Thanks to large immigrant communities, the music of Ireland and Scotland has spread all over the globe, and it has even insinuated itself into the mainstream. However, the Celtic realm actually consists of six nations, subdivided into two groups of three homelands that are related to one another by language and culture. Ireland (Eire), along with the UK-based Scotland (Alba) and Isle of Mann (Mannin or Ellan Vannin) make up one linguistic branch, known as Goidelic, while the other, called Brythonic, is comprised of Wales (Cymru), Cornwall (Kernow), also geographically in the U.K., plus Brittany (Breizh) in Western-most France, as well as the region of Galicia in Northwest Spain.
While each Celtic country has achieved its own highly individual and recognizable sound, they tend to share certain characteristics. All exhibit a passionate love for dance music and a marked preference for unison structures and modal tunings, which bestow an underlying tinge of melancholy to even the merriest dance pieces. All six have developed a type of haunting slow air that can be performed by a single a cappella singer or in various instrumental combinations. Each favors homegrown versions of harps, bagpipes and double-reeds but later adapted fiddles, guitars and other plucked instruments (the Irish especially love the Greek bouzouki), flutes and accordions to suit their needs. Most songs tend to be about love, drinking or patriotism—or assorted combinations thereof.
Each of the six populations has weathered centuries of political oppression, and some have been more successful at maintaining their age-old identities than others. One result of this painful reality is several hundred years of political broadsides and protest songs, marking their bitter, protracted—and in some cases still ongoing—struggles for self-determination. But there are recognizable differences, too. Only Ireland and Brittany have maintained strong ties with Roman Catholicism. But while the church calendar is indivisible from the Breton national character, the equally devout Irish have maintained a more secular approach, at least musically speaking.
The Irish, having endured several centuries of political and economically necessitated emigration, developed a wide-ranging selection of nostalgic songs about leave-taking and homesickness. The fiddles and nasal uilleann pipes employed in Irish music may sound a bit shrill to the innocent ear, as though tuned a half step or so higher than is typical of their counterparts. But slow tunes from anywhere on the island, whether interpreted by a singer or on a tin flute, have a wavering, eerie pathos that is virtually unmatched anywhere else.
Scottish bagpipes are generally larger and more powerful than those of the other nations and feature the most intense drone. The country also harbors a sprightly unaccompanied vocal style called puirt-a-beul (mouth-music), several types of work songs, glorious hymns, a hilariously profane taste for obscene lyrics and volumes of high-art ballads that are easily the equal of works of Harold Arlen or Franz Schubert. Both Irish and Scottish music blend remarkably well with that of Scandinavia, although it's hard to say which commonalities date from the Dark Ages, when the Viking raiders at first pillaged and then settled down in both places, which are from later encounters.
Welsh melodies tend to be mellifluous, complex and long-breathed, especially when performed by one of the famous male choirs or on one of the indigenous harps. Breton dance tunes, whether sung or performed instrumentally, rely heavily upon call-and-response structures with the two voices chiming in together on the final note of each verse. And the local permutation of the "slow air," called a gwerz, is one of the world's most gloriously beautiful descents into utter pessimism. Manx styles, while based more on the harp and voice than pipes, tend to mirror those of nearby Scotland, while Cornwall's emerging sound seems to have much in common with that of Brittany, which not at all surprising considering their shared maritime history and tendency to intermarry.
But this is only scratching the surface, as the six homelands and acknowledged Celtic outposts like Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, Galicia in Northern Spain and various Irish- and Scottish-American enclaves not only offer enormously rich caches of folkloric material but are also moving forward to experiment with modern-day innovations like pop, rock, show-tune-based extravaganzas (Three Irish Tenors, Celtic Woman, Riverdance), hip-hop, techno and electronica. Some bands, such as Afro-Celt Sound System, have even embarked upon frisky and highly entertaining intercultural experiments. But the blood-red modal thread that binds these countries together is always present in one way or another, just as it has always been. Christina Roden
