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Celtic Music for a
"New World Paradigm"
by Maireid Sullivan, October 1995
Published in Irish newspapers and Music journals
across the United States
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Music has the means to offer a major contribution to the shifting paradigms of our new era.
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.
Though the
"Counter Culture" took off in the Sixties, it's been said that
what happened then is almost insignificant when compared to
the magnitude of the cultural movement unfolding toward the
turn of the millennium. Global communication technology is the leading facilitator. Digital technology has become necessary to the growth and expansion of intelligence. That's because communication multiplies the effect of cultural movements.
A new world view is still being defined.
The scientific concept of a new "paradigm" has come into everyday use over the last few decades. A new point of view expands understanding of human potential: A visionary
world view 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.
Musicians and songwriters are sounding out the harmonics
of a full life.
In The Global Brain (1995), Peter Russell shows how biological evolution alone could not have given us the capacity for communication that we have available to us today:
"The image a society has of itself can play a crucial role in the shaping of its future. A positive vision is like the light at the end of the tunnel, which, even though dimly glimpsed, encourages us to step in that direction."
- Peter Russell, 1995
When you think about it, from the very beginning "The New World" was populated by people who were forced by varying circumstances to immigrate: The Africans were sent to North America as slaves. The Celts were transported first to North America and then to Australia as indentured slaves and refugees from English oppression.
The well documented continuing
movement of the Celtic people over the last
hundreds of years is an excellent illustration of the
making of history.
While it is hard to imagine what life might have been like in ancient times, we can trace the impact of history's making on the Celtic people through vast research sources available today.
After William
the Conqueror's incursions into Scotland with the 'Great
Harrying of the North' in 1067, and Norman English incursions
into Ireland from the late 12th century, these disinherited
populations began to leave in large numbers. From the
beginning of the 17th century many tens of thousands
left with their defeated armies and made new lives on
the Continent and in North and South America.
England's
first expansion as an empire began with plantations
in Ireland and Scotland. Forests were felled and rich
agricultural lands were confiscated. Following Cromwell's
expansion of the British Empire from the
seventeenth century, thousands of men, women and children
were transported to a life of indentured slavery throughout
the eastern United States, and to the West Indies; the
Virgin Islands, Jamaica and Montserrat.
The English
land Lords exported Irish agricultural produce to England
and the Continent while a million people were 'transported' and millions at home died of disease and starvation
during the most devastating Irish famine of the mid-nineteenth
century, effectively 'depopulating' Ireland under genocidal English
expansionist policies.
Most of us make big changes in our lives only when forced by circumstances. These immigrants left their homelands only because they had to, but behold the wonders they have created in new cultural forms. Multicultural collaborations contribute immeasurably to advancements in science, technology and global communication. Cross-cultural pollination is an asset!
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National borders will not define communities of the future world.
For the most part, these people didn't arrive in tribal groups, but as individuals and small families. Longing for connection to the old country, they preserved their 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.
As boundaries crumble we may venture into many fields of traditional music to encounter local masters. Recent decades have seen musical form 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.
Music entrances and thrills.
The soul reveals itself through emotional gestures in music. New music
technology makes it possible, as never before, to capture
a sense of "the music of the spheres": Music is a kind
of truth our bodies know - rhythms and reflections of
what we feel, even
in silence, until we hear the voice of the muse in our heart's original song.
While creative
impulses assert originality, musicians must know the
cultural ethos of the 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 should not be
bound to those roots. The aim is
to find the mode that has survived in a traditional
form while retaining its identity and improvising a
new idea in the moment of play - 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.
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Great artists are not easily categorized.
This may be the time to quit labeling. 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
the world, read widely, tuned in to good filmmaking, good radio and TV
programming, and learned to blend old and new.
Re-emerging
Celtic culture is a natural model for newly emerging cultural sensibilities: A freedom movement which is buoyant and mystical.
It's music entrances, e.g. as in the music of jigs
and 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. Its vibrancy is improvised.
Sean O'Riada
came to public notice during the 1960s in Ireland as
a pioneer in the revival of ancient Celtic
musical traditions. He was the first to give harmonic structure to the traditional
melodies. Ceoltoirii Chualann, O'Riada experimental group, evolved to become the Chieftains, and led to many more musicial explorations melding of traditional forms with classical
and popular styles.
Since first
becoming a Free State in 1922 and then a republic in 1949, Ireland
has seen tremendous progress in the reclamation of its
language, literature, and music. A celebration of freedom
is evident in the diversity of musical styles embraced
as popular culture. For example, the annual Jazz festival
in Cork is considered to be an important part of the
European circuit for Jazz lovers. Today, Billboard's
top 10 includes Irish musicians from Rock, World, and
New Age music genres. There has been an explosion of
Celtic compilation albums on mainstream labels. These are samplers from the tradition designed for
people of Celtic heritage who are just beginning to
discover the interest their heritage can bring to their
lives.
