Gateshead musician, Ryofu, is shocking traditionalists with her unique blend of Northumbrian pipes and rock music. She tells Steve Pratt how she's even had to hire bodyguards to keep the dissenters at bay.

RYOFU is a musician who feels that the Northumbrian pipes are an instrument you either love or hate. The type of music she plays evokes much the same kind of extreme reaction.

Purists, it seems, don't much care for the heavy metal music she bangs out on the traditional instrument. Her critics have become so vocal and potentially disruptive that she employs three bodyguards to protect her.

"I have the bodyguards even when I'm not working," explains Ryofu - alias Jacqui Powell-Swinburne, from Gateshead. "It's been quite a shock and takes some getting used to, having them with you wherever you go. It's meant a lot of adjustment. I do seem to create a lot of hostility. They don't like the type of music I play on a traditional instrument."

Bad reviews are one thing but potentially violent critics are another. "When the word started to go round and they realised what I was doing, I started getting threatening letters and telephone calls and so on and so forth," she says. "I've been attacked on the street and on stage. I am quite small and vulnerable when I'm by myself. When I've been on stage it's been more worrying because someone threw a pint of beer over me and tried to pull me off the stage."

She's determined to carry on making the kind of music she wants, and has a series of gigs lined up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this month.

That she went into the music business isn't too surprising as her father, Jack Henry, was a musician with the Joe Loss Orchestra. He also played with other bands led by Henry Hall and Edmondo Ross. As a young girl, Jacqui performed in her father's own band.

"I've always sung," she says. "My father tried to teach me the piano, but I wasn't a very good listener. I wasn't too keen on that at the time, so I couldn't play an instrument."

She dabbled in world music, teaming up with bouzouki player Gordon Clarke, touring Europe and producing the East Is A Blaze CD.

Then Jackie, who is now back based in the North-East, heard the Northumbrian pipes and was hooked.

"I loved the haunting sound," she says. "It's an instrument you love or hate. I fell in love with it and decided to give it a go."

She's been performing professionally for about nine months after taking lessons to master the art of pipe-playing. "The pipes were difficult to learn, they're a unique instrument," she says.

"I liked their heritage, that there was a lot of history behind them. Being quite diverse musically myself, they're an instrument I think I can really play.

"I learnt all the traditional tunes but experimented in world and jazz music. I didn't see any harm in doing that. Now it's heavy metal. I've always loved rock music. I was brought up on it. My brother was into Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, that sort of thing."

Jazz was a natural progression from that for her as she wanted "to spice things up a bit" and it was the music she felt more happy, most comfortable playing. "I wanted to improvise rather than just play the instrument because it can get a bit boring when you're doing the same things all the time. It was a natural development. I didn't just say, 'I'm going to do this music now' but kind of slipped into it," she says.

Audiences are surprised when she launches into heavy metal on the Northumbrian pipes and some display their opposition vocally. "You do get the shock factor but with a lot of interest," she says.

"I get the other side of things too, just completely hostile to what I'm doing in a very big way. I've been surprised at the kind of hatred I've got back from it."

Ryofu - the name is Japanese for dragon's breath - is not only playing live gigs but creating and performing her own compositions for her first solo CD. She aims to record it over the next two or three months.

What this woman who describes herself as "a rock musician come vocalist" won't be doing is bowing down to the purists who dislike what she's doing with the Northumbrian pipes. "I'm retaliating in quite a major way," she says. "They're not going to deter me but encourage me to make myself more controversial."

* Edinburgh Fringe Festival www.edfringe.com 0131-226 0026.