The Celtic Phenomenon

[garthmoe]

Hi everyone. Hope you are enjoying the lovely autumn weather.
What I'm writing about is the current impact of Celtic music. It seems to be waning - and it would be sad if it ceases to be a strong musical influence. In my area (southern Ontario) I have noticed that the theatres that used to present many Celtic acts no longer book them. I was wondering how much opportunity you have where you live to see live Celtic groups. I would be especially interested to know how the East Coast is doing in this regard. Are the groups travelling less because of the economy or other factors? Has the general public moved away from Celtic music?
I still love listening to this brand of music and I hope it stays around a long time and continues to grow and influence the music scene. Your thoughts?

Garth

[Joe]

Hi garthmoe

Great post. You know, I came to the conclusion that I had "missed" the Celtic Colours festival. I say "missed" because I have not heard any news from it. To be sure, all of the acts must have been amazing.

Apart from very sparse summer Celtic music events, I'd say 75% of Celtic / Irish events take place in mid-March.

This autumn weather has been fantastic...quite rare to be this far into October with no frost yet. Our hot pepper plants still have lots of blossoms on them, and the green beans are still growing well.

[jason22]

Yes, many Celtic music concerts, and festivals, take place in March, for the obvious reason that it's the month that St. Patrick's Day falls in. As to the popularity of Celtic music, if you know where to look, you can at times find some recordings. Usually though, they are from lesser known musicians, and labels. And most of the time you won't be able find it in major retail outlets. Though at Wal Mart, around the time of St. Patrick's Day, once again, I was able to find an album of Celtic Music that was on sale. But since Celtic is considered to be, as a genre, traditional, rather than popular music, it is not in as much supply. In fact, funny enough, some of the stores where I've found Celtic Music are not where the average person would expect to find music of any kind, much less Celtic. But, at Mary Yoder's Amish Kitchen, & Gift Shop, they sell among other genres, Celtic music. And, before it went out of business, at Linens and More, in Niles, Ohio, I was able to sometimes find some such albums too. So you just have to keep an eye out, and shop around. And of course, sometimes libraries will sell surplus CDs too. I just recently bought a Celtic pop album, by a group called B*Witched, at a public library, if that can rightly be considered to be Celtic . P.S. Another factor as to why Celtic music is not as well known, and available is that a great deal of the songs are not copy righted, and the composers usually are not even known. So recording industry executives can not exclusively possess the songs as intellectual property. Like, unless it's a modern composition, simply in written in the traditional Celtic style, I may record myself singing the same songs that other performers have sung, and even sell albums of it. So it'd all be rather generic.

[Ginny]

About 10 years ago I used to LOVE the song C'est La Vie by B*Witched! (...maybe still do! ) There's a fiddle in there...and the trippy music video had some awkward Irish dancing! Hahaha not exactly what I'd classify as Celtic either though!