Celtic culture
is now front and center on the world stage.
A new voice
of Celtic culture has reached the Diaspora: Celts as
far-flung as Latin America, Africa, Australia, and the United
States are reawakening to their ethnic heritage. Musicians
in all these places have been performing traditional
Celtic music for years. Most of the Australian folk
songs were written to Irish or Scottish melodies. Hundreds
of musicians, who play jazz, blues and classical music,
also know and play the traditional Celtic repertoire.
Many find value in playing Bach as well as Celtic music
as part of their skill development.
The US, Canada,
Australia, as well as England, Scotland, Ireland, France,
Spain, Brittany, host Celtic Music Festivals which
have become important gathering places for thousands
of music lovers, offering a heightened sense of community
for organisers, local and visiting artists and their
expanding audiences. Well established
festivals book over 300 performers for their annual programs
and there are at least an equal number of artists who
apply, unsuccessfully, to perform. Some of these large
festivals actually ration the number of appearances
allowed to the most popular groups, e.g. three years
in a row then at least a year break. Even the ever popular
Highland Gatherings
are broadening their music programs to include the new
and old music of their Celtic cousins.
The spread of these festivals and the growing mainstream appeal of popular Celtic influenced music, and a growing fascination for unaccompanied singing, is finally reaching the larger population it belongs to and it brings with it riches beyond imagination.
"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. ...the
myths never die, they are constantly being revived in
new and varied shapes, and sometimes surprise us in
unexpected places."
-
Jean Markale - Professor of Celtic Studies at the Sorbonne, Women of the Celts (1986).
The music is a conduit to the ancient Celtic myths and philosophies which are coming to life again to feed starved imaginations.
back to top An interesting history:
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 - Free Speech and Free Will
(as opposed to the concept of Original Sin) were at the
foundations of tribal law. The individual was important
and 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.
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).
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 Celts (whom they named Picts) of Scotland.
Irish traditions
gradually embraced the radical new idea of "Christ
Consciousness" which, of course, was 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, while the Roman Empire
was in decline on the continent, 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.
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From the
13th century, the escalation of political struggle between England and the Roman Catholic Church
launched massive aggressive incursions upon Irish soil. Traditional Irish cultural sensibilities were
supplanted by dualistic
materialistic philosophy within
competing narrow-minded patriarchal religious and imperialist politics.
From that time until now, the last of the 'women-centured cultures' in the west joined the majority of the world's women in taking a subservient position to patriarchal power. But, today men and women can be friends and colleagues! For the first time in nearly a thousand years women of the western world are openly involved in reexamining and redefining culture.
Feminine sensibility in
recovery.
The poetry of beauty is an expression of the flow of femininity. Jungian psychologists, archaeologists, and mythologists, e.g. Robert A. Johnson, Marija Gimbutas, and Joseph Campbell, talk about the historical oppression of the feminine
in our nature (male and female) and the growth of rational
science and technology out of our dominant masculine
energy. The time has come for more conscious effort in reinvigorating
reverence for truly feminine empowerment to nurture. Nurtured and nurturing, we develop strength and confidence.
The key is to remember delicate feelings of love and wonder - to remember our capacity for compassonate feeling. This will be the antidote to the alienation of modern society. With compassion and intelligence we can understand each other, forgive our adversarial ways and bridge gaps created by the philosophy of dualism which sees everything in terms of "good-vs-evil" and which result in political strategies based on fear. If women and men collaborate in taking a healing approach to the affairs of the world we can turn the tide of history. The various movements can commit the awesome strength they've recently reclaimed, especially the strength that comes from the spirit of gratitude.
The arts have the power to touch the heart, cut through claustrophobic dogmas, abstract ideologies and social stratas of age and class. More and more artists are taking control of their creativity so that they may serve more effectively. And we have the support of scientists who study the effects of music on tachyonic and quantum consciousness and on the electromagnetic fields of our bodies.
More people are creating 'shrines' to inner stillness, contemplation and beauty in their homes and music is a very important part of that experience.
Confidence is gained through new levels of understanding revealed in the
natural creativity of liberal, performing and visual artists:
Women and men share equally in celebrating the liberation of
greater capacities for feeling and compassion - a new Renaissance.
~
Mairéid Sullivan is a singer/songwriter, poet and student of history, born in County Cork, Ireland. she has lived in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.
NOTE: See the Appendix 1995, written shortly after this essay was written in October 1995
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