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Celtic rock is a genre of folk rock, as well as a form of Celtic fusion which incorporates Celtic music, instrumentation and themes into a rock music context. It has been prolific since the early 1970s and can be seen as a key foundation of the development of successful mainstream Celtic bands and popular musical performers, as well as creating important derivatives through further fusions. It has played a major role in the maintenance and definition of regional and national identities and in fostering a pan-Celtic culture. It has also helped to communicate those cultures to external audiences.

Definition

The style of music is the hybrid of traditional Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton musical forms with rock music. This has been achieved by the playing of traditional music, particularly ballads, jigs and reels with rock instrumentation; by the addition of traditional Celtic instruments, including the Celtic harp, tin whistle, uilleann pipes (or Irish Bagpipes), fiddle, bodhrán, accordion, concertina, melodeon, and bagpipes (highland) to conventional rock formats; by the use of lyrics in Celtic languages and by the use of traditional rhythms and cadences in otherwise conventional rock music. Just as the validity of the term Celtic in general and as a musical label is disputed, the term Celtic rock cannot be taken to mean there was a unified Celtic musical culture between the Celtic nations. However, the term has remained useful as a means of describing the spread, adaptation and further development of the musical form in different but related contexts.

History

Ireland

It was in Ireland that Celtic rock was first clearly evident as musicians attempted to apply the use of traditional and electric music to their own cultural context. By the end of the 1960s Ireland already had perhaps the most flourishing folk music tradition and a growing blues and pop scene, which provided a basis for Irish rock. Perhaps the most successful product of this scene was the band Thin Lizzy. Formed in 1969 their first two albums were recognisably influenced by traditional Irish music and their first hit single "Whisky in the Jar" in 1972, was a rock version of a traditional Irish song. From this point they began to move towards the hard rock that allowed them to gain a series of hit singles and albums, but retained some occasional elements of Celtic rock on later albums such as Jailbreak (1976).

Formed in 1970, Horslips were the first Irish group to have the terms 'Celtic rock' applied to them, and produced work that included traditional Irish/Celtic music and instrumentation, Celtic themes and imagery, and concept albums based on Irish mythology in a way that entered the territory of progressive rock all powered by a hard rock sound. Horslips are considered important in the history of Irish rock as they were the first major band to enjoy success without having to leave their native country and can be seen as providing a template for Celtic rock in Ireland and elsewhere. These developments ran in parallel with the burgeoning folk revival in Ireland that included groups such as Planxty and the Bothy Band. It was from this tradition that Clannad, whose first album was released in 1973, adopted electric instruments and a more 'new age' sound at the beginning of the 1980s. Moving Hearts, formed in 1981 by former Planxty members Christy Moore and Donal Lunny, followed the pattern set by Horslips in combining Irish traditional music with rock, and also added elements of jazz to their sound.

Scotland

There were already strong links between Irish and Scottish music by the 1960s, with Irish bands like the Chieftains touring and outselling the native artists in Scotland. The adoption of folk rock produced groups including the JSD Band and Spencer's Feat. Out of the wreckage of the latter in 1974, was formed probably the most successful band in this genre, combining Irish and Scottish personnel to form Five Hand Reel. Two of the most successful groups of the 1980s emerged from the dance band circuit in Scotland. From 1978, when they began to release original albums, Runrig produced highly polished Scottish folk rock, including the first commercially successful album with the all Gaelic Play Gaelic in 1978. From the 1980s Capercaillie combined Scottish folk music, electric instruments and haunting vocals to considerable success. Scottish Band The Waterboys became a well known Celtic Rock band during the 80s with the release of albums such as This Is The Sea and Fisherman's Blues. They also incorporated folk elements into their music. One of Scotland's most commercially successful and fondly-remembered rock acts, Big Country, also incorporated the influence of traditional Scottish music into their songs. While bagpipes had become an essential element in Scottish folk bands they were much rarer in folk rock outfits, but were successfully integrated into their sound by Wolfstone from 1989, who focused on a combination of highland music and rock.

