Celtic Music for a "New World Paradigm" by Maireid Sullivan, 1995 Following the Australian launch of my Dancer CD, in May, 1994, I 'visited' the United States in Feb. 1995, intending to stay three months. I stayed seven years - swept up by the "Celtic music wave" - which inspired my first essay, published widely in newspapers and music journals.

Celtic Music for a “New World Paradigm”
by Maireid Sullivan
September, 1995

Music has the means to offer a major contribution to the shifting paradigm of our new era.

Though the "Counter Culture" took off in the Sixties, it’s been said that what happened then is insignificant when compared to the cultural movement we are seeing as we approach the millennium.

The international launch of Cultural Tourism policies during the mid-1980s led to an unprecidented rise in the popularity of Celtic influenced music as an emerging form of "world music" which dares to express an unfolding of inner feeling as an antidote for our unbalanced world. This feeling is contributing to a change in emphasis in current music industry trends.

Global communication technology is the leading facilitator.  High technology has been necessary to the growth and expansion of intelligence.  That’s because communication multiplies the effect of cultural movements.  Biological evolution alone could not have given us the capacity to communicate as we do today.

An interesting history:

In my view, western people today are the first to take freedom and equality of the sexes for granted as a social right. Ancient Celtic traditions are a model for these freedoms - an ancient precedent.

While Romulus and Remus were still pups and the seven hills of Rome were outside the city limits, the Celts were Kings of Europe. For hundreds of years before the Roman Empire, the Celts dominated Europe and the British Isles - through their trade, technologies and travels - until the spread of the Roman Empire (from mid 700s BC).

The Celts have been on the road for six thousand years, give or take a few miles.
Ancient Celtic culture was egalitarian and highly developed. Men and women were equal. "Personal Sovereignty" was the foundation of tribal law - Free Speech and Free Will, as opposed to the concept of Original Sin, (Pelagius, 5c AD). The individual was expected to unfold the possibility of 'godhood' on earth - the veil between the worlds was penetrable by the sensitive spirit.

Ancient 'ways' have parallels with egalitarian practices today.

Somehow, throughout eleven centuries of Empire the Romans never went to Ireland.
They built Hadrian's Wall across the middle of England around 120AD as a shield against the unconquerable Celtic tribes of Scotland (whom they named Picti - 'painted ones').

Irish traditions gradually embraced the radical Patristic Era insights on "Christ Consciousness" during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, which, naturally, they interpreted through the "Natural Philosophy of the Druids" - forming a rich contemplative practice in the name of Celtic Christianity, which flourished until the Council of Witby in 663AD.

Celtic cultural heritage represents excellent examples for spiritual contemplative life prior to the expansion of Western dualistic intellectual materialism: In ancient Celtic wisdom, the body is seen as the 'threshold' between the natural world and the Otherworld, through which the soul interweaves. In the Irish language this is called coích anama (literally "shrine soul" or “soul shrine”).

Throughout the period of Celtic Christianity, before the Holy Roman Empire became 'distracted' by The Crusades for a "Second Coming", Irish scribes were busy copying Europe's great literature, sacred and secular, thus saving them from extinction during the dark ages of transition from classical to medieval Europe.

National borders will not define communities of the future world. 

Most of us make big changes in our lives only when forced by circumstances.  Migrants left their homelands only because they had to, but behold the wonders they have created in new cultural forms.  Refugees have contributed immeasurably to advancements in science, technology and global communication. 

Cross-cultural pollination is an asset!

For the most part, people don’t travel in tribal groups, but as individuals and small families.  Longing for connection to the old country, they have preserved many customs.  Links to ethnic roots are intact in every one of those cultural groups.  And we have a multi-layered, multi-cultural global network of connections – a global village – a web of connections.

As boundaries crumble we may venture into many fields of traditional music and encounter local masters.  In recent decades we have seen musical forms move through experiments and collaborations fused stylistically.

