Country and Western

[brianrost]

Country musicians are a lot more open to diversity than the performers who stick to traditional folk music styles.

Well, that's not eaxcatly true. The one thing that's a constant with traditional music is the tradition keeps evolving. Bluegrass is not traditional music and bluegrass has been evolving since Bill Monroe birthed it in the 1940s.

Durham52 posted a video of this interesting group from Northumberland in notherern England.The Unthanks is a cool name, but it's just the last name of the two sisters who are the core of the group. They perform traditional acappella songs, but they also have covered King Crimson

 

[brianrost]

Musicians in the New England Contradance community, for example have a pretty constant track record of fusing varied ethnic styles for their sound.

Funny you should mention contradancing. I played in contradance bands for years (as well as danced). The musicians themselves came from lot of different backgrounds and there was a lot of room for experimentation as long as it worked with the dancing. Some played classical music, some were die-hard folkies, some were reprobate rockers (like me) and others had jazz backgrounds. One band I was in had both a tuba and a trombone and a few bands were experimenting with drums.

In the 80s and the 90s when I was playing the circuit, pianists were moving away from root-five left hand basslines into lifting lines from jazz and classical counterpoint. The repertoire was still largely what were called the "chestnuts", but musicians were composing new pieces all the time which were disseminated in self-published tunebooks (I still have a stack of them). Other parts of the country, particularly the Pacific Northwest, started developing their own flavor of the music which began showing up in the New England repertoire. I remember a book called the Portland (Oregon) Collection being a popular source of tunes back then. There's now 3 volumes, the latest came out about a decade ago.

 

[HaphAsSard]

Re: pronunciation of "Celtic".

It's a Latinate, Early Modern word, originally borrowed from French celtique, but even there only a répechage from Classical Latin, where celticus was indeed pronounced "kell-tick-uss" - rhymes with "puss" - with a "k" sound, just like in the ultimate source, i.e. either Ancient Greek keltoi or a possible, actually Celtic predecessor of the Greek word. In other words, this one (word) was not in continuous use in any language throughout the Middle Ages.

Back to English, the "sell-tick" pronunciation - based on the French immediate source, as well as on the (itself French-based) general way in which “c+e” sounds in English - was actually the more usual for a long time.
This was the case until the majority of non-sporty users of the word - mainly academics - deemed it more 'authentic' to say "kell-tick". Why?
Why, in accordance to the original pronunciation in Classical Latin, Ancient Greek, as well as (assuming the name was not a Greek invention, which hasn't been ruled out) the possible Gaulish original (in Celtic languages “c+e” reads "keh" to this day), and why not, German keltisch (German being the lingua franca of historical linguistics way back when).

As for dictionaries, most of them admit both variants as correct (but give the "kell-tick" one first):
Why There are Two Ways to Pronounce 'Celtic'

 

[P. Aaron]

It bothers me that Boston Celtics pronounce the word incorrectly.

And every other stinkin' sportscaster. Messed up a whole bunch 'o vocabulary.

 

[ElectroVibe]

He was a good one
He looked like he could run...