Music
(see External links – Music at end of article for examples of modern Celtic music)
Today, Irish sean-nós ("old style") and Welsh penillion (voice and harp) singing as well as Scottish working songs are familiar from many recordings made both by traditional singers and by others who have learned technique and style from these. Celtic music is as improvisational as jazz, and in the hands of a group like The Chieftains, as glorious as a symphony orchestra. It has the power to rock and roll, though most of the traditional instruments are acoustic. Many of the lyrics and melodies have a history that's centuries old, a heritage that's been handed down over the generations by word of mouth.
The claim that distinctly Celtic styles of music exist was made during the nineteenth century, and was associated with the revival of folk traditions and pan-Celtic ideology. The Welsh anthem "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" was adopted as a pan-Celtic anthem. Though there are links between Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic folk musics, very different musical traditions existed in Wales and Brittany. Nevertheless, Gaelic styles were adopted as typically Celtic even by Breton revivalists such as Paul Ladmirault.
Celticism came to be associated with the bagpipe and the harp. The harp is considered to be the national instrument of Wales and is used to accompany penillion singing (or cerdd dant) where the harpist plays a melody and the singer sings in counterpoint to it. The roots revival, applied to Celtic music, has brought much inter-Celtic cross-fertilisation, as, for instance, the revival by Welsh musicians of the use of the mediaeval Welsh bagpipe under the influence of the Breton binioù, Irish uillean pipes and famous Scottish pipes, or the Scots have revived the bodhran from Irish influence. Charles le Goffic introduced the Scottish Highland pipes to Brittany.
Unaccompanied or A cappella styles of singing are performed across the modern Celtic world due to the folk music revival, popularity of Celtic choirs, world music, scat singing and hip hop rapping in Celtic languages. Traditional rhythmic styles used to accompany dancing and now performed are Puirt a beul from Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Sean-nós song from Ireland and Kan ha diskan from Brittany. Other traditional unaccompanied styles sung currently are Waulking song and Psalm singing or Lining out both from Scotland.
The emergence of folk-rock led to the creation of a popular music genre labelled Celtic music which "frequently involves the blending of traditional and modern forms, e.g. the Celtic-punk of The Pogues, the ambient music of Enya ... the Celtic-rock of Runrig, Rawlins Cross and Horslips." Pan-Celtic music festivals were established, notably the Festival Interceltique de Lorient founded in 1971, which has occurred annually since.
Read more about this topic: Celts (modern)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“As if, as if, as if the disparate halves
Of things were waiting in a betrothal known
To none, awaiting espousal to the sound
Of right joining, a music of ideas, the burning
And breeding and bearing birth of harmony,
The final relation, the marriage of the rest.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)