Celtic Music : 3rd Ear - The Essential Listening Companion

This comprehensive guidebook covers all that is Celtic in music today, through essays exploring solo artists, bands, singers, and players of specialized instruments, such as harps, pipes, fiddles, drums, squeezeboxes, whistles, mandolins and more. Performers profiled range from the rock-influenced group Clannad, to Welsh band Ar Log, Brittany group Gwerz, singer Christie Moore, harpist/piper/singer Alan Stivell, and many more! Reviews guide readers to the essential recordings, as well as unexpected, genre-expanding discoveries for any new or established Celtic collection.

Part of the reliable "Third Ear" series (see also Alternative Rock, LJ 2/15/01), this glossy guide to the "Celtic" genre will appeal to both fanatics and newcomers. The form, or "brew," as editor Mathieson puts it, has a singular identity created by fusion with strains of rock, jazz, techno, and trance. A regular contributor to Jazzwise magazine, Mathieson presents a readable historical overview of Celtic music from the 1960s, which saw the folk and traditional music revival, to the present. He forewarns readers that this is not a history of folk or traditional music or of the Celts. In the spirit of the music's roots-rich heritage, this work uses a geographical organization that encompasses Ireland; Scotland; Wales, the Isle of Man, and England; Cape Breton; Brittany; and Celtic Iberia (parts of Spain and Portugal). Artists associated with a particular region are discussed by experts in the field. Very nicely illustrated with more than 150 album covers and several color photographs of performers, this also features a useful artist index and suggestions (though limited) for further reading or research. A solid and inexpensive purchase for public libraries as well and a useful selection for comprehensive world music collections. David M. Turkalo, Suffolk Univ. Law Lib., Boston
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