Collin Botts on Irish mandola

[Bertram Henze]

...horrible synthesizer trash you find on Youtube.

Many exploit one famous aspect of Celts: their love for fighting and their fearless commitment to battle. The result is a fantasy GoT-like world expressed in musical fragments collected from opposite corners of Celtic reality (uillean pipes and Lambeg drums). Much that is really Viking is labelled "Celtic" just because it sounds belligerent. That is the fate of the historically scattered and complicated - it is simplified away. They call it "marketing".

[Nick Gellie]

As for Galicia and Asturias, I recognized that immediately as a way to attract tourist dollars and sell "Celtic" music. The Celtiberians are a vanished people; all of Spain was Romanized early and often, then fell mostly under Moorish rule for centuries. The Galician language is recognized as a Romance language with no Celtic roots. The fact of any culture having bagpipes in its music in no way indicates "Celticness" either, or the Greeks and Tunisians would be Celts too.

Promotion of Galicia and Asturias as "Celtic" regions and cultures coincided precisely with the boom in all things "Celtic" in the 1990s. Whatever puts brass in your pocket I guess as long as it doesn't harm anyone, but it's pretty much a completely false construct.

It's much more accurate to speak of music in particular as being Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Breton, Atlantic Canadian, etc and that's what I do.

Mike, I have been to Galicia and Asturias several times. In both regions they do play their own version of Celtic music. Are you saying that they invented their original Tunes in the last 50-100 years? Even if they did, it is still great music. I have five Llan de Cubel and three Felpeyu albums - all original songs and tunes from their folkloric tradition as good as if not better than a lot of Celtic music in France, UK, Scotland, and Ireland.

[Mike Anderson]

Mike, I have been to Galicia and Asturias several times. In both regions they do play their own version of Celtic music. Are you saying that they invented their original Tunes in the last 50-100 years? Even if they did, it is still great music. I have five Llan de Cubel and three Felpeyu albums - all original songs and tunes from their folkloric tradition as good as if not better than a lot of Celtic music in France, UK, Scotland, and Ireland.

Nic, I have no comment to make on their music, as I don't listen to it; all I was saying is that Galicians and Asturians are in no way Celts, nor are their cultures - language etc - Celtic. In fact, I'm now 100% on the side of the archaeologist Roger linked to, and I refuse to think in terms of "Celtic" anything. I think that as a matter of national pride etc it once had value as a unifying idea, but in the 21st century - best left to the marketing wizards and the synth players.