music of the swedes
… or music that’s been mangeled …
Dig that roots music, man!
turnip on time
otherwise no entry
I was playing for a group of Morris Dancers once, and someone came up and said “Oh, I just love Celtic dancing!” 
Redwolf
That’s why Irish dancers don’t move their hands! No sticks! No handkerchiefs! It explains everything!
Well if you were playing a “celtic” harp the innocent comment doesn’t surprise me. What sort of music were you playing?
Harps are useless for Morris Dancers…can’t be heard over the bells. In fact, I didn’t even play harp back then.
At the time, this person spoke to me, I wasn’t playing at all. Their regular musos, a button accordianist, a fiddler, and a guy with a recorder, were playing “Sweet Jenny Jones.” A Morris standard, at least locally.
Seriously, does something like this look particularly “Celtic”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t5jvBGhsQ4
During my turn at play, I was playing a Sweetheart Pro whistle on “South Australia,” “Abram’s Circle” and “Shepherd’s Hey”. A great whistle for that kind of thing, by the way. Carries over the bells and doesn’t clog.
I was wearing my regular RennFaire garb with some May Day Morris-y modifications…nothing really “Celtic” looking. Full skirt, bodice with some flowers tucked in the cleavage, big floppy hat with more flowers. The dancers, of course (there were three different sides there), were wearing Morris kit, complete with bells.
Redwolf
Isn’t “Sweet Jenny Jones” a Welsh tune? I could have sworn I remember hearing once that the Welsh were a Celtic group.
Probably…though relatively unknown outside of the Morris world. And it’s played in a very distinctive style for Morris Dancing.
There are Welsh Morris sides, but it’s a very different style. These were all Adderbury (Cotswold) Morris Dancers.
I forgot to mention in my previous post that the woman actually asked if all the dancers were “from Ireland.”
Redwolf
There’s a very long tradition in the English-speaking world of associating anything old-fashioned, traditional, or relic-like that comes out of any part of the British Isles as Celtic. I’m sure part of it’s based on the pre-Saxon invasion and whatever might be left behind from that, but a lot of it has to do with the once explicit belief (among certain people) that the “Celtic race” was backward while the “Teutonic race” (or whatever the term of the day was) was industrious and progressive.
I know a Gaelic speaker from Highland Scotland who went to boarding school in the Lowlands, and the other kids all called him “Haggis” and would say things to him like “Och aye the noo”, both of which are Lowland Scots (or a parody thereof, in the latter case) and were utterly unknown to him at the time.
Um … right …
Sweet Jenny Jones is a Welsh tune. It’s also called “Cader Idris” and is an ancient tune that spread throughout England in the nineteenth century. It is associated with words as well, though I’m not sure how old they are. The tune was a standard in the ancient Welsh harping tradition. One thing it isn’t, at least by origin, is a Morris tune. I know it’s been taken up by Morris sides in various places nowadays, stuck for anything decent to play, but, in origin, it’s about as far as you can get from being an original Morris tune.
Meanwhile … OK, I’ll quote first … (I’m having to bite my lip fairly hard here to stop myself expressing my instinctive outrage at American presumption, both in the above and the below points) … (It’s OK though … I’ll get over it 
) …
I could very nearly write an entire thesis on what is wrong in that sentence.
Firstly, I take it, then, that “the English-speaking world” doesn’t actually include England. English people understand very well that the use of the word “Celtic” in this fashion is an American thing, and that is one of the reasons the word is treated with the disdain it is by English people (I’m just reporting here, not necessarily expressing my own opinion). Celts don’t seem to care, and just put it down to a rather quaint American ignorance.
Secondly - and I apologise for sounding like a broken record on this one from time to time, but I’ve had my own fingers burned on it, so I’m probably over-sensitive - I would suggest being careful about the term “British Isles”. It can cause more offence than you might imagine these days.
Thirdly, what is this “very long tradition” of which you speak? I bet it goes back decades, eh? 
Oh, and by the way, haggis isn’t a Scottish Lowlands thing. It has been well-known all over Scotland and the North of England since at least as far back as the 15th century. The Scots who do insist that it is Scottish in origin (although that is not entirely certain) claim it to be Highland in origin.
Okay, Ben, I need to point out one widdle ting just to remind us that there are always exceptions that niggle at the broader truths: there’s an elderly lady from Belfast who lives hereabouts, and she was coming along for a gig I was doing for dancers. I had an uilleann pipering CD playing in the car, and she said, “I love the ould Seltic airs.”
Double whammy. But, true, this could have been a Merkinism she picked up over her years in the States; I didn’t have the disrespect to ask.
I’m in a grouch. Sorry. 
I couldn’t blame you in the slightest.
BTW, that is one totally brilliant post of yours there. Love the last sentence.
Really? I’m going to have to try hangovers more often.
Just to add my 2 cents 
with the massive amounts of emigration over the last century or 2 there is going to be a huge amount of contamination (or fusion if you prefer) of indigenous music (including Irish/Celtic/every thing else) and the result is music that comes from many origins. Thus the disagreement of what “true music” from a region sounds like.
Here in New Zealand we are unfortunate in that much of the music of the Maori (indigenous people of NZ from the 1200’s) is lost since colonization. We have unique instruments being “rediscovered”, but without the music.
John
It can simply be any sort of music that accompanies garlic songs