Posted 2:43 am Saturday, September 04, 2010
Four Winds Celtic Music Festival Sept. 18
By STEWART SMITH
Entertainment Editor
With the upcoming Four Winds Celtic Music Festival, Jed Marum is out to change people's perceptions of the genre of Celtic music.
Entertainment Editor
With the upcoming Four Winds Celtic Music Festival, Jed Marum is out to change people's perceptions of the genre of Celtic music.
Marum, the headlining musician for the Sept. 18 event, said "Celtic" has more or less become the catch-all term for Irish and Scottish folk music. Played with wind instruments such as the flute and pennywhistle and stringed instruments such as the harp, guitar and bouzouki, Celtic music -- and Irish music especially -- is particularly melody driven, often with as many as five musicians "driving hard on melody," Marum said.
However, much of the genre often gets labeled as simply being "diddly music."
"With the jigs and all, they go 'diddle diddle diddle,' you know," Marum said with a chuckle. "(People) tend to think of the Riverdance folks, and that's an important part of (the genre), but there are an awful lot of songs as well. I guarantee there will be people there who will hear a version of an old Irish song that they always thought was an American folk song. "Streets of Laredo?" That's taken from an Irish song that's over almost 400 years old. It comes from a song called "The Bard of Armagh," which is 350 years old. It's almost exactly the same melody and the storyline is almost the same. And yet I grew up thinking it was a cowboy song, which isn't surprising since a lot of those Irish guys were cowboys."
The festival will feature a mix of Scottish and Irish music, but often with a distinct American folk flavor.
"There will be folks that do the sort of favorite pub songs and there will be bands that do Scottish or Irish ballads that come down from history, stuff by Robert Burns, that kind of music. A lot of what's going to be at this festival, a lot of these bands have an American folk style as well, so it's a bit of a mix," Marum said.
American folk and bluegrass finds its origins in Celtic music, a fact that will be on full display during the festival.
"At this particular festival, with almost every act you'll see the roots of American folk music and bluegrass. Most of the people there are Americans and we grew up with American folk and bluegrass and we are rediscovering our Celtic roots, which was sort of the origins of folk and bluegrass," Marum said. "I went to play the Tuscon Folk Festival a couple years ago, and there was a bluegrass band that introduced this 'old, American folk tune,' they said. And then they started playing 'Leaving of Liverpool,' which is a very old Irish song. That's so common. So many of the songs we sing, like 'Shady Grove,' these wildly popular bluegrass songs are directly taken from the Irish and Scottish tradition. We've put them in a major key and changed the tempo, but they have become American folk songs and they came directly from that background. You'll see that a lot at this festival."
As a Boston native and with family ties directly from Ireland, Marum said he always felt a strong connection to Celtic music.
"I grew up singing songs like 'Molly Malone' and Reilly's Daughter' that my father and grandfather and uncles sang," Marum said. "My father's family was born in Ireland, a lot of them. I grew up with those songs and everybody in my neighborhood did, too. I got involved with folk music as a young man, and when I moved to Texas, I started singing the songs I had been singing all my life and people just assumed I was an Irish singer. Well, it never occurred to me. I thought everybody in the country sang (those songs)."
In addition to Marum, other scheduled performers will include LegHorn the Piper, Iron Hill Vagabonds, BEHAN, Tim Glennon, Dublin Double, Curtis Henry and Williow.
The Four Winds Celtic Music Festival will be held at the Four Winds Faire grounds in Whitehouse, at 710 Hwy 110 S. Gates open Sept. 18 at 11 a.m., music acts last from 12-10 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults, $5 for children age 12 and under, while children age 5 and under get in free.
