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Brian Boru · Post by **Brian Boru** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 2:59 pm

Are there reels and jigs and such that are specifically Welsh? Or is it just Methodist hymns? I know this is slightly off topic but my wife was asking the other day, and at least its Celtic

Innocent Bystander · Post by **Innocent Bystander** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:38 pm

Immediately I thought of "Tatter Jack Welsh". (N.B. That's a joke.)
I don't know anything obviously Welsh, but here's a link you might find interesting:

http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/4558

flutey1 · Post by **flutey1** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 5:10 pm

you might want to check out this group: http://www.ffynnon.com. they have audio samples on the site.

cheers,
Sara

awildman · Post by **awildman** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 8:22 pm

Brian Boru wrote:Are there reels and jigs and such that are specifically Welsh? Or is it just Methodist hymns? I know this is slightly off topic but my wife was asking the other day, and at least its Celtic

yes there are welsh dance tunes. but what do you mean by Celtic? What makes music Celtic? The instruments played? The rhythym? The origins of the Welsh people? Particular technique used that is unique to Celtic music? How do you know it is Celtic anyway? Don't you need to know something about the music to label it?

TheSpoonMan · Post by **TheSpoonMan** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:01 pm

awildman wrote:
Brian Boru wrote:Are there reels and jigs and such that are specifically Welsh? Or is it just Methodist hymns? I know this is slightly off topic but my wife was asking the other day, and at least its Celtic
yes there are welsh dance tunes. but what do you mean by Celtic? What makes music Celtic? The instruments played? The rhythym? The origins of the Welsh people? Particular technique used that is unique to Celtic music? How do you know it is Celtic anyway? Don't you need to know something about the music to label it?

Celtic music like celtic people I guess. Even though the people aren't particularly "celtic" but yeah. It's an easy way to say "irish/scottish/welsh/breton/galician, etc". I don't see anything wrong with 'em- different musics are pretty different, but there's a continuity that's fun to play with.

awildman · Post by **awildman** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:09 pm

My apologies. I don't really have a problem with someone using the term Celtic. Some people do. generalizing is necessary for most things in life. I personally prefer to be more specific to avoid confusion and I think that Celtic is really too vague a term to use a lot.

It gets really annoying when somebody asks what kind of music I play. I respond "Irish". Then they say, "Celtic?" Sometimes it's hard to bite your tongue when you just gave them a very specific answer and they respond with an amoebic generality like that.

TheSpoonMan · Post by **TheSpoonMan** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:13 pm

awildman wrote:My apologies. I don't really have a problem with someone using the term Celtic. Some people do. generalizing is necessary for most things in life. I personally prefer to be more specific to avoid confusion and I think that Celtic is really too vague a term to use a lot.

It gets really annoying when somebody asks what kind of music I play. I respond "Irish". Then they say, "Celtic?" Sometimes it's hard to bite your tongue when you just gave them a very specific answer and they respond with an amoebic generality like that.

Yeah, that irritates me too (tho' I also see why they do it and I see that the term's useful sometimes- still annoying tho, ha). But I'm sure we've all referred to "asian" or "middle-eastern", etc., music before, to be fair.

flutey1 · Post by **flutey1** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:42 pm

well, now that everyone else is already off topic...

yes, Celtic is a generalization, but sometimes a necessary one. it is somewhat inconvenient to refer to all the separate people/places. plus there are groups that's it's hard to classify as specifically Irish/Scottish/anything else in particular but have that characteristic (yes, general) sound.

plus there's this whole problem of the fact that the people we refer to as 'Celtic' today are actually mislabelled and have no connection to the historic group known as the Celts (which appeared in central Europe somewhere around 800-600BC). we have the 18th century romantics and nationalists to thank for that misnomer

cheers,
Sara

TheSpoonMan · Post by **TheSpoonMan** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:51 pm

flutey1 wrote:plus there's this whole problem of the fact that the people we refer to as 'Celtic' today are actually mislabelled and have no connection to the historic group known as the Celts (which appeared in central Europe somewhere around 800-600BC). we have the 18th century romantics and nationalists to thank for that misnomer

