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Thread: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

  1. #1
    Destroyer of Mandolins
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    Default How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    I mean, do you play Irish or Scottish or other 'Celtic' music without any such heritage? I play Irish folk and both sides of my family are Dutch. I'm as Irish as a wooden shoe.
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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    +1
    German as far as I can trace anything back (which is not very far), but I don't really care.
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    Registered User Randi Gormley's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Russian/Ukrainian, Hungarian and Latvian here. I can hide out, though, because my husband's last name sounds Irish. There is actually some Irish in his background, although it's mostly German, with a smattering of Scotch-Irish and English.
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    Registered User BlueMt.'s Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    About the only thing missing from my mutt pedigree, is any Irish or Scottish heritage. I do hunt with a Gordon Setter to give credibility to my "Celtic" playing.
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    Mandolindian rgray's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Despite my Cafe ID here, I have to say that I do have Irish/English ancestry on my dad's side which gives me a link to music I do love. I respect my Native American heritage but just can't get into sitting around listening to a drum and flutes.

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    Registered User Jim MacDaniel's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    I'll wager that more people have Irish or Scottish blood running in their veins than who currently self-identify as Irish or Scottish, at least in countries to where the Irish and Scots commonly emmigrated over the past few centuries. To my point in a round about way, though my family has traditionally self-identified as Scot-Irish, and though we have roots in 19th century Galway via my paternal grandmother's family -- based upon where many of our people were in the 1700's (Pennsylvania), 1800's (Kentucky), and 1900's (Indiana), odds are that I have a large amount of non-Celtic blood running through mine as well (e.g., German, English, French).

    That also begs the question as to what does it mean to be Irish, Scottish, or any other nationality for that matter. Is simply self-identifying as such adequate, is having genealogical proof a prerequisite, or it is deeper than that, such as being brought up in a family that has kept the old traditions alive, generation after generation, regardless of where they now reside? My family qualifies by the former two criteria, but certainly not by the latter. It is only in my generation of the MacDaniels where a few of us have started to explore our Irish and Scottish roots, esp. through music, travel, and reading.

    As a aside, based upon the state of my people at the time, we can't really be for sure just what our name is anyway, let alone where it originated. Since they were illiterate, they were dependent upon the oral tradition, as well as upon others' for recording our history for quite a while. Our family oral tradition broke down sometime between then and now, so my Dad and his brother had to rely solely upon public records in their genealogical research. They found our name spelled as McDaniel, McDonald, Macdonald, and as other common variants, most likely because the county clerks hard a hard time understanding our people's accents as they were asked to sign their X. It only took on its current spelling in the early 1900's, when my great great Uncle, a business man in Indianapolis, changed the spelling from Mc to Mac to put his business' name at the top of the Mac's & Mc's in the phone book -- lol
    Last edited by Jim MacDaniel; Apr-11-2011 at 12:22pm.
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    Registered User steve V. johnson's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    There was a time, not long ago, just a few decades, in which Irish heritage was the largest single ethnic-origin group in the U.S.

    I was making up a list of players last week and I noticed that quite a few of the folks I knew who play Irish & Scottish trad musics actually have names from those groups. I had presumed that most of the folks with whom I play (and whom I know who play) in
    the US are not of Irish heritage. (I am not, my wife is not, and of my primary playing friends [~20 people] only three or four are.)

    But in my list the names came to over half the number. Day by day, very few of those are actively engaged with 'being Irish (Scots, etc.),' in the sense of identity and participating in organizations and such, tho they are very engaged with the musical
    tradition in serious ways. (That is, not 19th-century drinking & sentimental songs from the music hall traditions.)

    Interesting... We've only been to Ireland in the off-seasons, Febr - April, and the number of trad players was legion, but still
    dwarfed by the mainstream pop afficionados, as in any contemporary media culture. When one contrasts the number of trad
    players who playin the off-season (for themselves, as a matter of course) with the number of people who visit Ireland in the
    'high season' (and year round, too) -just- to play Irish trad music, the view of the widespread and wild popularity of the form
    is pretty amazing.

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Irish (with a wee bit of Scotch) and German heritage here. Red hair and freckles too.

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    I frequently get asked that question when playing out. My standard reply has become that I've been adopted, but in fact I am what dog lovers refer to as an "American breed". Bohemian, Polish, German, Dutch, English, possibly Russian/Arab & who knows what else. We play Irish folk/rock & Americana. Our Fiddle player is Slovenian.