We have been seeking and discovering the unfamiliar, integrating it and going the long way around to appreciate the familiar in ancient traditions.

A New World Paradigm

A new worldview is still being defined.  The scientific concept of a "New Paradigm” has come into everyday use in recent years, following use of the term by Marilyn Ferguson in "The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s" (1980). 
A new point of view expands our understanding of human potential.

A visionary worldview is the wand that makes dreams real. 

New sensibilities are reflected in the way we live, our circle of friends and the work we choose to do. Contemporary trends in music are a direct reflection of this growth. 

"World Music" sounds out the harmonics of a full life.

Music entrances and thrills:  The soul reveals itself through emotional gestures in music which offer another means of expression and celebration.

New Music technologies capture “the music of the spheres.” 

Music is a kind of truth our bodies know, rhythms and reflections of what we feel, until we hear the voice of the muse, even in silence, and we hear our heart’s original song.

While creative impulses assert originality, musicians must know the cultural ethos of their music.  It must be firmly implanted so that understanding can be used to create a new idea without losing or contradicting the character of the music.  The roots must be there but we shouldn’t be bound to those roots.

The aim is to carefully find the mode that has survived in a traditional form while retaining its identity and improvising a new idea in the moment of play.  Thus expressing a feeling to play in a certain way that liberates the music; a contemporary idea so subtle that it enhances the vitality of the music.

Great artists are not easily categorised.  This may be the time to quit labelling.  Fashion in music is as obsolete (or diverse) as fashion in apparel.

Imperfect as they are, the new concepts of World Music and New Age Music have helped to free up the restrictive forms of older musical styles.  Artists can experiment within a broader frame of reference to convey new feelings and messages to meet the needs of people who have travelled and read widely, tuned in to good radio and TV programming and learned to blend old and new.

Celtic culture is now front-and-center on the World Music stage.

Newly re-emerging Celtic culture is a natural model for this sensibility.  It is a freedom movement which is buoyant and mystical.  It’s music entrances - as in the music of Jigs & Reels, and the Slow Airs.  Beat comes from the song:  It can be a sound -- a motif every now and then – contributing to the musical form or it can be silence. 

Celtic music is spirited. It’s vibrancy is improvised.

Celts as far-flung as Brazil, Australia, and the US are awakening to their ethnic heritage. (Thirty percent of Americans and forty percent of Australians have Celtic roots.) 

The ancient myths and philosophies are coming to life to feed starved imaginations.  “There is nothing more tenacious than tradition, nothing more firmly rooted than the ancient beliefs and systems of thought when they are concealed within new forms,”
said Jean Markale, Professor of Celtic Studies at the Sorbonne (Women of the Celts, 1972)  “…the myths never die, they are constantly being revived in new and varied shapes, and sometimes surprise us in unexpected places.”

The individual was important and expected to unfold the possibility of godhood. 
For them, the veil between the worlds was penetrable by the sensitive spirit.  In my view, western people today are the first to take freedom and equality for granted as a social right. 

The voice of Celtic music has not lost touch with the heart of the individual
– the power of one. The arts don’t recognise age and class. 

Music has the greatest power to touch the heart and cut through claustrophobic dogmas.  More and more artists are taking control of their creativity so that they may serve more effectively.  And scientists are studying the effects of music on tachyonic and quantum consciousness as well as on the electromagnetic fields of our bodies subtle levels.

Confidence can be gained from sharing new levels of understanding revealed by the creations of artists and the research of scientists.  Women and men can now celebrate the liberation of their great capacity for feeling and compassion – a new Renaissance for the individual and a new appreciation of relationships and community.
Ancient Celtic society paralleled these social rights – an ancient precedent:
Personal Sovereignty - Free Will / Free Speech leads to egalitarianism.

~

Mairéid Sullivan is a singer/songwriter, poet and student of history, born and raised in County Cork, Ireland, she has lived in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.

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