Well, but I kind of get the feeling that that’s why the members were chosen; they all look really good. But what do I know–I’d never heard of Celtic Woman before a month ago, and have only seen a few YouTube videos.
I’d actually agree. I have a vague feeling that a lot of the multicultural icons popular in America are also actually similarly blandified from their “real” culture inasmuch as it can be defined.
Oh, for everyone who was wondering about my notation, it’s sort of like this for my made up fake Celtic song:
a
g
f
e e
d d d
c cc cc cc cc cc cc cc
Versus:
g
f f
e e
d d d
c cc cc cc cc cc cc cc
(imagine this being played fast with all notes the same length, hopefully with clapping or other accents on all the notes that are not “c”.)
Although I’m not 100% sure because my training is almost 3 decades ago. What I mean to convey is the specific way in which I find them bland is that the top notes in this made up song in “real” Celtic music would be at least one half tone, possibly more, higher than they are in Celtic Woman music.
Well, you did mean to get off-topic.
Actually, the “multi-cultural” world of today tends to treat many European-descended whites as fundamental nonentities. It offers a (frequently fake and commercial) identity for almost everyone and anyone else, but these groups may have no consistent cultural identity, instead being treated as as “generic people”. You can go buy ethnic music from around the world and many such people get a positive self-identity from claiming a certain heritage; many of the generic ethnic white mongrels don’t, but are left without a racial identity of their own.
The fact that the identity is fake doesn’t cancel its impact. Oddly, even many euro-nations themselves accelerate this trend by passively, and sometimes actively, denigrating and destroying the perceived value of their own cultural traditions in a moronic attempt to be “multicultural.”
Oh, the poor, beleaguered white man in Europe and America! You can hardly find any examples of us and our culture left on TV or in the movies! Or in magazines or books! Oh, woe is us! What of our poor children’s heritage?
That, sir, is a rather pathetic demigration of an actual problem. It may not be the worst problem in the world, but measured against that standards virtually no one on the verge of death ought to complain. The plain fact is that young “white” children, males especially, are pften treated like human water - a tasteless thing to which other ingredients are added to make it palatable.
I’ll second this. It’s not that the poor white man’s culture is dying, it’s that it’s LAME. I grew up hippie, and I always slightly envied kids who had ‘culture’, however superficial (and in the Pacific Northwest, superficial differences were pretty much all we got). There was always so much emphasis placed on multiculturalism that I felt like I wasn’t special if I wasn’t different.
I mean, it’s not like this is a huge tragedy or whatever, but don’t tell me you’ve never seen someone take on the trappings of some culture (hick, in my sister’s case) and outdo the natives? It does happen.
ETA: When I say it’s LAME, I mean from the perspective of one inside. Seriously, my cultural heritage is Laurence Whelk? No wonder the punks are pissed.
Oh, and bringing that back to the topic at hand - world music is all well and good, but the less inoffensive (read: different from Laurence Whelk) it is, the broader your fanbase.
Ah now to be fair, the biggest single threat to my own sense of cultural identity isn’t multiculturalism, in fact others’ expressions of their own identities make me more comfortable expressing my own. The biggest threat IMO is Anglophonic globalised mediated homogenisation. 
However, in agreeance with part of what you’re saying, I see the popularity of ‘Celtic’-punk in the US as indicative of a striving for a culture of one’s own amongst many white American youth. Other than the Pogues, most of those bans are far more widely popular in the US than on this side of the pond.
Cripes, but as a hippie raised, officially, Irish, I felt the same way. Sure, the other members of my family didn’t move to the PNW until it was cool, but even before that I saw my culture as “suburban.” As in, place me anywhere and, within a few minutes, I could find my way to the K-Mart.
OTOH, my earliest memories are of lullabyes in German sung by my mother. Yeah, I’m a mutt. Sue me.
Celtic Women, populated as it may be by ladies of many (and many of my) tastes, sings pretty songs, but they, like the “Irish” songs of a century ago (cue" “Tur a Lur a Lura”) are playing to a crowd that is outside (okay, barely, and their hotness almost makes up for it) my experience.
I see the Octoberists as more of a fusion band. Sure, the fusion is circa 1850, but that’s closer than most, if you recall when most of your kin made the jump to the US.
ETA: And Flogging Molly brings us WELL into the early 20th century! 
Some-one here linked to their version of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring on youtube in a wedding music thread.
I clicked it.
Holy Hell.
I had Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring at my own wedding. Their version made me want to stab the listening public in the face, every single one of them, and the celtic women and their producers too. I can’t help it. For me, dumbed down classical music is like watching a beautiful old building being demolished.
I watched a PBS broadcast. Two of the songs I really liked. One of them was from West Side Story. The other was Over the Rainbow. Both songs were written to be sung romantically and their voices could give anyone diabetes.
But the more that I think about the OP, the more that I agree with him. I think it was my husband who called them Stepford Woman. There is no human quality to their singing. It’s canned. It’s icy cold. It has no depth. It is the Lennon Sisters Lite – no one to sing the lower parts.
Maybe they are called Celtic Woman because there actually is only one woman singing and her voice is synthesized in eight or twelve different but perfect ways. Just wondering.
Do you have any objection to my using this as a sig for a while? You might want to give it some thought.
They do have some good tunes in their repertoire, but there’s too much froth and polish (trad music in ballgowns? Come again?) and not enough heart. There’s no tension or feeling of what the music actually is.
If you want to talk Celtic group with gorgeous leading ladies and actually good music, take a look at Danú (mmm, Muireann nic Amhlaoibh) or Altan (mmm, Mairead ni Mhaonaigh – and Dermot Byrne for we ladies!).
Well, here’s some fine Music for Europeans!
Hearing Celtic Women was almost enough to make me consider a trip to Boston (a few miles from the place of my birth)–tickets are already scarce for the Dropkick Murphys St Patrick’s Day shows. But I’ll probably just order this compilation–an interesting mix of old & new Irish (& Irish-American) tunes. Or maybe haul out my Chieftains in China LP–those guys never complain about multi-culturalism.
Of course, I could just listen to some bluegrass, western swing or honky tonk. The US has been multicultural since the beginning–even if the suits in Nashville have tried tohush it up.
Becoming a Celtic Women fan is probably a better way of dealing with The Heartbreak of Melanin Deficiency than becoming a racist skinhead. Just barely…
(By the way–have you ever heard of this little book? Like the Chieftan’s LP, I’m glad I bought it when it was cheap.)
Yeah, I believe I have a copy of that lying around somewhere.
There’s a documentary series to accompany it too. Quinn is great, he also did the first feature film in the Irish language, Poitín.
Thank you! I’d known about the films but just assumed they would not be readable on my US player. Your post prompted me to send an email; here’s the answer:
So–they will soon have another customer in the USA!
Middle of the woad?
Yes, that’s a nice sound bite, but I’d need some concrete examples. I mean, I’m a white male living in Oakland, for God’s sake, and I’ve never been made to feel that way. Nor have I ever had a conversation with any friends who said they’d been treated in such a manner. So I call bullshit, until you can give some real examples.
Am taking to a GD thread.
You may do as you please with it.