#i assume you're just referring to irish and scottish trad

[finnlongman]

any celtic folk recs? any thoughts on celtic fusion (especially when, for example, slavic influences are weaved in)?

Like, trad music? Hmm, I don't know if I have any recs per se -- I'm just getting back into folk myself and my knowledge of the bands and musicians that are out there these days is extremely limited. It would be an exaggeration to say my folk knowledge stops with Planxty but unfortunately not as much of one as I'd like it to be. (When I first got into folk my uncle bought me Clannad, the Chieftains, Planxty etc... meaning I had the music taste of someone ten or twenty years older than me. I come from a family with zero trad background -- my parents are Classical musicians -- and lived in an area with no folk scene, so I was kind of fumbling around in the dark trying to figure it all out.)

With regard to currently active contemp folk musicians, I enjoy Fergal Scahill's "tune a day" videos on Facebook! (He's a fiddle player, he's posting a different tune every day for 2019. Sometimes he does them with others, especially if he's overlapping with anyone's tour or performances, and sometimes they're solo.)

What else... I used to listen to Leahy quite a bit. They're from... hmm, I wanna say Cape Breton, but that might be wrong. I've always been pretty drawn to instruments that I play myself, so I love a good fiddle player. I also had a couple of CDs by Brian Finnegan, who's a flute player -- based in Scotland, I think, but again, don't quote me on that.

Just flicking through my Spotify... I also enjoy Lúnasa and Sileas, both bands I think I discovered through a rec from Maggie Stiefvater a few years ago. I also got really into like... folk-punk fusiony stuff for a while. There's a band called Ockham's Razor who did some really trad stuff, but some much less trad stuff, and I was *super* into their music in like 2012. (I actually wrote a novel inspired by one of their songs.)

Not sure if she's really what you're looking for, but there's a Northumbrian piper (as in, she plays Northumbrian pipes, I don't know where she'd from herself) called Kathryn Tickell whose stuff I like. I saw her perform a few years ago and that was kind of fusiony with Classical; she did some versions of classical pieces with pipes alongside the cello, though also more trad folk.

For Scottish stuff my aunt bought me a Julie Fowlis album like, I don't know, going on ten years ago now. Most people know her from the Brave soundtrack. She's pretty good, I like her.

But honestly this is a rubbish list, lol. One thing I discovered at the Blas summer school this year (well, I already knew, it was a reminder) was that my folk knowledge is woefully limited. There are so many GREAT bands out there producing music all the time, and I probably couldn't name any of them. I'm trying to broaden my knowledge a bit as part of my whole 'getting back into folk music' thing (and I also want to learn more songs, including Irish-language songs).

As for fusion stuff, I'm definitely a fan! I love seeing trad music played on non-trad instruments or on another country's trad instruments. I love people doing trad dance to non-trad music and the reverse. I think it's good fun. I don't have a lot of experience with it outside of, like, folk rock, folk punk type situations -- I've listened to less that directly mixes trad influences from different traditions -- but I'm down to hear more if anyone's got any recs!