The word CELTIC

madguy · Post by **madguy** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 8:49 am

On 2002-10-21 10:42, aderyn_cyrdd wrote:
On 2002-10-21 10:33, Redwolf wrote:
E.g., "What kind of music do you play?" "Celtic." "Oooo...I just love Enya!" (this usually from someone with a crystal around her neck and a bumper sticker that says "My other car is a broom").
Not all of us pagans with crystals around our necks think Celtic=Enya. Nor do all of us love Enya, for that matter.

Andrea ~*~

Thank you, Andrea, for making me not feel like the only one around who doesn't favor the music of Enya! People I work with refer to her music as New Age?!

~Larry

nickt · Post by **nickt** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 10:38 am

I'm beginning to get the feeling that in the USA "celtic" = "new age music". Over here that's not the case - generally, if you say "celtic", people think "Chieftains", "Irish trad music", and more recently "Riverdance music". In short, pretty much what we C&Fers would think of as celtic music. "Music for when you're in the hot tub"??!! Good grief!

Wizzer · Post by **Wizzer** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 11:08 am

Quote:
"I'm beginning to get the feeling that in the USA "celtic" = "new age music". Over here that's not the case - generally, if you say "celtic", people"

We have lots of people here in the US who enjoy Celtic music. Be they of Irish, Scotch, German, Italian, and many other lineage. The appreciation for the music but not necessarily the history is there.
If we had more exposure of:
Fiona Ritchie hosts radio's finest Celtic hour, with music from evolving traditions in Ireland, Scotland, North America and beyond. This show comes on NPR

They would certainly loose there tunnel vision of ITM and see the bigger picture of the music of the Celts. She does a very good job of defining the differences and also how much alike the variations are. That said, I am for keeping the traditions alive how ever it can be achieved.
Phil

Redwolf · Post by **Redwolf** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 11:20 am

It's interesting (and perhaps this is a Santa Cruz thing...I don't know), but someone mentioned music/CD stores earlier. Hereabouts, if you go to a CD store, if you want to find traditional instrumental music, you look under the country of origin (Ireland, Scotland, etc.). If you want to find traditional vocal music, or a combo of vocal and instrumental, you look under "Folk" (you will find some vocal music under country of origin, but it's usually not terribly traditional stuff...for example, what you're likely to find under "Ireland" is actually music hall stuff). If you look under "Celtic," it's all "New Age," with a smattering of Celtic-inspired rock.

This is assuming a general music/CD store (for example, Borders, which has the most complete selection of just about any music you care to name I've ever seen in a non-specialty CD store). It would probably be different in a store that specialized in traditional or folk music, but unfortunately there are none of those hereabouts.

Redwolf

P.S. HOT TUBS???!!! That would crack me up too! Hope you launched into a good, fast reel, just to give the lie to that one!

[ This Message was edited by: Redwolf on 2002-10-21 13:22 ]

Pat Cannady · Post by **Pat Cannady** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 11:37 am

I guess my hostility to the word "Celtic" originates from its imprecision. It can mean anything these days, thanks to record companies and their marketing people.

It is pretty obvious from history that the pre-christian, pre-Roman tribal people of western europe never thought of themselves as "Celtic", otherwise they would have had an easier time organizing to fight Caesar.

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 11:52 am

On 2002-10-21 13:20, Redwolf wrote:
P.S. HOT TUBS???!!! That would crack me up too! Hope you launched into a good, fast reel, just to give the lie to that one!

I did some jigs but I was mainly along at the invitation of the other two who, as a matter of fact, are pretty new agey. I don't think our program dispelled the hot tub idea. To be fair, this is in Ontario and lots of people who relate at all to the word Celtic would think of Ashley MacIssac, The Rankin Family, Leahy, etc. Not hot tubs. When the teacher said that I had a funny image of some old piper or fiddler in Ireland in his tub enjoying some jigs and reels.

Steve

Zubivka · Post by **Zubivka** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 12:00 pm

It is pretty obvious from history that the pre-christian, pre-Roman tribal people of western europe never thought of themselves as "Celtic", otherwise they would have had an easier time organizing to fight Caesar.

