Alexander, P. (2018) Salsa Celtica's Great Scottish Latin Adventure: an insider's view. In: McKerrell, S. and West, G. (eds.) Understanding Scotland Musically: Folk, Tradition and Policy. Series: Ashgate popular and folk music series. Routledge: London, pp. 139-156. ISBN 9781138205222 (doi: 10.4324/9781315467573-11)
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Publisher's URL: https://www.routledge.com/9781138205222/
Abstract
A significant force in UK world music for over fifteen years, Edinburgh’s Salsa Celtica promotes a particularly resonant blend of Scottish cultural hybridity: a finely-honed marriage of traditional and newly composed Scottish melodies set against Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns. As a long-term member, I discuss the group from both a personal and ethnomusicological perspective, exploring the changing salsa/celtic balance within this contingent identity, and how these elements play back against a wider conception of contemporary Scottish music. Salsa Celtica’s deft adaptability represents a growing dialogue between increasingly co-territorial musical worlds. But more than this, the band is both product and expression of urban Scotland: its line-up speaks to a city’s ethnic encounters and the music itself is a direct outcome of the self-conscious eclecticism of the Edinburgh session scene. I therefore also investigate how this musically embodied multiculturalism functions as a pragmatic, easygoing and ever more pertinent celebration of contemporary internationalism. Through interviews and musical/visual analysis, I unpack the shifting ground that Salsa Celtica treads between insider and outsider in the world of Scottish music, a fluid musical discourse offering continually varied spaces of negotiation for both musicians and audience.
Item Type: | Book Sections |
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Keywords: | Salsa, folk, music, Celtica. |
Status: | Published |
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Alexander, Dr Philip |
Authors: | Alexander, P. |
Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music |
College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics |
Publisher: | Routledge |
ISBN: | 9781138205222 |
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