Honestly, isn't there enough death and suffering in the world already?

[dianec42]

... or to paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android, "Isn't life depressing enough without making up more of it?"

What is up with the fascination with tragedy in Celtic (and Celtic-inspired) music? Yeah, okay, drama and all that; maybe happy endings are kind of boring. On the other hand, I'm finding it equally boring to be able to listen to the first two lines of a song and know with absolute certainty that the lovers will both be dead by the end of it (and the inn in flames, as likely as not). It really makes me want to shake the songwriter by the shoulders and shout, "What is WRONG with you people? Don't you know any HAPPY stories?!"

And for cryin' out loud, Loreena McKennitt isn't even any proper variety of Celt; she's CANADIAN. Of all the people on the planet who should be smug and happy, don't the Canadians usually win?

It's almost a shame the music's so pretty. If I could somehow ignore the words...

Comments

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Still, some parts of Canada are considered musicologically "core Celtic", in that you don't get to ignore them if you're looking at Celtic fiddle tunes and you know that "Celtic" is not a synonyn for "Irish". Canadian Celtic music gets included in the Celtic repertoire more often than Spanish Celtic does, despite how wickedcool Galician bagpipe music is.

But yeah, there is that Scottish reputation for love songs in which people die. And there's also the murder ballads -- Trix likes to put one of those into most Homespun Ceilidh Band (http://www.homespunceilidh.com) concerts. Do you know "Marrowbones"? At least that one can be thought of as cheery in a way...