Shure! Obvious. Then they allegedly got christian, roman, organized... and still got a hard time against various groups of Northmen (Vikings, Saxons, etc.).
How often should one remind that most what we believe about the whole 1st millenary is read from Roman court authors, who actively indulged in pure propaganda rather than history in the modern sense ?
All the so-called Barbarians and other ex-otis groups of people--Celts, Northmen, Germans, Slavs, Huns--had all their own quite developed civilization with industry and the rest. Enough to eventually destroy Rome, just like Rome destroyed Carthago and so many other civilizations when it could.
Then the Roman Catholic priests came and carefully destroyed all evidence of runes, or other writings prior to Roman cultural colonization, and the Roman church (or Byzantine, farther East) made sure to refer to pre-Christian times as barbaric.
Try and replace "Celtic" by "native Americans" in your sentence, maybe you'll catch my meaning. Now you're certainly right in the sense that your average Navajo or Blackfoot did not introduce himself by saying "hello! I'm a Native American"

Pat Cannady · Post by **Pat Cannady** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 12:57 pm

Now you're certainly right in the sense that your average Navajo or Blackfoot did not introduce himself by saying "hello! I'm a Native American"

[/quote]

That's exactly what I meant, Z. I no more blame Vercingetorix for what happened in the first century BC than I would blame Sitting Bull for Wounded Knee.

The point is that the people who romanticize all things "Celtic" are engaging in a bit of self-delusion. That's all.

Redwolf · Post by **Redwolf** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 1:48 pm

On 2002-10-21 13:52, SteveK wrote:
On 2002-10-21 13:20, Redwolf wrote:
P.S. HOT TUBS???!!! That would crack me up too! Hope you launched into a good, fast reel, just to give the lie to that one!
I did some jigs but I was mainly along at the invitation of the other two who, as a matter of fact, are pretty new agey. I don't think our program dispelled the hot tub idea. To be fair, this is in Ontario and lots of people who relate at all to the word Celtic would think of Ashley MacIssac, The Rankin Family, Leahy, etc. Not hot tubs. When the teacher said that I had a funny image of some old piper or fiddler in Ireland in his tub enjoying some jigs and reels.

Steve

You know, come to think of it, some of that New Age stuff does sound like it's coming from under water

Think of it...play a bagpipe in a hot tub and you wouldn't need jets. Of course, before long, you WOULD need a new bagpipe....

Redwolf

BrassBlower · Post by **BrassBlower** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 4:01 pm

I have heard an episode of T&S in which Fiona Ritchie describes the music of Scandinavia as "music from the northern Celtic regions"! Go figure. Well, I guess they play jigs and reels, too. Any of you (other than Henrik Norbeck, of course) play both IrTrad and ScanTrad?

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 1:07 am

On 2002-10-21 18:01, BrassBlower wrote:
I have heard an episode of T&S in which Fiona Ritchie describes the music of Scandinavia as "music from the northern Celtic regions"! Go figure. Well, I guess they play jigs and reels, too. Any of you (other than Henrik Norbeck, of course) play both IrTrad and ScanTrad?

To my ears, Norwegian and Finnish music in particular sounds very much like Scottish and Irish music but Swedish and Danish music aren't far off. The Shetlands are politically British but very Scandinavian culturally and the Shetland fiddler Aly Bain is an icon on the Scottish scene. So are Scandinavians celts? I know of no evidence for this at all but it might have been meant metaphorically because of the similarity in musical styles.

I've suggested before, but not received a comment, that the reason for this similarity might well be that what we now know as celtic culture might be heavily influenced by the Viking incursion into Scotland and Ireland. What celtic music sounded like before that time is something we'll never know, unless very archaic sounding forms like waulking songs actually take us back to that earlier time.

By the way, all this stuff about Celtic music being confused with New Age music is a bit puzzling to me as it seems to be to the British-based members of this board, which probably explains why none of us have a problem with the label 'Celtic'. Apart from now knowing that Enya is New Age and that it might sound as though it came from under water, how would I recognise New Age music if I ran into it by mistake? Someone please tell me; I don't want to have to put on earphones in a shop to find out.

[ This Message was edited by: Wombat on 2002-10-22 03:08 ]

Zubivka · Post by **Zubivka** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 1:23 am

On 2002-10-21 14:57, Pat Cannady wrote:
The point is that the people who romanticize all things "Celtic" are engaging in a bit of self-delusion. That's all.