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Incidently, I have never been to Ireland but I plan to find the time.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve-o View Post
    Red hair and freckles too.
    It must be mentioned that this is a Scandinavian feature brought to the British isles by the Vikings (around 800 to 1200 A.D.). Original Celts have black hair (and sometimes bright blue eyes, which combination is especially weird). But then there's been so much mixing of genes around the Atlantic, that the definition of what is really Celtic is open to heated discussion.

    At least, I have green eyes - does that count?

    Quote Originally Posted by 1-2-many View Post
    Incidently, I have never been to Ireland but I plan to find the time.
    You definitely should. Not everything is green there.
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    Better late than never walt33's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    I play mostly Québecois and some Irish music. There is some European French in me, and possibly some Scottish (if Colburn is a Scottish name). Probably more German than anything.

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    They say the Celts originated in an area somewhere in Southern Germany. It's obvious, by looking at my very Irish Father, that big, blonde Vikings were hiding in the woodshed somewhere. My Mom, very Scots, had curly blonde hair and sky blue eyes.

    One night at Berkeley's Starry Plough pub, they played a Norwegian tune. It sounded Scots/Irish to my unskilled ears ... and the musicians walked on top of the chairs as they played. It was very awesome.

    All I really know is that the first time I heard a fiddle playing a jig, my DNA lit up like a Christmas tree.
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    Registered User John Kelly's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Scottish on both sides of my family, a mix of lowland and full-blooded highland ancestry but my birthplace in Kintyre in Argyll, Scotland, is only about 14 miles from the coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and traditionally where St Columba first landed when he left Ireland and finally settled in Iona. My surname is Irish (Kelly) but on mother's side my family are Fergusons and Camerons (of Locheil and Native Gaelic speakers, a talent I have not inherited). Oh, and proud of it all, too. As Loretta says, hearing the music stirs something in the innards.

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    My Mother's maiden name is Maloney--I always though we were Polish?!?! lol


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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    And how many Irish, nowadays, grow up with traditional music? Compared to the regular rounds of pop music and commercial stuff everyone is exposed to?


    I don't want to imagine how horrible it would be if we were only allowed to play music we grew up with.
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    Registered User Jim MacDaniel's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    ...I don't want to imagine how horrible it would be if we were only allowed to play music we grew up with.
    Especially if we only listened to music the recording industry said we should listen to.
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    Notary Sojac Paul Kotapish's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    50% Bohemian / 25% Scottish / 25% Mutt.

    For me, the drive to play Irish tunes had very little to do with Ireland or Irish culture. It was all about the sound.

    I was taught by Irish nuns, but if they were interested in jigs and reels, they didn't share their enthusiasm. And although there was some bluegrass and old-time music around where I grew up, I didn't pay much attention to any of that stuff until I was in college. When I got into that music in the early '70s, it was an interest in fiddle tunes, in particular, that opened my ears to other traditions.

    In much of the U.S., it seems, blood lineage and cultural heritage aren't necessarily linked, and culinary heritage seems to have a much more staying power than music or dance in most families or even in regional communities. We still bake Bohemian pastries and love our sausages and beer, but the only polkas you're likely to hear are from Kerry.

    It was a cliche on the west coast some decades back that aside from Joe Cooley and Kevin Keegan, everyone playing Irish music out here was Jewish. Like all cliches, there was a kernal of truth to the statement. I've had the privilege to play with some of the greats of Irish tradition music, but over the years I've probably played as many tunes with folks whose families hailed from Russia or Poland as those from Ireland or Scotland.
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    Registered User Steve-o's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by Loretta Callahan View Post
    All I really know is that the first time I heard a fiddle playing a jig, my DNA lit up like a Christmas tree.
    Great line Loretta. I can relate!

    Tim started this thread by (ostensibly) taking a straw poll to satisfy a curiosity about musical influences and heritage. I’ve enjoyed the responses so far and doubt anyone here is surprised by the variety of cultural/ethnic backgrounds that we musicians bring to the “Celtic” melting pot. I think it also is a wonderful testament to the infectiousness of the music.

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    I don't want to imagine how horrible it would be if we were only allowed to play music we grew up with.
    Groan ... I loved my folks, but they listened to the most wretched pop music drek ever. Instead of Sinatra and Big Band music, they listened to light opera and Gale Storm. My Mom managed to turn me on to some ballads handed down through her family, and those are the only ones I still like.

    Hahaha ... that's hilarious!

