanying some extraordinarily mediocre vocalists.
It's curious, because I always pushed for greater awareness of the instrument, and now that they are becoming more recognised in popular culture in Latvia, I find myself cringing and shuffling nervously in my seat. Is it similar to the I-hate-it-that-the-underground-band-I-like-has-become-'mainstream' syndrome? Possibly a little, probably not entirely.
I saw a video on YouTube today which was the impetus for this blog post. It's of a band called 'Instrumenti' accompanied by the bagpipe-and-drum band by the name of 'Auļi'; both groups are Latvian. Instrumenti is a pop group which has achieved reasonable success here in Latvia, and Auļi has been at the forefront in the recent bagpipe 'revolution', if you will. Anyway, here you see Instrumenti trundling through a song, and then suddenly...bagpipers with Panda heads! It kinda sounds okay to the tell the truth, but I still can't help feeling that bagpipes have become a bit of a novelty - I mean, panda heads!?