Celtic music

Celtic music is a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic peoples of Western Europe. The term Celtic music may refer to both orally-transmitted traditional music and recorded popular music with only a superficial resemblance to folk styles of the Celtic peoples.

Definition debate

At issue is the lack of many common threads uniting the "Celtic" peoples listed above. While the ancient Celts undoubtedly had their own musical styles, these have grown and evolved to the point where considering any modern styles reminiscent of ancient Celtic music is misleading. There is also tremendous variation between Celtic regions. Ireland and Scotland, for example, have living traditions of language and music, whereas Cornwall and the Isle of Man, in contrast, have only revivalist movements that have yet to take hold. Galicia has had little or no Celtic musical influence for several centuries, but is still grouped with the others. Thus, traditionalists, and most musicological scholars dispute that the "Celtic" lands have any folk connections to each other.

Related Topics:
Celt - Musicological

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the other hand, it is indisputable that related musical styles have been recorded and performed by and for persons living in all the "Celtic" lands, and thus there is such a thing a musical tradition uniting these areas — it is simply a form of popular music instead of folk music; whether or not this distinction is important is a matter of taste. Many critics of the idea of modern Celtic music claim that the idea is the creation of modern marketing designed to stimulate regional identity in the creation of a consumer niche; June Skinner Sawyers, for example, notes that "Celtic music is a marketing term that I am using, for the purposes of this book, as a matter of convenience, knowing full well the cultural baggage that comes with it".

Related Topics:
Popular music - Folk music - Marketing - Consumer - Niche

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~