Like Pogo used to say "to each their furry own"

While the Celtic Woman package deal isn't to my taste, I see the talent, the packaging and the high production values and think both of the kind of reaction Michael Flatley gets(negative and positive) and some of what brought me to traditional music and dance.

My first reaction was astonishment: "how on earth do they SING in those corsets?!!!" The venue I saw them in was a PBS fund drive. I find it endlessly fascinating that the mainstream folk performers seem to always be a part of what's broadcast during fund drives: Michael Flatley, Peter Paul & Mary, revivals of Kingston Trio, a handful of others. Always. The Celtic Woman phenomenon to me is a part of this continuum, and has a place in the entire continuum of "folk."

This sort of production presents a glimpse of tradition to people who wouldn't willingly attend a folk festival, would be apalled by a hard core traditional acapella singer like Frank Harte, are accustomed to videos and Hollywood flashyness. Yet, the bones of traditon that are under those yards of tulle, enhanced by the well designed lighting, with the superb editing can still reach out and grab the imagination, and THAT can lead to seeking out the rest of the iceberg of which Celtic Woman is only the shiny tip showing.

As a child, my first exposure to Irish music of any sort was "Arthur Godfrey presents Carmel Quinn." It's 40some years later, I'm up to my eyeballs and beyond loving traditional song and tunes & a chance acquaintance gives me a CD burned of that very same album. I hear it now -all full of Holywood orchestration, like something out of a Bing Crosby movie and yanno, it's not what I really want to listen to now. It seems hokey. Yet... yet.... "If I were a blackbird" I'd rather listen to Andy M. Stewart sing it, now... but I've been singing it for 40 years because I nearly wore out my vinyl Carmel Quinn album as a child.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be born to a place where traditional music is strong: I certainly wasn't. Not everyone knows it's even there to FIND. The paths we sometimes to take to our heart's delight can be convoluted. I'd never disdain the ways folks get their interest piqued. The folks who go to Irish fest here who HAVE to hear songs I find utterly boring "Come out you black & tans" and "No nay never" and oh lord NOT "The Scottsman" one more time - those are the gate fees that bring the wonderful harper, Cherish the Ladies, the traditional shanachie telling tales, the sean nos singer with the small audience.

Folk the music, and "folks" the people, are a continuum, and if we want to survive, we'd best not forget it.