Celtic Music: What Is It?

The term "Celtic music" means different things to different people. Some take a narrow view: there are those who say only Irish music is "Celtic." Traditional musicians in Ireland and Scotland tend to avoid calling their music Celtic. Others, such as Fiona Ritchie, host of National Public Radio's The Thistle & Shamrock, take a broader view and include music of the Celtic lands of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall in the Southwest of England, Brittany in Northwestern France, Galicia in Northwestern Spain, and the music of immigrants and their descendants in Canada (particularly Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island), the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It generally means traditional music, but even then the definition gets stretched as many performers of Celtic music write and play their own music.

"Keltic" or "Seltic"?
There has even been some dispute over the pronounciation of "Celtic." It comes from the Greek word "Keltoi," so it started with the "k" sound, but in English it came to have the "s" sound as found in words like "center." However, in the last hundred years or so the "k" sound has been taking over when used in reference to the people and the music. These days, "Celtic" with the "s" sound is more commonly used for the Celtic Football Club of Glasgow, Scotland, and the Boston Celtics basketball team. Having grown up in Massachusetts within range of Boston radio and TV stations, I had to learn that when speaking of Celtic music, one uses the "k" sound.

The Music's Traditional Setting
Celtic music in its purest form can be found in gatherings of amateur musicians in kitchen sessions, pub sessions and ceilidhs where anyone who can keep up is welcome to join in. The songs, jigs, reels, hornpipes, strathspeys and other forms sometimes date back several hundred years and were handed down from older to younger performers and spread as people moved around. When the music of the Scottish and Irish people came to the United States, it was transformed into the "old-timey" sounds of Appalachian music. Yet in Canada, the Cape Breton Islanders preserved Scottish fiddle styles that nearly died out in Scotland itself.

Celtic Music Instruments
The traditional instruments of Celtic music are the fiddle, shown being played in the photo by Alasdair Fraser, the harp, including the small harps or clarsachs of Scotland, several forms of bagpipes from the Great Highland bagpipes of Scotland to the smaller uillean pipes of Ireland and the cauld wind pipes of Scotland, the concertina, the melodeon, the flute, the tin whistle and the bodhran. The guitar didn't really take hold in Celtic music until after World War II. In the late '60s and early '70s several Irish musicians introduced a Greek instrument, the bouzouki, a six-stringed intrument sort of halfway between a mandolin and a guitar. The "Irish bouzouki" has eight strings. Also heard in Celtic music are accordions, and more recently electronic keyboards and synthesizers, notably in the music of Ireland's Enya, who began her career with her family's well-known band Clannad, and Loreena McKennitt, a Canadian who began recording as a traditional harp player and moved to the synthesizer.

Celtic Music Becomes Popular
Celtic music was largely ignored by the record industry until the 1960s. Many people didn't think there was a market for it. When Green Linnet records was founded in the early 1970s by Lisa Null and Patrick Sky, they were told they'd never get anywhere with that "diddley diddley music." Ten years later, the label was very successful, and they put out a T shirt with the label's logo and underneath it, the words "diddley diddley." Meanwhile, The Chieftains, the Irish group still a powerful force in Celtic music today, recorded their first album in 1963, but only one other in the 1960s. They became much better known in the 1970s and they contributed several tracks to Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon, released in 1976. The soundtrack won an Oscar. Several other Irish groups, among them Clannad, Planxty, The Bothy Band, Boys of the Lough, and De Dannan formed and became well known in the '70s. Meanwhile in Scotland, the '70s saw the formation of groups like Silly Wizard, Ossian, The Battlefield Band, and The Tannahill Weavers.

Many groups and solo artists, while rooted in the tradition, have done a lot of experimenting which has expanded the traditional forms and the definition of Celtic music. While The Chieftains' first album from 1963 may sound very traditional, they were criticized by old-school performers for taking liberties. Clannad, the Irish group from Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore) in the far northwest of the Irish Republic where English is a second language for many, became known for taking Celtic music, and songs sung in Irish, to places it had never been before. Their hit "Theme from Harry's Game" was the first song sung in Irish to make it to the top five of the popular music charts in the United Kingdom. That hit was recorded soon after Enya left Clannad, but by the late '80s her music was becoming more popular and she has gone on to win four Grammys for Best New Age Album.

Taking to the Big Stages
While Celtic music was growing in popularity and taking on influences from popular music, it really took off for many with Riverdance. Scored by Bill Whelan and featuring dancers Jean Butler, Michael Flatley and the Irish choral group Anúna, Riverdance was performed as part of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest and then went on to sellout performances in Dublin, London, New York and all over the world. After leaving that show, Flatley went on to create Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames and Celtic Tiger. These highly successful shows in large venues have led to other successful large-venue performances by Celtic Woman, Celtic Thunder and the Celtic Tenors. While some folks, fans of the groups and soloists who became known from the '60s through the '90s, have been critical of the commericalism of the large-stage shows, those shows have led many new listeners to explore Celtic music and discover artists who have been on the road playing smaller venues for decades. The criticism of the big shows is reminiscent of criticism leveled by tradtionalists against The Chieftains, and it's had the same negligible effect.

Music for the Love of It
Celtic music today is as vibrant and as popular as it has ever been. While it has become commercially successful on big and small stages, it can still be found in its original form in kitchens, parlors, small pubs and halls played with boundless enthusiasm by people who simply love the music. They are sometimes joined by musicians who tour regionally and internationally. These musicians tend to keep in touch with their musical roots. Clannad started in Leo's Tavern in Gaoth Dobhair and went on to international fame. The Chieftains' Matt Malloy owns his own pub in Westport, County Mayo and often sits in during the lively sessions there. The spirit of those sessions was captured on CD as Music at Matt Molloy's.