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71-2.)Īnd it is easy to see why the 2015 Celtic Connections Festival drew combined actual audiences of over 100,000 with gross ticket sales of over £1.1 million (Anonymous 2015). ‘Locating Authenticities: A study of the ideological construction of professionalised folk music in Scotland’ (unpublished Phd Thesis, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh), pp. ‘Whereas “Scottish” may have been limiting for those creating radio playlists and festival programmes, “Celtic” (in all its ambiguity) allowed for a multitude of interpretations and could be pushed much further than “Scottish” or “Irish” alone.’ More specifically, the term really took hold in Scotland with the establishment in the early 1990s of the radio show ‘Celtic Connections’ on BBC radio Scotland and the festival of the same name in Glasgow primarily located ‘Celtic’ music in Scotland within a decidely commercial space:
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In tandem with the emergence of a commercial genre of ‘world music’ came the invention of ‘Celtic music’ where bands deliberately altered their performative discourse and musical instrumentation to appear more ethnically Scottish and authentic to foreign audiences. As the international touring circuit opened up for Scottish traditional musicians in the 1980s and the subsequent changes in professionalization and marketing of Scottish bands, the logic of mediatization and presentation have changed how these groups are perceived in other countries. The term ‘Celtic’ music is regarded with disdain by most performers of Scottish traditional music that I know, however, it has been enthusiastically taken up by those with an interesting in marketing or promoting Scottish traditional music both at home and abroad.
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This shift can broadly be evidenced in the texts of traditional song, performance practices and contexts and their reception by audiences. The commodification of traditional music, as well as altering the socio-economic basis for the tradition has also altered the very performative nature of authorial presence, performance and vocal persona. There are artists who now claim to be ‘folk’ because of its commercial viability, who would have never have dreamt of claiming that moniker 10 or twenty years ago. This has had particular implications for the meaning of ‘folk music’ both in Scotland, Britain and in North America, and who, what and how it is performed.
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The other very significant change in the 21st century is the collapse of historically and geographically defined authenticity into authenticity in performance practice. One of the key reasons for this shift in commodification (and mediation) and the move from purely a local social music making to a partially mass mediated traditional music has been the adoption of economic models from popular music in terms of touring, distribution of gig income, commercialization of recordings and the shift towards professionalization, royalties and rights. What it underlines however for me, is two things: 1) ‘Celtic music’ as a genre is effectively a mass media marketing term that has now proven itself as commercially useful as ‘World music’ in the late modern West, and 2) the social networks that underlie traditional music in Scotland (and possibly elsewhere) are in fact very quietly now fully commodified and professionalized, despite the overt ethos of communitarianism within folk and trad music communities themselves. Staggering success really for a winter festival for a niche musical genre that receives relatively little media attention in the mass media. This Inverness Courier article cites Celtic Connections 2015 with actual audiences of 100,000 and gross ticket sales of over £1.1million.