Brittany

The region of Brittany also made a major contribution to Celtic rock. The Breton cultural revival of the 1960s was exemplified by Alan Stivell who became the leading proponent of the Breton harp and other instruments from about 1960, he then adopted elements of Irish, Welsh and Scottish traditional music in an attempt to create a pan-Celtic folk music, which had considerable impact elsewhere, particularly in Wales and Cornwall. From 1972 he began to play folk rock with a band including guitarists Dan Ar Braz and Gabriel Yacoub. Yacoub went on to form Malicorne in 1974 one of the most successful folk rock bands in France. After an extensive career that included a stint playing as part of Fairport Convention in 1976, Ar Braz formed the pan-Celtic band Heritage des Celtes, who managed to achieve mainstream success in France in the 1990s. Probably the best known and most enduring folk rock band in France were Tri Yann formed in 1971 and still recording and performing today.

Wales

While Welsh folk music developed as a distinctive part of a pan-Celtic movement, early Welsh pop and rock music was more influenced by American and English artists than Irish and Scottish acts. By the end of the 1960s the Welsh rock scene included a number of internationally successful English language groups that included Badfinger, Amen Corner, Elastic Band, Budgie and Man.

The Welsh rock scene would change markedly from October 1969, when the Sain record label released its first single. Founded as a label for both rock and folk musicians in the Welsh-language, and home to artists such as Dafydd Iwan, Meic Stevens and Ar Log, Sain would become Wales' biggest record label. With Sains success as both a folk and rock label, more and more folk musicians transitioned into rock music in the early 1970s, meaning that traditional Celtic element within Welsh folk music now became evident within the burgeoning Welsh language rock scene. Acts such as Edward H. Dafis caused a sensation by "going electric" and using rock instrumentation. This new Welsh language rock scene was also associated with Welsh nationalism, political activism and the campaign for the Welsh language.

by the 1980s Celtic rock had firmly transitioned into the mainstream, and was now at the centre of Welsh language culture. With acts such as Ar Log touring the world with new renditions of "traditional Welsh folk music, haunting love songs, harp airs, melodic dance tunes and rousing sea shanties". Dafydd Iwan's 1983 song Yma o Hyd would become his biggest cross-over success.

The late 1970s and 1980s also saw a backlash against Celtic rock. With many Welsh language acts such as Sains own Geraint Jarman finding success using more contemporary and global musical forms (such as reggae) with lyrics conforming to the traditional techniques of Welsh formal poetry. Jarman would later be credited by the musician Gruff Rhys with "severing ties with Celtic folk and serving as a bridge to a new wave of post punk". The Welsh scene became divided between more traditional music and the new punk-folk bands such as Bob Delyn a'r Ebillion. While the 1990s saw the creation of the Fflach:tradd label and an increase in recognisably Celtic rock acts such as The Bluehorses, the era is marked by the success of Wales' international Rock acts such as the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Super Furry Animals and Catatonia. However, current Welsh rock acts such as Calan and Bwncath continue to find success within the Celtic rock genre.

Cornwall and the Isle of Man

Whereas other Celtic nations already had existing folk music cultures before the end of the 1960s this was less true in Cornwall and the Isle of Man, which were also relatively small in population and more integrated into English culture and (in the case of Cornwall) the British State. As a result, there was relatively little impact from the initial wave of folk electrification in the 1970s. However, the pan-Celtic movement, with its musical and cultural festivals helped foster some reflections in Cornwall where a few bands from the 1980s onwards utilised the traditions of Cornish music with rock, including Moondragon and its successor Lordryk. More recently the bands Sacred Turf, Skwardya and Krena, have been performing in the Cornish language.

