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Oh, God, loads.
From Kate Rusby to Solas to Natalie MacMaster to Clannad to the Afro Celt Sound System, from caretaker popularizers like the Chieftains to raucous upstarts like the Pogues to wispy airy-faeries like Clannad or Loreena McKennit.
Two strains interest me, as any time folk musics make their way into the "pop" scene: the raw, undiluted essence of the thing—that is, the most traditional of the traditionalists—or the true fusion of different styles into a wholly new thing.
That's hard to come by: while the so-called "world music" genre will often re-contextualize a traditional sound, it's very rare that something really new emerges. There are a thousand instances of the former, where a traditional melody is lazily shoehorned into a pop setting (e.g., Ashley MacIsaac playing "Sleepy M aggie" over—yawn—a half-assed hip-hop beat) for every wondrous one-off where stylistic fusion is actually used as a compositional device, like the Afro Celt Sound System's "Whirl-Y-Reel," which at least creates the illusion of musicians of various cultures and styles all in a room together, listening to each other, reacting to each other, finding a common ground and creating something entirely their own—their own genre, Afro Celt Sound System music.
Do you know what I mean? That's the exciting thing for me—to see the tradition treated as a living, vibrant thing, a building block for the new. |
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