Is celtic rock folk music

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 08:06 AM

There are plenty of bands doing funky stuff with folk tunes that have something to say:

Kerekes Band (Hungarian)
Croft no. 5 (Scottish)

but rehashed Irish-pub-band cliches? I don't think so.

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 07:56 AM

If there's no connection at all with the tradition the songs came from in treatment and content and all that(all of the songs mentioned are fairly recent compositions by the way), is the music still traditional?

Or does it matter at all what label you stick on it?

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: Connacht Rambler
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 07:56 AM

Didn't mean to be smart. I meant Dropkick Murphys, not Dripkick.

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 07:47 AM

I suppose you can call it anything you wish, but I shan't be attending any or buying any.
The 'folk' are losing their sense of 'tradition', in my opinion (with some wonderful exceptions, of course).

I'm afraid I will never see the charm in "louder & faster" just to be louder & faster.

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: Amy_Florence_Nthants
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 07:39 AM

Depends what you count as folk music

With celtic/folk rock often they use folk tunes i.e Cruchan and Waille Waile but then put them to really heavy guitar/drum. Its an adaptation of a folk song and in that way its folk music.

Other songs like DOT take a folk style and make it into music but if its folk then its not in the trad sense but more like 'Somewhere along the road' which most people regard as folk, including me. and that could extend to tunes played in the celtic rock Genre which aren't trad.

If a song/tune has to be trad to be folk then music would never move on, we would never have embraced the epic Blowzabella or played Jump at the Sun by John Kirkpatrick in sessions :-(

Folk music has always shifted and adapted to the music around it, Celtic rock certainly has folk type aspects to it, but it would never be regarded like salsa celtica as 'Pure Folk music'

It all depends on your viewpoint as to how traditional a folk song/tune has to be to be folk, whether modern songs in a folk style count as folk and whether you can still embrace a folk tune as folk music if it has a heavy drum line.

IMO (Not that is really counts) If a modern song is known by the majority of people in the room when you sing it, it counts as folk, yes it's a flawed theory but I hold to it none the less. And if you take a traditional song/tune or play a modern tune in trad style then you are playing folk

Folk is a very expansive and inclusive Genre, and i think the title celtic/Rock Folk/metal trad/rock etc are justified and well named, they are not just folk or rock music but they combine the two, sometimes in a very appealing manner

Ummmm and Mr Bridges..so any music played on a modern instrument is folk music????

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: oldhippie
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 07:24 AM

Also, The Real McKenzies, and Black 47 fall into the same question. I like Richard's answer above.

Subject: RE: Is celtic rock folk music
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 07:15 AM

If the above are folk songs (some are not, check the 1954 definition) then they are still folk songs if played on modern-day instruments.

That is part of the evolutionary process of folk music.

Subject: Is celtic rock folk music?
From: Connacht Rambler
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 06:56 AM

I've just been listening to the Dripkick Murphys version of 'The Fields of Athenry'. Lots of punk electric guitar. Is it folk music?
Is 'Dirty Old Town' by The Pogues folk music? What about 'Fairytale of New York'? When Christy Moore is accompanied by Declan Sinnot on electric guitar, is he being a folk singer?
I asked these questions because Irish traditional music and singing has always thrived on absorbing other traditions in a creative manner: bagpipes into uilleann pipes, the bouzouke, the quadrille into set dancing, Gregorian chant into sean nos ... and so on.

On this basis, celtic rock would seem to me to be a natural continuation of the Irish tradition.