Celtic And Country Music

Let's say that the American frontier was mostly settled by the Irish, Highland Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish. The Ulster Scottish stayed in other parts of the country, and their culture became more urban than rural. What would American music be like now? Would we hear bluegrass with bagpipes and flutes? ;-)
 
umm they did as well. There were plenty of Cornish and Welsh on the frontier. Maybe not in the Kentucky and Tennessee hills of the 1790s-1830s and with the opening of the Western plains and Mountain West after the Mexican War those two groups along with the Irish were among those responsible for opening the West.

I think what you want to shoot for is an earlier emmigration of those groups and with it they become more prominent and influential in cultural terms.
 
umm they did as well. There were plenty of Cornish and Welsh on the frontier. Maybe not in the Kentucky and Tennessee hills of the 1790s-1830s and with the opening of the Western plains and Mountain West after the Mexican War those two groups along with the Irish were among those responsible for opening the West.

I think what you want to shoot for is an earlier emmigration of those groups and with it they become more prominent and influential in cultural terms.

I realize that there were Cornish and Welsh settlers on the frontier, but there were more Ulster Scottish people there. In my scenario, there would be little to no Ulster Scottish presence in the frontier, as most of them would stay in the urban regions. I wondered what impact this would have on the development of American music. Would Appalachian folk music have sounded the same?
 
The thing is, country music seems to have developed from Scotch-Irish folk tunes in OTL already, so what exactly are you shooting for?
 
The thing is, country music seems to have developed from Scotch-Irish folk tunes in OTL already, so what exactly are you shooting for?
His point is what if there were only Irish-Irish, that is, the Scots-Irish tunes never got out of the cities because of Scots-Irish never did and instead the slot in the music was filled by the Catholic Irish.
 
The thing is, country music seems to have developed from Scotch-Irish folk tunes in OTL already, so what exactly are you shooting for?

That's true; it did for the most part. I think that the frontier culture produced American music like country and bluegrass, though. IOW, that region served as an incubator of sorts. The music took its unique form in that environment. The American style differed from the British and Irish styles. In my scenario, the people from the Celtic regions of the Isles would be predominant in the frontier while the Ulster Scottish would stay in the settled east. It's true that they would have their own folk music, but what would the Celtic frontier music, that was formed in the Appalachian/Shenandoah region, sound like? Would it sound like Old Time music combined with the Chieftains?
 
His point is what if there were only Irish-Irish, that is, the Scots-Irish tunes never got out of the cities because of Scots-Irish never did and instead the slot in the music was filled by the Catholic Irish.

That's right. You likely explained it better than I did. I didn't limit it to Irish settlers, though. Frontiersmen, who speak (or spoke) Brythonic or Goidelic dialects are included. They are both Catholic (Ireland) and Protestant (Wales). IIRC, the Highlanders were split on religion, with some converting to Presbyterianism. Heck, I'll add Bretons to the mix too. If memory serves, some French Huguenots lived in Brittany.
 
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