Celtic fusion is an umbrella term for any modern music style which incorporates influences from Celtic music or from Modern Celts.
It is a syncretic musical tradition which borrows freely from the musical traditions of all the Celtic nations and the Celtic diaspora, as well as from all styles of popular music; it is thus sometimes associated with the Pan-Celticism movement. While Celtic fusion may include authentic music from any Celtic nation, it may also feature non-traditional or non-Celtic music that has been influenced by the common characteristic of Celtic identity.
Celtic electronica
The genre of Celtic electronica blends traditional Celtic influences with modern electronic music. Artists such as
Martyn Bennett,
Lorne Cousin,
Mouth Music, Mark Saul,
Saint Sister and Valtos (band) whose backgrounds are in traditional Celtic music tend to favor traditional instruments, melodies, and rhythms, but augment them with drum machines and electronic sounds. Others, like Dagda,
Brigid Boden and
Niteworks approach the fusion from a background in electronic music that eschews traditional instruments and incorporates traditional melodies played on synths into a New Age-influenced
trance music sound.
Peatbog Faeries have experimented with Celtic electronica, mainly on
Faerie Stories.
Celtic hip-hop
The first Celtic-identified
hip-hop group to gain mainstream notoriety was House of Pain, a
Los Angeles based hip-hop group which incorporated rhymes about the
Irish-American experience into their music. With a few exceptions, however, their actual instrumentation did not incorporate traditional "Celtic" instruments, though they did use time signatures typical of jigs on several songs – a major deviation in a hip-hop market where virtually everything is done in time.
Marxman, an Irish-Jamaican hip-hop group, whose explicitly nationalism and Marxism politics gained them notoriety and infamy in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, incorporated traditional instruments into several songs on their first album, but largely abandoned them on their second album for a more electronica- and blues-oriented sound that would later form the basis for the emergence of trip hop.
Sinéad O'Connor contributed vocals to several of Marxman's songs and even tried her hand at rapping on her 1994 album Universal Mother with a track about the Great Irish Famine of 1845–1849.
Starting in 1998 Manau, a French hip-hop group of Brittany origin, created the first truly consistent fusion of Celtic music and hip-hop in two critically acclaimed albums, incorporating a wide range of traditional instruments and melodies and combining them with hip-hop beats. In one of their songs, they used part of an arrangement of a traditional tune ( Tri Martolod) by Alan Stivell, and were subsequently sued by him for copyright infringement.
1998 also marked the release of Seanchai and The Unity Squad's second album, Rebel Hip Hop.
Celtic-influenced world music
Many Celtic fusion artists integrate musical traditions from all over the world into their sound. The clearest example of this is Afro Celt Sound System, the members of which bring to the band strong backgrounds in either African or Irish musical tradition. The Irish fusion group
Skelpin incorporates Spanish flamenco, Middle Eastern, and American soul elements and instruments into its music. Delhi 2 Dublin
[1], a band based in Canada, is known for fusing Irish and Indian music.
Salsa Celtica is an 11-member "world fusion" project based in
Edinburgh, Scotland that mixes salsa with Scottish bagpiping and world influences.
Other artists such as Loreena McKennitt,
Red Cardell, the American Rogues, and Catya Maré take inspiration from numerous diverse traditions around the world, although their focus may be on Celtic music.
Celtic jazz
Modern acts such as Clannad,
Nightnoise, Melanie O'Reilly, and
Raggle Taggle or
Roland Becker (in the eighties) combine Celtic music with jazz. The jazz can range from the
big band swing style to the
smooth jazz style.
O'Reilly's musical partner has a side project called Temro
Ensemble Ériu is an Irish band that blends the minimalism and improvisatory spirit of jazz around Irish traditional melodies.
Norman&Corrie, comprising Scottish drummer Corrie Dick and multi-instrumentalist Norman Willmore of Peatbog Faeries, perform Shetlandic fiddle music reimagined as contemporary electronic-fringed jazz. The band released their debut album Twa Double Doubles in 2024.
