I just about 7 minutes of a thing on PBS called “Celtic Woman.” What the hell is this?
OMG, seriously. What?
Basically, Celtic Woman is comprised of an ever-changing line-up of female vocalists, and sometimes female instrumentalists, too, who in turn are backed up by instrumental orchestration.
For instance, Celtic Woman “covered” one of Enya’s well known tunes, [u]Orinoco Flow[/u].
Believe me Boss…
You don’t want to know…I mean you reallllly don’t want to know.
Just walk away…
On this..trust me.
Slan,
D.
We feel your pain, Dale.
My description of the genre I attempt to play now runs toward “umm, kind of, well, it’s not from here” for fear that the response will be the dreaded “Oh! Wow! I LUUUVE Celtic Woman!”
I used to loathe “Oh! Wow! I luuuve river dancing!” The Celtic Woman thing is worse. Far, far worse.
It’s pledge drive time.
To me, Celtic Woman is similar to a beauty pageant talent show.
Both cause reflux. Best to be avoided.
It is a formula band/act, ala the American “boy bands” or the even earlier Menudo. Fill set slots with good looking young people, have a theme, go on tour, sell lots of tickets.
To my mind there is nothing wrong with it. It gets the music out there. Some people like it. Others don’t. I don’t understand why anyone would get worked up over it. Especially considering the real problems going on in the world.
They’ve even got their very own boy band bunch…“The High Kings.”
Arghhh.
Redwolf
Gag me with a Shamrock!
Casey
Luckily, a small palette of recurring design motifs make it easy to identify this contagion in the marketplace, and good music hygiene will generally suffice to prevent a serious outbreak. The chief menace this virus poses is by the infiltration and infection of the Christmas and birthday gift choices of well-meaning but clueless relatives.
“The Music?” What music would that be? When does it start?
This is Lawrence Welk on Lucky Charms. Gag me with a shamrock, indeed. Major gagging.
djm
Talented Dublin Piper and fellow Chiff member, Tommy Martin, will be their featured piper for the U.S. tour. Sure, it may not be a lot of folks cup of tea, but it is a good paying gig and so very few folk get the opportunity to make a fairly decent wage gigging these days.
All the very best Tommy, congrats! 
You win!
P.S. I am no longer religious, but I love this Celtic Woman version of Ave Maria nonetheless:
But we LIKE to get worked up Bill!
Fodder for the lampoon mill. Gives us a fleeting sense of superiority! Who doesn’t need that once in a while?
Now, as for me…since my efforts on fiddle could not get me a gig on Celtic Woman, let alone Sponge Bob, I’m on safer ground
if I stick to deriding the junk food that clutters the aisles at Giant Food.
And, as far as that goes, I can say this:
Celtic Woman and its ilk are to Irish music what Hamburger Helper Beef Fried Rice is to Chinese Food.
They wouldn’t sell it if people didn’t like it.
And people do love it! More often than not, if I happen to tell someone I play Irish music, they will say something like – “Oh I love Celtic Woman”. I used to try to explain but now I just smile and say – that’s great.
It is pledge time and I did watch them sing Orinoco Flow this weekend. I realized that the Celtic Women were only a small part of the production. The band and especially the 15-20 back-up singers were working hard. The “women” just chirped a couple of words every so often.
What a world! I just googled a ticket agency for their show in Boston later this month. Tickets are available from $90 (upper balcony) to $488 (orchestra center).
And usually it’s SELTIC Woman, rather than Celtic with the hard “c”. My dad was kind enough to give me a copy of one of his cd’s and he asked me if I liked the Seltic Women cd he gave me just a few weeks ago. I felt badly because I honestly don’t even know where it is now… 
I liked Hayley Westenra’s voice but was quite surprised when she showed up during the pledge drive at PBS in Celtic Woman. Not sure if I understand what could be the reason for that. My wife bet it was the outfits.