I Celti, la prima Europa: The Role of Celtic Myth and Celtic Music in the Construction of European Identity

Abstract

Celtic music and mythology have played a crucial role in several contemporary processes of nation-building, usually addressed to stateless regions in Atlantic Europe. Nonetheless, when after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc Europe faced becoming a unified market (with the Maastricht Treaty), the Celts of the Iron Age appeared as the perfect ethnic explanation to endorse the idea of a rooted communal past. The lavish exhibition held in Venice in 1991—with the meaningful name I Celti: La prima Europa—became the official celebration of the new identity. The list of Celtic expansion after Venice 1991 is endless, music being a crucial component because of its popularity and communicativeness.

Notes

1. The volume has been republished several times. It is extensive, with 61 chapters and more than 100 authors from all over Europe (Kruta et al.). A video documentary was also produced (Gavioli).

2. The invocation of a Celtic past as a referential ethnic substrate is hard to sustain, if only because it has been used by Napoleon III for all Frenchmen a century and a half ago (Dietler, “Our Ancestors”), for several decades by radical groups like the Brittany Liberation Front (FLB)—a terrorist organization responsible for several violent attacks—but also by the leader of the French extreme right, J. M. Le Pen, in his discourse inducing xenophobia and racism, and that is without leaving France. In the specific realm of music Megaw (“Music Archaeology”) is sufficient to rule out any discourse of a musical genre based on ancient Celts’ music.

3. Northwest of Spain, another European region frequently considered as a Celtic nation.

4. Some approaches focus on the other side of the struggle: how stateless nationalist parties in the Atlantic Celtic periphery have used Europe to advance their territorial projects, by means of a discourse that emphasizes the importance of Europe as a framework for constitutional reform and shared sovereignty (Hepburn and Mcloughlin).

5. There was also the decisive implementation of pharmaceutical (Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck) and computer (Intel, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, IBM) American multinational corporations on Irish soil. Willing to open new markets in the new geopolitical frame that emerged after the fall of communism, for American investors Ireland offered important advantages compared to other European countries.

6. About the recording process with such outstanding rock stars, see Glatt (279–91). Complementarily, Davy Spillane, the celebrated performer on uilleann pipes, appeared on albums by Kate Bush, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Enya, Steve Winwood, and Chris Rea, among others.

7. Enya released her eponymous record Enya in 1986. In 1992 the same album was remastered and re-released as The Celts, evincing a meaningful turn in Enya’s aesthetic orientation. By 2001 she had sold 54 million records.

8. Maireid Sullivan is an Australian singer and author of the book Celtic Women in Music (1999). Please note that the information in this epigraph about the 1990s Celtic wave constitutes a representative but rather brief review of a very broad phenomenon. Many other musicians, bands, festivals, editions, and events started or expanded then. Another clarification: classical Celtic music also thrived in the wake of popular forms, but this genre falls outside the scope of this research.

9. Regarding all these varied and sometimes contradictory pieces of information, it is difficult to assess the nature of the relationship between the specifically European genesis and such a powerful world trend. In pure theory, out of Europe we should not speak of obscure campaigns resulting from festive states or opulent supranational projects. Instead, the European influence was probably significant in North America and other areas more or less rooted in Celticity because of their Scottish or Irish origins and correlative desire to revive these (see Sim). Thus, to a large extent it seems that the Celtic trend developed worldwide in its own way. However, the echoes of Venice and all that it represented were surely substantial enough to provoke active responses and reflective processes, occasionally emerging in relevant artists, records, and festivals.

10. This remarkable multiplicity is also visible in Celtic genres: jigs and reels, for example, are very frequent, but almost any folk dance, traditional piece, rock-style song, or classical category (symphony, sonata, suite) are welcome. The same happens with broad labels, such as Celtic jazz, Celtic rock, Celtic metal, Celtic fusion, and even Celtic flamenco, Celtic baroque, Celtic punk, or Celtic hip hop.

11. The harp would be the other Celtic favorite instrument, complementing the bagpipes as an identity symbol because of its refinement, delicacy, and polyphonic capacity.

12. The founder and piper of Milladoiro, Xosé Ferreirós, confirmed that the decade went quite well for his band, and estimated that the folk music wave, which burst all over Galicia at that time, had been due to an insistent campaign by the media (personal communication, 27 March 2013).

13. To cite but one example, the volume edited by Mathieson in 2001 (a general approach to Celtic music) offers a list of “Recommended Records” in each chapter. Those released between 1960 and 1990 represent only 17.4% of the total, while the other 82.6% are found during 1991–2000 (based on Mathieson, Celtic Music).

14. Additionally, the annual exhibition Euro-Celtic Art was founded in 1999 and is significant for its title and for taking place within the festival of Lorient.