What is Celtic Music?

By Eduardo Oviedo, Piper

To speak of the definition of "Celtic Music" is to speak of polemics, since nowadays there is a great controversy regarding this classification or "label" that has been used for different types of music. The idea, in this case, is to clarify a little the panorama of what it could be defined as "Celtic Music". Any subject that is exposed here can be object of investigation and deeper studies, and this is actually a very general summary according to investigations and different points of view regarding this music.

As a result of music sales, the present industry of music, merchandising and, specially, by the globalization that exists today, there was a necessity to classify these types of music within a category, which produced that “Celtic Music” was denominated as an uniform term to everything that has some similar kinds of sounds. In some cases, different groups or projects are located within this category because they just have a not very specific Irish-Scottish flavor, whose music sounds relaxing or evocative, but without being really experts or investigators of folk music and even without using any of the characteristic instruments or rhythms. In turn, Celtic Music is located within the bigger category of World Music.

We can say this music is the union of different types of music based on the folkloric music of the regions with Celtic heritage, that is to say, of the nomadic towns that little by little were populating old Europe (from century XX A.C.) and that came from Asia. In addition they were conformed by different tribes with certain common characteristics, but the Greeks in a very general way, denominated them as "Keltoi", which gave origin to the word "Celt".

In order to continue, we could say that this classification of music involves, basically, the following regions of the world:

Ireland, Scotland, Britain (the Northwest of France), Isle of Man (between Ireland and Great Britain), Northumberland (Great Britain), Wales (Great Britain), Cornwall County (Great Britain), Galicia (Spain), Asturias (Spain), and Nova Scotia (Canada),

It is good to mention that in the case of Nova Scotia, which belongs to the American continent, a great important issue has occurred, because the Scottish immigrants who arrived at these islands (mainly to Cape Breton) conserved very old traditions almost lost in own Scotland and they developed the old musical styles.

The Celtic Music that we know today, in most of the cases was developed about 400 years ago, hence most of the old music was lost and now we cannot know certainly how it was played. Present Celtic music has musical influences from other countries, like contributions made by Italy, France, and some regions of Spain. In addition, we can find non-traditional instruments being played on these kinds of music.

Among the most characteristic instruments than we can find nowadays in Celtic music, are the following ones:

• Accordion (button or keyboard)
• Different types of bagpipes (Asturian, Scottish, Galician, Irish, etc.)
• Violin
• Whistle
• Irish Flute
• Celtic Harp
• Irish Drum (bòdhran)
• Guitar
• Banjo

In addition, there are many traditional and popular songs in these countries, giving the voice a very important place. Singing has gotten to even be the means of diffusion of the music from generation to generation, because often scores do not exist, people do not know how to read them or they do not play some instrument. This happened especially in the past but even today much people know the repertoire by ear only and, rather, some investigators are perhaps the ones that have been in charge to transcribe music to scores.

Regarding the thematic developed by the Celtic music groups, values, customs and literature of the old Celts can be found, so it is the case of the close and sacred relationship of man and nature, the use of names of Celtic deities and supernatural characters, in addition to important figures of the Celtic society, so as the bards and druids.

Within this music also exist very characteristic rhythms, among which we can mention the Jig, the Reel, the Hornpipe, the Slip Jig, the Strathsphey, the Muiñeira, the Alborada, the Jota and the Alalá. It is possible to mention that some of the rhythms are mentioned since they are common in the Celtic music groups, but in many cases, since it has been exposed previously, they came from musical roots of regions other than Celtic.

As a conclusion, it is important to know clearly that the definition of "Celtic Music" is complex, and that there are many groups of traditional music that don’t like this classification. We hoped to have clarified a little the panorama and that this text becomes an incentive to investigate and to form your own criterion.

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