How many "eh?"s in "Celtic Fest"?

[muckefuck]

So monshu has just confirmed that old friends of us will be coming to stay with us the second weekend in September. This spurred me to check the Celtic Fest schedule, since after last year's rainout, I'm more determined that ever to put in an appearance. Sadly, it looks like I'll be going in spite of the headliners rather than on account of them.

Whenever I see the words "exciting fusion" or "blending modern and traditional" in connexion with a "Celtic" band, then they automatically have twice as hard a row to hoe in gaining my affections. Which is ironic, since some of my all-time favourite Celtic acts (e.g. The Pogues) could be described in just this way. The trouble is these descriptors have become lazy shorthand for the Irish equivalent of New Country, i.e. soft rock with pipes and fiddles.

I was actually kind of relieved that all I could find for McPeake was a compilation video, since after hearing snippets of one lame guitar ballad or "mystic" pipe solo after another, I doubt I could actually sit through a full-length composition of theirs. Pogey at least are more in the Drovers mode than the Altan, but the couple of songs I listened to on YouTube had me yawning. But just reading the homepage for Canadian Corrs-knockoffs Leahy was painful to my ears.

Gadelle at least sound promising, since they call to mind the immense good time I had when La Bottine Souriante played several years back. But what is the deal with trying to pass off French Canadian folk music as "Celtic" anyway? Between Leahy (from Ontario) and Pogey (Nova Scotia), the whole programme is so damn North North American this year they should rename it "Canuck Fest" just for truth-in-advertising purposes.

Despite the name, it's always been more pan-Irish than anything. Most years they can't even be arsed to book a Welsh artist, and certainly not anyone of major calibre in the folk-rock scene. (Jon, we love you, but you don't even know the damn language.) And who can remember the last time they had a Scottish artist? I know they probably don't have the budget for the Corries or Capercaillie (though Gaelic Storm aren't exactly playing for free), but I would kill for a less-known but dead-interesting artist like Macumba, let alone a halfway talented puirt a' bhèil performer.

Bitching aside, I'll be there, since the small tents still host near-unknowns who really know their reels and slides. I just might not be staying past teatime, even if this year the heavens don't open.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

the Irish equivalent of New Country, i.e. soft rock with pipes and fiddles
Oh god yes, I've sat through an awful lot of that.

OTOH, If you can have La Bottine Souriante, why not Lo'Jo, or La Tordue? That would get me interested.

...and as for the Welsh, this suddenly makes it all clear.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

For that matter, why not Manu Chau and Orishas?

edited

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I quite agree, but then I'm not so keen on the whole "Celtic" label in the first place. I remember a bit on Qi about the Celts as a "nation" being invented in 1792 - of course, I don't have any more reason to trust Justin Pollard et al than I do to trust Sir Walter Scott, but the idea that the celtic label is a bit of nationalist flummery does work with my rule of thumb "everything you thought was ancient is actually at best 18th and probably 19th century."

Thanks, by the way, for the feedback on Bernal. I skimmed Black Athena 1 quickly once before I went to a talk by him and didn't get much of a sense of its scholarship, but I've always been hesitant regarding the place of etymology in historical arguments: often it seems to be deployed for connatative effect, rather than as evidence per se.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

But what is the deal with trying to pass off French Canadian folk music as "Celtic" anyway?

I think they're working on the theory that the Gauls were Celts, and they're the cultural heirs of the Gauls, so their music is "Celtic."

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Feh! If that's the logic, where are the Lombard folk groups?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

or the Hungarians?

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

Galician music (especially the kind with bagpipes) sometimes gets lumped in with Celtic stuff.

I'm not so sure they're basing the 'Celtic' classification on a Gaulish connection. Québec got an awful lot of Irish immigrants, some of whom assimilated into Francophone communities. I know and know of a number of Francophone Murrays, for example, and many Québécois Sylvains are actually Uí Shúilleabháin in disguise. Riel, as in Louis Riel, comes from Ó Raghallaigh. I'm not exactly an expert on fiddle music, but I'm told that Québécois jigging owes a lot to Irish jigging, and that some Irish tunes are played in Québec under different names.

[(Anonymous)]

This is sadly due to the State Department's new rules on visiting artists visas. Wales is oddly enough on the "watch carefully" list. Bringing Bryn Terfel over for Lyric used to take three months of paperwork, it's now up to NINE. And this is Bryn.... Random folk music guys are taking about a year.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

*facepalmheaddesk*

Honestly, there are no words. I can't even conceive of the chain of logic these numbnuts are pursuing. Wales on the watch list? Wales? What's next--that hotbed of Islamic terrorism Niue?