Celtic metal
Celtic New Age
Celtic New Age artists such as
Enya,
Clannad, Afro Celt Sound System, Catya Maré, Iona, and
Gary Stadler incorporate traditional melodies and lyrics with synths and pads to create a mellow relaxed fusion that has proven highly marketable. Enya, for example, is one of the best-selling musicians in the world.
Celtic pop
Celtic
Pop music artists such as
The Corrs,
Nolwenn Leroy,
Mimori Yusa and Gwennyn incorporate pop music elements into traditional tunes.
Celtic punk
Other Celtic punk artists are The Real McKenzies, Neck, Smiting Shillelagh, Flatfoot 56,
The Tossers, The Vandon Arms, The Molly Maguires, Mutiny, and Black 47 (who also incorporate hip-hop influences). The genre is most popular in Ireland, Scotland,
England, the United States, and Canada.
Punks singing in Celtic languages began to emerge in the late 1970s in Wales, where groups such as Ail Symudiad (Second Movement) and Y Trwynau Coch (The Red Noses) began performing in fast-paced idioms reminiscent of the Jam; a rather harder sound was adopted by Yr Anhrefn (Chaos) in the 1980s. The 2000s saw in Scotland the emergence of several Gaelic-language punk bands, such as Mill a h-Uile Rud and the genre is also represented in Brittany with the band called Les Ramoneurs de Menhirs.
Celtic reggae
The fusion of Celtic music and
reggae is a hybrid started by the band Edward II and The Red Hot Polkas, an example of Celtic
Dub music, The Trojans, an example of Celtic
ska, and followed on by PaddyRasta, an example of Celtic
Folk music reggae, and the Celtic Reggae Revolution. Other collaborations include
The Chieftains and
Ziggy Marley, Sharon Shannon and Bréag.
Celtic rock
Modern Celtic rock acts include
The Waterboys, Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson, Rathkeltair,
Alan Stivell,
Gaelic Storm, Sinéad O'Connor,
The Cranberries,
The Proclaimers,
Red Cardell,
Peatbog Faeries, Lenahan, Lordryk, Croft No. 5, Enter the Haggis, Callanach, The Dreaming,
Shooglenifty, Spirit of the West, the American Rogues, Homeland,
Ashley MacIsaac,
Mudmen,
Wolfstone,
The Paperboys, and Great Big Sea.
Others
Other established hybrids include bands like, again, Celtic Reggae Revolution, PaddyRasta, Pubside Down, and (again) Sinéad O'Connor.
As might be expected from musicians playing a style of music defined by its fusion of disparate elements, many bands combine multiple styles. Shooglenifty, for instance, incorporates reggae, rock, and jazz into their musical style; Croft no Five did the same with rock and funk. Bands like Na’Bodach are stylistically disparate between works on the same album, where a rock-influenced song may be followed by funk or bluegrass thereafter. Rare Air, an '80s Canadian band, had two bagpipes, with rock guitar and Caribbean-influenced drums.
Books
"Irish Folk, Trad and Blues: A Secret History" by Colin Harper (2005) covers Horslips, The Pogues, Planxty, and others.
Cunliffe, Barry, ‘The Celts: A Very Short Introduction’ (Oxford, 2003).
Maier, Bernhard, ‘The Celts: A history from earliest times to the present’, K. Windle trans, (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2003).
See also
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List of Celtic fusion artists
Sources
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Megaw, J. V. S. and M. R., ‘Ancient Celts and modern ethnicity’, Antiquity 70 (1996), 175-81.
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Dietler, Michael, ‘Celticism, Celtitude, and Celticity: the consumption of the past in the age of globalization’, in Celtes et Gaulois, l'Archeologie face à l'histoire . vol. 1, ed. S. Rieckhoff, Bibracte, 2006, 237-48.