    Quote Originally Posted by Nonprophet View Post
    My Mother's maiden name is Maloney--I always though we were Polish?!?! lol
    NP
    Yup, that Celtic/ITM music is very infectious, indeed, Steve-O!
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    Registered User John Flynn's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    75% Irish, 25% British, a formula for internal conflict if there ever was one!

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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    It must be mentioned that this is a Scandinavian feature brought to the British isles by the Vikings (around 800 to 1200 A.D.). Original Celts have black hair (and sometimes bright blue eyes, which combination is especially weird). But then there's been so much mixing of genes around the Atlantic, that the definition of what is really Celtic is open to heated discussion.

    At least, I have green eyes - does that count?



    You definitely should. Not everything is green there.
    Bertram, I'd have to quote Cesar to you when he mentions that many of the ancient british tribes were red headed. Also a huge percentage of the modern british & irish populations have the "ginger" gene where as only a relatively small percentage have norse genes. But as you mention there has been a lot of mixing and it's likely that at least some of the red hair comes to scandinavia and the baltic basin via the viking slave trade which accounted for 95% of their business.

    Celtic isn't a word I'd use to describe anybody I know from any of the so called "celtic" places or their music. As with so many labels, they were coined by others and not the names used by the natives to describe themselves. The only celtics I know are a soccer team

    There's a lot of Irish on my mothers side but I'm scots. I don't think it matters where your from regarding music because the more you get into it the more of the detail you absorb. Very many of the so called natives know squat about their own native music traditions.

    As a youth I was mad keen on bluegrass, and funnily enough, the first time I met Dagger Gordon was around 24 or 25 years ago when he and his pals gave me a lift whilst I was hitching to a wedding. They were going to play for the same wedding. The music playing in the car when I got in was Roland White's "Tell me Baby", I think they were quite surprised when I started singing along. At that time I played bluegrass with my pal Iain, but it wasn't long before I started sliding down the slippery trad slope due to a shortage of highland bluegrassers, otherwise things may have turned out quite differently for me.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by Loretta Callahan View Post
    They say the Celts originated in an area somewhere in Southern Germany.
    If that is true, then I have a little chance of left-over DNA traces, because that's where I grew up, too.

    Quote Originally Posted by Loretta Callahan View Post
    All I really know is that the first time I heard a fiddle playing a jig, my DNA lit up like a Christmas tree.
    +1
    I never heard it put in better words.

    Quote Originally Posted by John Flynn View Post
    75% Irish, 25% British, a formula for internal conflict if there ever was one!
    Interestingly, "Britain" is a word said to be originating in Greece, meaning "painted people" and depicting Celts. All Celtic Britain including Erin called itself Britain until the Saxons and others came and adopted the name, thus changing its meaning.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jock View Post
    Bertram, I'd have to quote Cesar to you when he mentions that many of the ancient british tribes were red headed.
    Caesar said that? Oops, should have paid more attention in Latin class. It is plausible then that the stream of red went north, not south - I stand corrected. The Vikings were that good at streams of red that this option never occurred to me.

    Still, the most abundant type I encountered in Ireland was like this:
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Bertram, I remember the 1980's when Ch4 started broadcasting a few Hurly matches and being struck by the fact that; in one game one side were all black haired like your man above, and the other team were all red heads, to a man.

    The theory regarding the term british originating in greece is quite correct but was revised once historians started looking to our indigenous literature only to discover that the ancient britons had actually termed themselves "pritannie" suggesting the greeks got their spelling wrong. Being a literate society the greek spelling stuck. The greeks were the first to name the islands in literature as the "Britannic Islands" consisting of Britannia Major (British mainland) and Britannia Minor (Ireland), and no, their not chords, thought to date from a greek geographer who sailed there around 400BC. The book is lost but so many other ancient geographers quoted him that much of the work survives in their works.

    It was also the greeks that rendered the collective noun for the tribes to the north of them as "celts". Them greeks have a lot to answer for, but I guess we should cut them some slack as they had a hand in giving us the ancestor of the modern mandolin! Otherwise this place could well have turned out as the Oodcafe or Balalaikarestaurant perhaps :D

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: How many 'Celtic' players aren't?

    Quote Originally Posted by Loretta Callahan View Post
    Them greeks have a lot to answer for, but I guess we should cut them some slack as they had a hand in giving us the ancestor of the modern mandolin!
    Plus, the ancestors of our modern CBOM instruments - some of these ancestors survive until today, massed together here:



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