Has anyone seen this book. It looks really interesting. It basically has a discussion of various styles of Irish playing, and cd recommendations for building a library.
It’s a great idea, I think..but I don’t know the value of the information it contains…has anyone here got this who can help me out?
The Amazon review seems to say it all:
So I guess its more a matter of taste whether it would be worth your while or not. Personally, I start running as soon as I see the word “Celtic,” but perhaps your tastes are more towards the modern fusion stuff and the sort of thing that is considered “safe enough for PBS”, so you might see it differently.
djm
I dunno…I looked inside the book using the Amazon “search inside” feature and saw a few names I recognized like Mary Black, Christy Moore, and Cormac Breatnach. I’m assuming “celtic” is simply a marketing term and am not immediately assuming that it’s new-agey stuff.
Any reviews from someone who actually has the book?
I got this book today for my birthday.
I have high hopes. Here are the first two sentences from the book:
“What is Celtic music? If anything, it is a marketing strategy”, and in the 2nd paragraph: “Apart from its inherent musical qualities, Celtic music has been influenced by wide-ranging non-musical factors, such as a fashion for a kind of pseudo-Celtic new age mysticism–which is not given much credence in this book” And later in the chapter: “This book focuses largely on the music made during the remarkable revival of interest…that took place from the 1960’s onward.”
A quick glance shows nods to Micho Russel and Mary Bergin when talking about the whistle, and I learned some things I didn’t know, like some of the bands Mary’s played with.
On the recommended records section, they have Bothy Band, Planxty, De Danna, among others.
So, I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into it.