Singing styles in the six Celtic nations?

[caniadafallon]

Hi all... this question isn't strictly ITrad, but it's still somewhat on topic.

Does anyone know if the Isle of Man, Cornwall, and Brittany have "names" (for lack of a better term at the moment) for their trad singing styles? For example, I believe these to be correct for the other three nations:

Scotland- Puirt a beul
Ireland- Sean nos
Wales- Penillion


If anyone can help, I'd greatly appreciate it! I've spent some time on Google, but haven't had any luck as of yet.

Thanks,
Ad

[Wombat]

Hi all... this question isn't strictly ITrad, but it's still somewhat on topic.

Does anyone know if the Isle of Man, Cornwall, and Brittany have "names" (for lack of a better term at the moment) for their trad singing styles? For example, I believe these to be correct for the other three nations:

Scotland- Puirt a beul
Ireland- Sean nos
Wales- Penillion


If anyone can help, I'd greatly appreciate it! I've spent some time on Google, but haven't had any luck as of yet.

Thanks,
Ad

I think you have a bit of work to do here Ad.

Let me take just Scotland as an example. Puirt-a-beul (mouth music) is a Scottish singing style roughly equivalent to diddling or lilting. It might involve words or it might not. Traditionally it would have been employed to accompany dancing when no instrument was available. Even when it involves words, the primary function is rhythmic and often the words are rather nonsensical.

There are other styles that are just as traditional but which are different. For example, waulking songs are sung unaccompanied call and response style by women working in the preparation of wool for weaving to accompany their work and have nothing to do with dancing. Then you have bothy ballads and muckle songs, both of which could be accompanied but need not be and both of which have a greater emphasis on words and some weird styles of unaccompanied Gaelic psalm singing in the Hebrides. There isn't a single traditional style by any means.

BTW, if you want completeness, you might look into Galicia as well which has some very interesting singing and instrumental styles.

[djm]

The Wombat is right. Mouth music/lilting is called the same in Scotland and Ireland, as I recall. Seán-nos simply means old style, so you can have seá-nos singing or seán-nos dancing or seán-nos ice cream, etc. I'm not familiar with the Welsh term you quote, but there is a big problem in Wales, from what I've read, that nobody actually recorded any of their original music, so that now people are trying to re-invent it. Besides Galicia you would certainly want to look at Britanny in France, which was once closely associated with the Britons in Britain whose remnants would become the Welsh and Cornish (and Manx, I think, too).

djm

[caniadafallon]

Hi Wombat and djm... thanks for trying to point me in a direction. I guess I wasn't terribly clear about my question, so I'll try again. I realize that there are many different styles-- waulking songs, etc-- I was only giving one example of a type of music from each nation. I'm trying to figure out if there were some specific styles of music that come from Isle of Man, Cornwall, and Brittany... "names" that would be along the lines of Irish Sean nos, Welsh Penillion, and Scottish Puirt-a-beul.

Erg, that still sounds clear as mud... See, I'm trying to write a brief paper that goes into Celtic cultural identity-- specifically how music helped preserve cultural identity-- and I just wanted to be able to give one type of music from each of the nations. But I can't seem to find anything very specific on those three nations.

Did that make any more sense? I'm having a brain blurp in the communication department at the moment...

[caniadafallon]

Woohoo!! I found something on Brittany!! From http://www.rootsworld.com/celtic/breton.html

Breton melodies, like those composed in Wales, are often written in major or minor keys and employ complex harmonies, but the modal tunings and unison structures more usually favored in Ireland and Scotland are also used. Much of Breton traditional music is built on call-and-response patterns. In a style called kan ha diskan, two (or two teams of) whirlwind a cappella singers known as the kaner and diskaner (chanteur and dechanteur in French) trade verses, joining forces briefly on the final words of each line. Like Scottish mouth music, kan ha diskan is meant to accompany dancing, in this case the hand-in-hand snake dances that Breton Fest-Noz (Night Festivals) are famous for, but listeners are also welcome. Well-known practitioners include Les Freres Morvan, three elderly brothers with trembly, time-worn voices who are captured live for all time on "Fest-Noz a Botkol" (Coop Breizh). Les Soeurs Goadec, another family act, were also recorded late in life on "Moueziou Brudez A Breiz" (Keltia), which was lovingly produced by the great harper and folklorist Alan Stivell. Charles Quimbert, Mathieu Hamon, and Roland Brou also present authentic kan ha diskan on "Trois P'tits Oiseaux - Chants de Haute-Bretagne" (Coop Breizh). Paul Huellou, an empathetic singer with a rough nasal edge, is heard solo and unaccompanied on "Songs From Brittany" (Music Of The World - Latitudes).

Slower ballads known as gwerziou (gwerz is the singular) are the Breton equivalent of Irish Sean Nos or Scottish airs. In its purest form, only the most accomplished vocalists are confident enough to attempt it, but it and kan ha diskan are also found in less rigid settings and contexts, backed by everything from dainty acoustic combos to crushing walls of electronic sound. Nolùen Le Buhé, with her wide eyes and secretive mouth, would have to appear on any list of first-rate a cappella singers, from anywhere. On "Komz a Raer Din..." (Coop Breizh), she concentrates on songs from the Yannes region and weaves a potent spell fashioned from equal measures of simplicity, passion, and ancestral channeling. For an overview of several singers and styles, the compilation "Gwerziou Et Chants De Haute-Voix" (Keltia) is an invaluable resource. Other vocal styles are also waiting to be discovered, especially Breton hymns and Christmas carols.

