Wow.

I'd say "thank you!", but that doesn't do your postings justice. Looks like maybe I finally figured out how to ask the question.

So, who's interested in traveling back in time with me and getting some local song-circles going? One thing I'm noticing is that the "green beer singing" that st. patty's day in the US has become sloshes all over the oral tradition that I'm interested in.

I'm in the DC area of the mid-atlantic. Please feel free to send me a private message if you're interested in exchanging email addresses, etc. In my view, all of this started with community and oral tradition playing a big role, and as a fiddle-player friend has said recently, has become a "virtual reality" of sheet music and recordings, which really has little to do with the human side of all of it. (learning songs/tunes by hearing them in person and in the language!)

I am interested in getting back to where it really came from. For instance, what were people like and what was the oral tradition like that would create a song such as "Dulaman" - very poetically about seaweed? This is not a simple "question" I am asking. I walked across Spain this past summer, and started to get some feel for what it was like to really be living close to the land and other people, so I'm interested in exploring that, on a personal level, not just reading about it or imagining. I think I can possibly learn a huge amount about the music, myself, the country/people of origin, the times, and much much more.

Yes, Sean Nos, thanks for mentioning that. I have to look into that a bunch more, along with the other things mentioned.

Yeah, well, it's also my English language, I bought stock back before the bubble ;P , and I don't like the marketing, etc. usage of "celtic" either, but that's not the way I'm using it. I'm using it to describe the music of countries/people that are historically/linguistically Celtic. Of course, there were people there before the celtic tribes moved in, and that would be interesting too if that was very accessible. (Layers of celtic tribes, romans, many various other people, and industrial development/activity makes that difficult, I think.)

And yes, as anyone who has traveled to any place where people have been for a long time knows - old cultures vary quite a lot from village to village, so of course it is not "fair" at all to use a label to describe a big chunk of western europe. Celtic tribes/culture have been found from Ireland all the way to the Black Sea.

You might find things like this interesting or helpful:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/art/verkerk/celtic/celtic/project.html

While I'm at it, I'll mention: Wouldn't it be interesting to try to reconstruct (very hard to do, I realize) what music was like based on archeological finds and what we know about current local music in various areas in Europe, and the movement of people over time, cultural influences, etc.? Of course, it would be mostly very hypothetical.

As I understand it, the word "Celtic" comes from Greeks who traded and colonized up the Rhone river in SE france and were exposed to the "Gauls" as the Romans called them. The Greek word was "Keltoi".
Correction or more info, welcome by experts, etc.

Anyway, let's all take a moment to realize that reality is much more complex that we can describe, esp. by email.....................

Ok, thanks again! I really learned a lot.
G