Right, Pat. But... At least they romanticize something. I agree that the whole "Celtic" trend (after over 30 years of such, it's more than a fad) was and remains essentially romantic and historically shaky.
And truely, recent research puts a serious doubt about the ethnic connection between continental and isley "Celts"--DNA tests have thrown some new light on the issue.
What counts is the musical drive to something which did away with both academic (i.e. scholarly classic) and pop rock'n roll, claiming for other roots. Even if these were as elusive as roots in Dr Pepper

Typical are the re-invention, almost from scratch, of the "Celtic" harp by A. Stivell (and others, maybe), or the Low whistle.
The whole trend strived more for cultural diversity, opening a new path aside guitar heroes, and 3-pedals grand piano. Also for a more "live" (excuse my broken Englysh

) participative, approach to music when bar Jazz was dying, or pickled (cheers!) in its own academism.
All this had to give itself some kind of recognisable identity, and chose the Triskell.
Given all this, I don't mind the label Celtic, as long as one keeps in mind the origin and limitations of this label, or any label.
Being no Trad ayatollah, I don't mind that Stivell today uses electric guitars in his band, or some Bagads adopted the didgeridoo as a contrabass drone for the biniou (=local pipe).
I even appreciate Riverdance for what it brought to a larger audience: it needs some starters, just as I don't believe you'd get to like classical by drowning straight into Shostakovich's 8th. So I vote for Riverdance just as for the New year concert of Vienna's philarmonia, and for Quincy Jones arrangements. Or Spillane, he-he

Now if one thinks the term Celtic is to broad, there's plenty more specific terms. Just watch out when they'll get to restrictive as sub-menus : Trad/ Celtic/ Irish / Eirin/ Clare/ Pre-1990 non-commercial pure kosher West Clare…
The only time I reject the Celtic term is when I suspect some racial (right of blood

) implication, but that's rarely ever from muzikos.

Sorry to be so lengthy, folks

Voting for Celtic, romanticism and some healthy part of self-delusion.

(edited for me gallic Englysh. Garlic English

)

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-10-22 03:37 ]

nickt · Post by **nickt** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 2:58 am

On 2002-10-22 03:07, Wombat wrote:
To my ears, Norwegian and Finnish music in particular sounds very much like Scottish and Irish music but Swedish and Danish music aren't far off. The Shetlands are politically British but very Scandinavian culturally and the Shetland fiddler Aly Bain is an icon on the Scottish scene. So are Scandinavians celts? I know of no evidence for this at all but it might have been meant metaphorically because of the similarity in musical styles.
[ This Message was edited by: Wombat on 2002-10-22 03:08 ]

Scandinavians are Germanic/Teutonic, not Celtic. They pushed north centuries ago into Scandinavia and forced the original Scandinavians (Lapps) into the far north. The Finns are not Scandinavian but Nordic being Finno-Ugric (not Germanic) in origin; they share cultural roots with Estonians and Samoyeds and IMHO have the world's weirdest language. Okay, geography lesson over.

moishe · Post by **moishe** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 4:03 am

my band is called "Celtic Stew" so we often encounter questions about the name. many americans of course pronounce it "Seltic" thanks to the glorious Boston basketball team. The word, to me, always means "not a Yankee" (read Charles Henry Adams on the yearly snowball fights between the Micks and the Yanks on Boston Common).
"Celtic" as many of us use it now can be seen as a postcolonial phenomenon of recreating something that no longer exists in any "pure" form. The use of the term is part of the dialectical process of English domination of Hibernian cultures and the ways those cultures redefined themselves. In the United States, I see the term as representing an ongoing discussion between the descendants of the English and those of the Irish. As in any market society, it inevitably became the label on a CD rack, just like "Rhythm and Blues" or "Bluegrass". Now where was I?....

nickt · Post by **nickt** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 6:42 am

On 2002-10-22 06:03, moishe wrote:
The use of the term is part of the dialectical process of English domination of Hibernian cultures and the ways those cultures redefined themselves.

Not really Moishe - as stated earlier, it was first used by the Greeks c.500BC. Besides, the English today are a mix of Celtic/Anglo-Saxon themselves anyway.

Shalom