Celtic music

Celtic music is a broad grouping of music genres that evolved out of the folk music traditions of the Celtic people of Northwestern Europe (the modern Celtic nations). It refers to both orally-transmitted traditional music and recorded music and the styles vary considerably to include everything from traditional music to a wide range of hybrids.

Celtic music means two things mainly. First, it is the music of the people that identify themselves as Celts. Secondly, it refers to whatever qualities may be unique to the music of the Celtic nations. Many notable Celtic musicians such as Alan Stivell and Paddy Moloney claim that the different Celtic music genres have a lot in common.

These styles are known because of the importance of Irish and Scottish people in the English speaking world, especially in the United States, where they had a profound impact on American music, particularly bluegrass and country music. The music of Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany, Galician traditional music (Spain) and music of Portugal are also considered Celtic music, the tradition being particularly strong in Brittany, where Celtic festivals large and small take place throughout the year, and in Wales, where the ancient eisteddfod tradition has been revived and flourishes. Additionally, the musics of ethnically Celtic peoples abroad are vibrant, especially in Canada and the United States. In Canada the provinces of Atlantic Canada are known for being a home of Celtic music, most notably on the islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island. The traditional music of Atlantic Canada is heavily influenced by the Irish, Scottish and Acadian ethnic makeup of much of the region's communities. In some parts of Atlantic Canada, such as Newfoundland, Celtic music is as or more popular than in the old country. Further, some older forms of Celtic music that are rare in Scotland and Ireland today, such as the practice of accompanying a fiddle with a piano, or the Gaelic spinning songs of Cape Breton remain common in the Maritimes. Much of the music of this region is Celtic in nature, but originates in the local area and celebrates the sea, seafaring, fishing and other primary industries.

Instruments associated with Celtic Music include the Celtic harp, uilleann pipes or Great Highland bagpipe, fiddle, tin whistle, flute, bodhrán, bones, concertina, accordion and a recent addition, the Irish bouzouki.

In Celtic Music: A Complete Guide, June Skinner Sawyers acknowledges six Celtic nationalities divided into two groups according to their linguistic heritage. The Q-Celtic nationalities are the Irish, Scottish and Manx peoples, while the P-Celtic groups are the Cornish, Bretons and Welsh peoples. Musician Alan Stivell uses a similar dichotomy, between the Gaelic (Irish/Scottish/Manx) and the Brythonic (Breton/Welsh/Cornish) branches, which differentiate "mostly by the extended range (sometimes more than two octaves) of Irish and Scottish melodies and the closed range of Breton and Welsh melodies (often reduced to a half-octave), and by the frequent use of the pure pentatonic scale in Gaelic music."

There is also tremendous variation between Celtic regions. Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany have living traditions of language and music, and there has been a recent major revival of interest in Celtic heritage in the Isle of Man. Galicia has a Celtic language revival movement to revive the Q-Celtic Gallaic language used into Roman times, which is not an attested language, unlike Celtiberian. A Brythonic language may have been spoken in parts of Galicia and Asturias into early Medieval times brought by Britons fleeing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain via Brittany., but here again there are several hypotheses and very little traces of it : lack of archeological, linguistic evidence and documents. The Romance language currently spoken in Galicia, Galician (Galego) is closely related to the Portuguese language used mainly in Brazil and Portugal and in many ways closer to Latin than other Romance languages. Galician music is claimed to be Celtic. The same is true of the music of Asturias, Cantabria, and that of Northern Portugal (some say even traditional music from Central Portugal can be labeled Celtic).

Breton artist Alan Stivell was one of the earliest musicians to use the word Celtic and Keltia in his marketing materials, starting in the early 1960s as part of the worldwide folk music revival of that era with the term quickly catching on with other artists worldwide. Today, the genre is well established and incredibly diverse.

There are musical genres and styles specific to each Celtic country, due in part to the influence of individual song traditions and the characteristics of specific languages: