Navan.org
Title
N A V A N ::: celtic language harmonies
Description
We are friends who have come together to share our love of Celtic music among ourselves, and with others. We sing in the languages of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man. We have a special feeling for those beautifully worded songs and poems whose tunes have been lost—there are so many. We also enjoy songs which have been carried on in traditional form to the present day. Sometimes we sing them solo, in the manner most often used today by traditional singers who have inherited them; sometimes we sing them in unison, following the traditional rhythm; most of the time we can’t help but add harmonies—that is part of our own tradition.
Celtic songs have proven to have great vitality and so the same songs have been sung for hundreds if not thousands of years. This naturally results in variation of the tune, and words, from age to age and place to place. Sometimes we incorporate several variations of a tune into one song, for example singing some verses in the sean-nós style, and others in the exuberant rhythms of an early American hymn which that sean-nós tune has inspired.
For people interested in the idea of song categories, there are many that can be assigned—and we are still discovering new ones. They are the categories shared by all cultures—children’s songs, working songs, love songs, story songs, lullabies, religious songs both pre-Christian and Christian, tributes, laments, and songs for the dead. It is when we look more closely inside these categories that we are able to see the distinct characteristics of Celtic life. For example, among the work songs we find verses for rowing, churning, waulking (fulling cloth), grinding grain, plowing and blacksmithing. In religious songs we find pre-Christian charms, pre-Christian charms with Christian elements added on, Christian songs which were composed in the manner of the original charms, and Christian songs composed in Irish but in the manner of the foreign Christian priests.
Languages
English
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