Subgenres

Celtic punk

Ireland proved particularly fertile ground for punk bands in the mid-1970s, including Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones, The Radiators From Space, The Boomtown Rats and The Virgin Prunes. Scotland also produced its fair share with acts including The Skids and The Rezillos. As with folk rock in England, the advent of punk and other musical trends undermined the folk element of Celtic rock, but in the early 1980s London based Irish band The Pogues created the subgenre Celtic punk by combining structural elements of folk music with a punk attitude and delivery. The Pogues' style of punked-up Irish music spawned and influenced a number of Celtic punk bands, including fellow London-Irish band Neck, Nyah Fearties from Scotland, Australia's Roaring Jack and Norway's Greenland Whalefishers.

Diaspora Celtic rock

One by-product of the Celtic Diaspora was the existence of large communities across the world that looked for their cultural roots and identity to their origins in the Celtic nations. While it seems young musicians from these communities usually chose between their folk culture and mainstream forms of music such as rock or pop, after the advent of Celtic punk relatively large numbers of bands began to emerge styling themselves as Celtic rock. This is particularly noticeable in the US and Canada, where there are large communities descended from Irish and Scottish immigrants. From the United States this includes the Irish bands Flogging Molly, The Tossers, Dropkick Murphys, The Young Dubliners, LeperKhanz, Black 47, The Killdares, The Drovers and Jackdaw, and for Scottish bands Prydein, Seven Nations and Flatfoot 56. From Canada are bands like The Mahones, Enter the Haggis, Great Big Sea, The Real Mckenzies and Spirit of the West. These groups were naturally influenced by American forms of music, some containing members with no Celtic ancestry and commonly singing in English. A band in England is the BibleCode Sundays.

Celtic metal

Like Celtic rock in the 1970s, Celtic metal resulted from the application of a development in English music, when in the 1990s thrash metal band Skyclad added violins, and with them jigs and folk voicings, to their music on the album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth (1990). This inspired the Dublin based band Cruachan to mix traditional Irish music with black metal and to create the subgenre of Celtic metal. They were soon followed by bands such as Primordial and Waylander. Like Celtic punk, Celtic metal replicates the fusing of Celtic folk tradition with contemporary forms of music. A well-known representative of this style is Thanateros from Germany.

Influence

Whereas in England folk rock, after initial mainstream recognition, subsided into the status of a sub-cultural soundtrack, in many Celtic communities and nations it has remained at the forefront of musical production. The initial wave of Celtic rock in Ireland, although ultimately feeding into Anglo-American dominated progressive rock and hard rock provided a basis for Irish bands that would enjoy international success, including the Pogues and U2: one making use of the tradition of Celtic music in a new context and the other eschewing it for a distinctive but mainstream sound. Similar circumstances can be seen in Scotland albeit with a delay in time while Celtic rock culture developed, before bands like Runrig could achieve international recognition. Widely acknowledged as one of the outstanding voices in Celtic/rock is Brian McCombe (born Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom) of The Brian McCombe Band, a pan Celtic group based in Brittany.

In other Celtic communities, and particularly where Celtic speakers or descendants are a minority, the function of Celtic rock has been less to create mainstream success, than to bolster cultural identity. A consequence of this has been the reinforcement of pan-Celtic culture and of particular national or regional identities between those with a shared heritage, but who are widely dispersed. However, perhaps the most significant consequence of Celtic rock has simply been as a general spur to immense musical and cultural creativity.

Celtic rock has also influenced musicians from countries and regions without Celtic communities, with some of them, like the Balkans, spawning their own Celtic rock scenes, which contributed to the interest for Celtic music and culture in local public. The pioneers of Celtic rock on the Yugoslav rock scene were the pub/garage rock band Roze Poze in the mid-1980s. In the 1990s, bands like Orthodox Celts from Serbia and Belfast Food from Croatia popularized Celtic rock further, influencing a number of younger acts, like Irish Stew of Sindidun.