[djm]

Since so little is actually documented from more than a couple hundred years ago of the folk music of each region, most writings on this subject tend to end up with 99% speculation based on 1% fact. You can make anything seem reasonable, but there is no real proof one way or another that the music has or has not evolved as the culture has evolved. You would not be alone in trying to image a "golden past". It is a perenial favourite topic.

djm

[AaronMalcomb]

Gwerzou are one unique form of Breton song. One of their most unique is Kan ha Diskan which basically means singing and unsinging. It's a duet format where one sings a question/answer verse and the other sings the question with a different answer. They are generally very rhythmic too sort of like puirt a beul.

There is some nomenclature confusion in puirt beul. The songs I've heard are kind of nonsensical and are just meant to have a dance rhythm (e.g. Open the door for the tailoring fiddler, Open the door for the fiddling tailor, Open the door for the tailoring fiddle, The fiddling tailor is the King's cousin). I've heard others refer to lilting as puirt a beul and some refer to canntaireachd as puirt a beul. Canntaireachd is a sung, quasi-language of vocables used to represent notes and embellishments in bagpipe music. Until written music was introduced to Gaelic Scotland it was the method of sharing and teaching tunes.

Cheers,
Aaron

[caniadafallon]

Thank you, Aaron, that was useful to hear your thoughts on puirt a beul, etc... I appreciate you taking the time to share. Now if I can just find out if there is a unique form of song (I like your phrasing better than mine) specific to Cornwall and specific to the Isle of Man, I would be one happy woman!

Best,
Ad

[Cayden]

It should be worth leafing through peter Kennedy's Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (ISBN 0-7119-0282-6)at your local library, which has an intorduction to every chapter i.e. Manx, Welsh Scottish etc song plus an extensive bibliography. And loads of lovely songs ofcourse.

[caniadafallon]

Thank you Peter-- most helpful! I will try to get over there tomorrow or Saturday and take a look-see.

[Wombat]

Thank you, Aaron, that was useful to hear your thoughts on puirt a beul, etc... I appreciate you taking the time to share. Now if I can just find out if there is a unique form of song (I like your phrasing better than mine) specific to Cornwall and specific to the Isle of Man, I would be one happy woman!

Best,
Ad

OK, here's what I know about Mann and Cornwall.

In both places the language more or less died out making it very hard to be sure what the msucial traditions were really like. There is revival in both places but, as with Galicia, this probably involves more invention than rediscovery. Both peoples have a strong choral tradition for singing carols. The term is used in a broader than usual sense to include songs for any religious festival including pagan feasts. The Manx term for their carols is Carvalyn Gailckagh.

There are many Manx language songs preserved, many exploring common Celtic themes. The most extensive collection is A.W.Moore's 1896 collection, Manx Ballads and Songs.

I don't know of any recorded examples of these styles but I suspect that revival bands from both places will have recorded. How authentic they would be is anyone's guess.

[djm]

In her recent book, "Hidden Ulster", Pádraigín Ní hUallacháin notes the influence of the French chorale style music on Irish traditional singing. This would have been brought over by the Anglo-Normans. Its hard to know where to draw lines (if possible at all) between what is locally authentic and what is imported. Certainly none of these cultures was socially isolated from the rest of the world.

djm

[AaronMalcomb]

Thank you, Aaron, that was useful to hear your thoughts on puirt a beul, etc... I appreciate you taking the time to share.

I forgot to mention waulking which is another unique, Scots Gaelic tradition. Part of the process for turning wool into tweed, called waulking, requires pounding and grinding the cloth. So folks sit around a table and waulk the tweed on the table while singing a rhytmic, call/answer song.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Joseph E. Smith]

Peter Laban wrote:"It should be worth leafing through peter Kennedy's Folksongs of Britain and Ireland."
===============================================

This book has been of immense value to me over the years. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn some of the history of and behind the songs within it's pages.

[tompipes]

Heres a question,
When did the "nos" become "sean". Who coined or when was the term "sean-nos" coined.
Another example of something called "old" was a language or a version of medieval norman english that was still spoken in north county dublin untill the early 1600's and later still, in south east wexford until the 1860's. In its decline it was called "Yeoladh" or 'the old' in its norman form.
There's no connection between yeoladh and sean-nos except to say that when both were considered to be in decline the were called 'old'.
Maybe thats not a fair analogy because maybe whoever called it sean-nos percieved it to be old when a lot of songs sung 100 years ago were not that old at all.
O'Neill in his writing, mentions the 'ancient' music of Ireland but no sean-nos.
So could the term be dated to after the 1920's, or was it a term that local Irish singers used all along but was just ignored by the Conradh na nGaeilge spin doctors like Grattan Flood et al. Like the whole Union/Uilleann thing.
I'm not offering explanations at all but asking the question of who and when. Any theorys out there.

Personaly I believe that this style of singing and those kind of songs to be Irelands ignored classical music. Just like India has its classical music consisting of ragas etc. and Indonesia has its Gamelan which is a high respected form of music in the eyes of the government and the people too.
Those poets and songwriters of Ireland from 1650ish till the 1840's (ish) composed lyrical words comparable to Shakespear, Milton, even Homer.
A much higher platform should be raised for the proponents of this elegant art form regardless of who first called it what.

Tommy Martin