By: James Sink
Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated each year in many ways. People have to wear green, unless they want to get pinched, and leprechauns and four-leaf clovers are plentiful, it’s a very celebratory time of year. With Saint Patrick’s Day being an Irish holiday, a lot of Irish tradition is celebrated as well. One form of this is music, every celebration includes some type of music, and this holiday is no different. Celtic music has quite a few subgenres to it, including a niche genre called Celtic Punk.
First, to understand what Celtic music is, a deeper look into Saint Patrick’s Day helps with understanding the origins of the themes for the genre. Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick, is a holiday celebrated on March 17th annually, the day Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, passed away. The holiday is celebrated by Irish and church alike, for Saint Patrick was the man who brought Christianity to Ireland. Saint Patrick wasn’t always a believer in Christ though. He was a man born in the 5th-century, to a wealthy Romano-British family. When he was 16, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders, and in captivity (as a shepherd), he found God. Six years after his kidnapping, he escaped back to his home, where he became a priest. He then went back to Ireland, converting thousands of pagan Irish people to Christianity. Over the centuries after his death, many legends began to form around him, bringing him to be Ireland’s foremost saint.
Celtic Punk is a mishmash of Punk, Celtic, and Folk music all rolled into one genre. Common themes seen in Celtic Punk songs consist of politics, Celtic culture, identity/heritage, religion, drinking, and working-class pride.
The genre dates back to the 1960s, where older folk-rock bands, such as the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers, started playing Irish Folk music in the United Kingdom. Many other bands began to mesh both punk and folk together, starting to create a more defined sound for the genre, with the Pogues being the band to popularize it.
The genre didn’t really take off until the 1990s, however, with the Celtic Punk movement in the United States. Three different major cities, with a large population of Irish Americans, are home to the three first, most influential groups for the genre. The Dropkick Murphys, from Quincy, Massachusetts; Flogging Molly, from Los Angeles, and The Tossers, from Chicago, are all bands who paved the way for this genre to become a big one among punk fans.
In a sense, the genre is a form of patriotism for the Irish people. Punk is a genre of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism, and Folk music is often themed around the heritage or background of the group of people, and with both combined, it creates a genre of songs for not just the Irish, but punk fans as a whole.
Old traditions died hard and some never die.
Photo from: sandiegouniontribune.com
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