See also

• List of Celtic rock artists

Notes

1. J. S. Sawyers, Celtic Music: A Complete Guide (Da Capo Press, 2001), pp. 1-12.
2. N. McLaughlin and Martin McLoone, 'Hybridity and National Musics: The case of Irish rock music' Popular Music, 9, (April, 2000), pp. 181-99.
3. Johnston, Thomas F. 'The Social Context of Irish Folk Instruments ', International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 26 (1) (1995) pp. 35-59.
4. Byrne, Alan (2006). Thin Lizzy. SAF Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 9780946719815.
5. J. Cleary, Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland, (Field Day Publications, 2007), pp. 272-3.
6. J. S. Sawyers, Celtic Music: A Complete Guide (Da Capo Press, 2001), p. 267.
7. T. Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-79,(Fontana, 1981), p. 276.
8. M. Scanlan, Culture and Customs of Ireland (Greenwood, 2006), pp. 169-170.
9. J. Cleary, Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland (Field Day Publications, 2007), pp. 265.
10. C. Larkin, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Guinness, 1992), p. 869.
11. J. S. Sawyers, Celtic Music: A Complete Guide (Da Capo Press, 2001), p. 366.
12. B. Sweers, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 259.
13. Heywood, Pete (May–June 2001). "Wolfstone - honest endeavour". The Living Tradition. No. 43.
14. M. McDonald, "'We are Not French!': Language, Culture, and Identity in Brittany" (Routledge, 1989), p. 145.
15. J. T. Koch, "Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia", (ABC-CLIO, 2006), p. 280.
16. Hill, Sarah (2017). 'Blerwytirhwng?' The Place of Welsh Pop Music. Taylor & Francis. p. 13-14. ISBN 9781351573450. Retrieved 24 August 2024.
17. The Welsh academy encyclopaedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales press. 2008. p. 585. ISBN 978-0-7083-1953-6.
18. Terfel, Bryn; Martineau, Martin. Schwanengesang (CD). Sain. SCD 4035. Album cover at Schwanengesang, album cover.jpg.
19. S. Hill, "Blerwytirhwng?: The Place of Welsh Pop Music" (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007), p. 72.
20. R. Wallis and K. Malm, "Big Sounds From Small Peoples: the Music Industry in Small Countries" (London, Constable, 1984), p. 139-53
21. "Ten of the best: A history of Welsh folk music tradition". BBC News. 2013-10-24. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
22. Rhys, Gruff (2005) Welsh Rare Beat liner notes, Finders Keepers Records
23. Blake, Thomas (2017-10-26). "Bob Delyn a'r Ebillion: Dal i 'Redig Dipyn Bach | Folk Radio". Folk Radio UK - Folk Music Magazine. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
24. "Wales: So "Cool Cymru" Part I". PopMatters. 2010-07-27. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
25. D. Harvey, Celtic Geographies: Old Culture, New Times (Routledge, 2002), pp. 223-4.
26. J. Herman, 'British Folk-Rock; Celtic Rock', The Journal of American Folklore, 107, (425), (1994) pp. 54-8.
27. "Irska muzika među Srbima", Glas javnosti
28. Janjatović, Petar (2024). Ex YU rock enciklopedija 1960–2023. Belgrade: self-released. p. 265.
29. Janjatović, Petar (2024). Ex YU rock enciklopedija 1960–2023. Belgrade: self-released. p. 372.

Further reading

• Colin Harper. Irish Folk, Trad and Blues: A Secret History (2005) covers Horslips, the Pogues, Planxty and others.
• Tony Clayton-Lea. Irish Rock: Where It's Comes From - Where It's At - Where It's Going (1992)
• Larry Kirwan. Green Suede Shoes (2005)
• Gerry Smyth. Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music
• Sean Campbell and Gerry Smyth. Beautiful Day: 40 Years Of Irish Rock (2005)

External links

• Irish Rockers
• Shite 'n' Onions
• Paddy Rock
• Spanish Celtic Rock Music
• Irish Punk

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