Traditional Celtic Music

Lots of people (excluding sports fans, of course) equate the term Celtic with Irish, which just ain't so; the Celts roamed throughout Europe, and pockets of their culture can still be found in Spain, France, the U.S.A., and Ireland . . . as well as Nova Scotia, which is why we placed the Ashley MacIsaac and Mary Jane Lamond hook-up "Fairy Dance" prominently among these Traditional Celtic Essentials. Paul Brady brings an Irishman's sense of bone-weary longing to "The Lakes of Pontchartrain (New Recording)," seen through the eyes of a foreign soldier in love during the Civil War. And Órla Fallon of the group Celtic Woman plucks her harp strings – as well as heartstrings — in "Carrickfergus," the tale of lovers separated by a seemingly uncrossable sea. In Next Steps, we travel back to the turn of the century . . . the 18th century.

You can't really speak of Celtic music without bringing up the name of Turlough O'Carolan, who lived in Ireland 300 years ago, and whose music is still widely recorded. Aryeh Frankfurter's "O'Carolan's Draught" dances and twinkles with the mystical spark that made the blind harpist a legend. Alan Stivell fell so deeply under the harp's magic spell that he almost single-handedly revived Brittany's Celtic tradition back in the '70s: his rendering of "The king of the fairies" conjures up visions of secret firelit revels held deep in a mysterious forest. And Kevin Roth and Janet Jackson Witman will wring out a tear from any Irishman who was ever homesick for the Old Sod in their dreamlike instrumental cover of "Danny Boy." In Deep Cuts, we'll follow our Celtic travellers farther afield, to Wales and Scotland.

Sounding more like they rolled in from Butcher Holler than their native South Wales, Ffynnon brings a down-homey fiddle and banjo to "Le Petit Cordonier" that will strike a chord with hillbilly and bluegrass fans as well as Celtophiles. Kornog's Music from Brittany is slightly misleading — the album was recorded in Minneapolis and the song we've taken from it is Scottish — but "Bonnie Jean Cameron" suits the burr of Glaswegian export (and Battlefield Band alum) Jamie McMenemy like the scent of heather on a Highland hillside. And in the Scots "daddy and daughter vs. disinclined darling" love song "Glenlogie," American Danny Carnahan wraps a lighter-than-air tenor around the lyric (not to mention his guitar and fiddle, as he morphs into a multi-tracked one-man band).

Though many people think of Celts as being more or less exclusively Irish, their roots run deeper and farther than that fabled green island in the North Atlantic. Scotland, Wales . . . even parts of France and Spain were also home to the Celts, and their music continues to thrive in all of those places and beyond. From Brittany and Boston, Glasgow and Galway, the harps, pipes, guitars, and voices of the Celts' descendants have laid claim to making the world's folk music uncannily popular in places where the race never set foot (although they did get around in their day). Our Traditional Celtic Music Essentials will take you to all these exotic locales — and more — with songs of love and parting, dreaming and dancing, spread over three languages and five centuries.