Really? I mean, yeah, they're not like the ancient Celts, but IIRC the Gauls, Celtiberians, Britons, and Scotti were all "Celts". There's some similar ancestry way back when. So I think it's reasonable enough to call them that. It's like calling German/Scandinavian, etc. things "Teutonic". Kinda wierd, not 100% accurate, but close enough.

flutey1 · Post by **flutey1** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:22 am

TheSpoonMan wrote:Really? I mean, yeah, they're not like the ancient Celts, but IIRC the Gauls, Celtiberians, Britons, and Scotti were all "Celts". There's some similar ancestry way back when. So I think it's reasonable enough to call them that. It's like calling German/Scandinavian, etc. things "Teutonic". Kinda wierd, not 100% accurate, but close enough.

it's reasonable to call them that because history has attached that label and we lack a better name for them. but for a long time scholars tried to justify a connection between the ancient Celts and the modern ones, and that just isn't there for the most part. I actually did a whole research paper and whatnot on this. but I'll do my best to sum it up in a paragraph or so...

Welsh scholar and nationalist Edward Lhuyd published his book Archaeologia Britannica in 1707, which attached the label Celtic to the group of similar languages in western Europe. He said they originated in the dead language of the ancient Gauls in France. He suggested the prehistoric migration of people from the continent to Britain and Ireland as how these languages came to exist on the islands, though he did not call those people the Celts. In a very short time Lhuyd’s ideas came to manifest themselves as a new nationalist, romantic identity for the peoples concerned. The term Lhuyd gave to the language group was used in reverse to justify the theory that the people shared a common heritage in an ancient race that had migrated out of central Europe.

The old, long-held theory was that the Celts originated in central Europe and migrated outwards. Recent studies suggest that the ‘Celtic’ languages are not leftovers from an invasion or westward expansion, but rather the common tongues of an Atlantic community connected by the sea. The old theory is not tied to more modern archaeological or genetic evidence, both of which have disproven it. The people we call 'Celtic' were indeed connected; they were connected to one another by means of the sea. Theirs was an Atlantic culture that developed on what we would call the fringes of Europe. So the places are indeed related historically, just not to the group of people that emerged in central Europe and were first called the Keltoi by the Greeks. The cultural ideas of those people may have made their way to the western and northern coasts of Europe, but for the most part the people themselves remained central.

I have a whole paper and bibliography if anyone wants more details. I'm hoping to get it published in an undergrad research journal in the spring. but anyways... that's my 2 cents

cheers,
Sara

TheSpoonMan · Post by **TheSpoonMan** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 2:03 am

Hm. What about the Gauls? I've studied a tiny-tiny bit of their language (or the little we have of it) and I remember it had some likeness or relation to Welsh and Gaelic (not a huge similarity on the surface- honestly it was more like Latin- but it's like comparing English to Old High German, except much much more time in between).

I have a whole paper and bibliography if anyone wants more details.

Hey, I'd love to see that if it's okay with you

Joseph E. Smith · Post by **Joseph E. Smith** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 4:43 am

Didn't MacNeal(sp? of MacNeal and Lehrer [sp?]) do a documentary on this very thing a good few years back for PBS? It was a multi episode history of the English language, and its geographical/cultural origins I believe.

Cayden · Post by **Cayden** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 4:53 am

Ennistymon based harper Paul Dooley has a CD out of Welsh music fro mold manuscripts. Beautiful harper, you don't know what O Carolan's about until you've heard Paul play it on the wirestrung harp.

Anyhow, for the Welsh music look here.

flutey1 · Post by **flutey1** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 2:00 pm

TheSpoonMan wrote:
flutey1 wrote:I have a whole paper and bibliography if anyone wants more details.
Hey, I'd love to see that if it's okay with you

sure, it's still in the process of revision and whatnot, but pm me with your email address and I'd be glad to send it to you.

cheers,
Sara

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Sun Dec 24, 2006 6:51 am

Here's a Welsh music site.

http://www.welshtraditionalmusic.com/

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