I have wondered a lot about musical styles. Looking at the Celtic idiom, you can see many distinct styles, or accents, that have developed. For instance, it is fairly easy to distinguish just by listening between Scottish and Irish music. Within Irish music, you have several distinct regional styles (i.e. Donegal, Clare, Sligo, etc.). Cape Breton music is to me instantly recognizable, and has a voice all it's own. The same can be said about the development of dance and language in each of these places. The reason for this has a lot to do with isolation. Taking Cape Breton as an example, the (mostly) Scottish people who settled there brought with them their language, their music, their cultural biases. The Gaelic that is spoken there has been isolated for so long, that it is closer (purer?) to the original Gaelic that was spoken in Scotland than the modernized form that developed in Scotland. Cape Breton dance is very much different from the highly stylized form that came to be in Scotland. And the music that evolved their is very distinct as well: primarily fiddle and piano, with a fairly healthy guitar tradition, but virtually no flute tradition; they gravitate, like the Scots, toward the reel and the strathspey.

Conversly, there is no Virginia style of Irish flute playing. There is a lot of Irish music in Virginia, but will there ever be any kind of regional style here? We do have "old time" music. I am not well versed enough to know if our style of old time is distinct from that of, say, upstate New York. Is Old Time our style Celtic music?

And what about Down Under? One would think that any Celtic music that was "imported" there from the old country would have been sufficiently isolated to have evolved a unique regional accent. Is there any such animal?

Any thoughts on this subject?

BeauD