The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #77280 Message #1378186
Posted By: Nerd
13-Jan-05 - 01:10 PM
Thread Name: Celtic music
Subject: RE: Celtic music
Wow, we've had this conversation on a number of occasions. Technically nowadays "Celtic" is a linguistic distinction, so "Celtic Music" is a misnomer. But it's at least as good as most of the other descriptions I've seen.
Whether one can talk about "Celtic" music or not is a subjective judgment, but some of the factual claims being made above are just not true. For example, labeling music "Celtic" did not begin as a marketing ploy to make money in the twentieth century, but as a statement of Irish pride among Irish people in both Britain and America at least as early as the 19th. The use of "Celtic" to express true ethnic pride is found today in Irish-American music (Celtic Thunder), Atlantic Canadian music (Celtitude), Scottish music (The Keltz), Breton Music (Heritage des Celtes), etc. These people aren't just cashing in, they're serious about what they do.
On an academic level, calling music "Celtic" is more or less meaningless...but so is calling music "Irish." After all, Irish music shares tunes with England and Scotland. More to the point, a Donegal fiddler may have more in common with a Scottish fiddler than with a Kerry fiddler. So either we just say "it's all music," or we try to come up with useful categories. Nationalities are NOT good ways to categorize music; you find the same songs, tunes, and instruments on both sides of most national borders in Europe.
To get to the specifically Celtic case, one of the things that happened in the 1960s and 70s was a certain blending of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Breton, music traditions. Luke Kelly and Christy Moore spent considerable time in the English folk club scene; Andy Irvine sang "Willie O' Winsbury" with a Scottish accent; Ar Log listened heavily to the Chieftains; Alan Stivell played Scottish bagpipes while his father built a "Breton" harp on Irish plans; etc., etc. They did not do this merely to market themselves...I believe these people had a genuine love of music. In some cases, they were also acting out of a sense of Celtic ethnicity.
So what we end up with is a hybrid music. Sure, you could just say, "if the singer is from Ireland, it's Irish music," but that would be just as misleading. If a Scottish person is singing a linguistically Anglo-Saxon ballad to a Breton tune (like, say, Ray Fisher singing "Willie's Lady" to the tune of "Son Ar Chistr,") is it English? Scottish? Breton? If a Breton person is singing an Irish Gaelic song and playing the Scottish pipes with a French guitarist and an ethnically Dutch fiddler (as was the case in some of Stivell's bands), then what is it? Why NOT call it "Celtic?"