VAGUE
Here it becomes more problematic, or rather vague. Spain, Portugal, and Italy, but even most of France, are more known as (similarly vague) “Latin” countries culturally, whatever that may mean, but mostly linguistically determined. Parts of Northern Italy (Lombardy, Piemonte) – including in nationalist “Northernist”, separatist circles (Lega Nord political party), self-define often as with (largely) Celtic roots, to distinguish themselves from other parts of Italy.
Similarly, Galicia and Asturias in Northwestern Spain, claim their Celtic roots to set them as regions apart from other parts of Spain. Some critics of this, also within Galicia and Spain itself, argue that this is largely a later “fabrication”, and that Galicia’s “celticity” is a myth, something like an all-too-inventive “identity” search, based on little. Even that is not so uncommon: culture and ethnicity do seldom combine fully one-on-one, as e.g. the spread of Islam shows, and other “dominating” cultures throughout history, adopted by subjects, at least partly. DNA studies confirm this in many cases.
“Based on little” - this Galician “celticity” as supposed myth - is, I think, too much to say. There is evidence of Celtic presence in large parts of Spain, including in Galicia. Whether this remained “pure” or soon mixed is another issue.
DNA
Historical studies, and (since the 1950s) historical DNA studies gave some interesting insights into this “Celtic” history. It also shed light on what is “substantially proven” about Celtic roots, and what “myth”.
Strictly looking at DNA, genetic remainders in current indigenous populations, make present-day France much more a “Celtic nation” than neighboring, more Mediterranean Italy or Spain. Folk traditions and cultures that survived even outside of “Celtic stronghold” Brittany in France, notably in Central France and the Auvergne and Alpine region, confirm this culturally, if not linguistically (safe in substrate influences in language formation).
I find these genetic/DNA studies interesting from a historical perspective, as it shows how “traditional culture” develops in tandem, yet partly isolated from “genetics” as such, showing human agency, despite it.
The problem is only that – according to geneticists - “Celtic DNA” is not always distinguishable from other European populations, including the Latins and Romans (who became influential), but also Basques, or older groups present in Western Europe, upon Celtic arrival. By comparison, a Germanic DNA – more to the North - was easier to distinguish, studies showed, to show ethnic origins in certain parts of Europe, as was a “Slavic” DNA. Celts seemed more mixed from the start.
It might very well be that forefathers of the Celts (oldest sources date it to the Ukrain/Russia area), soon mixed with older peoples moving west, while the culture was still developing. Historians claim that in the Western Alps (Switzerland, NW Italy) – in a later stage – some cultural - and linguistic! -Celtic traits came to the fore, but not all that would later be known (like bagpipes, round brickpatch fortress houses, etc.). It was still changing, as cultures are never static.
DILUTED
The countries where my parents are from (father Northern Italy, mother Southern Spain) have proven, historical “Celtic” presence, but much more regionally limited and diluted than in France. Pure races or genetic peoples don’t exist (despite Nazi and other “race purity” rhetoric: also the Germanic tribes absorbed present people in Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, etc.), but one can say that Gauls (Celtic-speaking peoples in France) are among the “main foreparents” of most indigenous French, percentage-wise.
This cannot be said of neither Italy or Spain. The irony is maybe that one of the oldest “documented” Celtic languages and peoples found by historians - deep in pre-history - were as already mentioned traced to the Italian-Swiss border region, in NW Italy. For that reason, the “Alpine type” as genetic marker of a Celtic physical European type, is named as such (though as said, often hard to distinguish from others). It seemed that the very basic elements of Celtic culture were shaped partly in those (now Italian/Swiss) Alpine regions, before spreading to other parts of Europe. It differed from both the Germanic/Teutonic cultures more to the North, Slavic or Dinaric peoples to the East, or more “Mediterranean” peoples to the South, with sometimes not even Indo-European languages (Basque, Etruscan, Iberian, a.o.).
The Roman empire had a strong influence, culturally and linguistically, due to their domination up to around 400 AD, making also regions where once Celts lived Romance speaking. Further migrations and historical connections diluted this relatively “distinct” Celtic culture.
FOLK CULTURE
Yet: in folk culture aspects remain, albeit mixed. Traditional music and musical instruments seems the best, and most honest, evidence of this, as some aspects were there before a partly “artificial” Celtic identity was called upon for political/nationalist reasons (just copying examples from e.g. Ireland or Brittany). There are – in other words – actually a few Celtic folk culture/music/tradition “remnants”, truly indigenous, in parts of NW Italy or NW Spain (and Northern Portugal), before a “Celtic international identity” became a rhetorical/political issue.
Both parts of Lombardy (like Bergamo) and Galicia, for instance, have their own “bagpipes”, differing from the Scottish or Irish ones, just like several regions within France have own bagpipes. France is by the way the country with the most and most varied “bagpipes” in Europe, many people may not know. The ones in Brittany and Auvergne are just best known. While bagpipes are in origin not a Celtic instrument per se, they relatively early in history were adopted as such, and certainly “celtified”.
The same applies to some “old” dance and song forms, recurring musical structures (e.g. chord “jumps”), and some other instruments associated with Celts, such as harps, frame drums, fiddles (in some areas), and the “hurdy gurdy” string instrument (a bit fiddle-like as well – due to drones – bagpipe like), found in e.g. Galicia, and Northern Italy (as in Auvergne, France).
Here the “vagueness” comes in. Bagpipes are common in, yet not exclusive to, Celtic cultures, as also found among Slavic and other peoples (e.g. Arabs), neither are the fiddle, harp, or even the hurdy-gurdy, also found in Hungarian culture, and among Slavic peoples. The frame drums are traditionally common in Northern Africa (most common among Berbers), and later also in Spain and Italy, and probably meant an early international influence on the travelling Celts. The Celtic peoples after all once extended from what is now Turkey, in Anatolia, westward through Romania, The Northern Balkan, the Alpes region, France, to Ireland. Probably the most heat-resilient Celts went to Anatolia or Iberia.
ABSORBED
On the border regions – or where other ethnic groups were more numerous – they encountered and mixed with e.g. Germanic peoples in N. France, Belgium, and South Germany, Etruscan and Venetian peoples in Emilia-Romagna and Trentino/Veneto (NE Italy), and Basques and Iberians in southern France and the Iberian Peninsula.
Where Celts became more dominant (numerically or culturally) present populations with older DNA were absorbed by the Celts, including those that built the “dolmens” stone structures (similar to Stonehenge), later adopted by the Celts.
Such stone structures pre-date the Celts, but also Germanic peoples, as similar “dolmens” as in e.g. Galicia or Wales, are found in England (Stonehenge), as well as the province of Drenthe in the Netherlands, pre-dating Germanic/Saxon arrival, as the Netherlands became primarily Germanic/Teutonic (absorbing also present people).
That is why historical DNA studies, developed since the 1950s, are interesting. They contradict the Nazi “purity” idea of Germanic peoples, discarding both the purity and – of course! – the supposed “superiority” to all other people and racial types in the world, as nonsense. On the other hand, these same studies did confirm the existence of a typical “Germanic” DNA. Of course not in any way that it meant that they were a “superior” Herrenvolk. A Celtic DNA proved harder to define, though with indications.
In Central and South Spain and Portugal, Celts arrived, but found more numerous and culturally advanced groups (Phoenician/Carthaginian/Egyptian/Iberian-influenced). The Iberians and Tartessians/Phoenicians – speaking proto-Semitic languages in part - in Iberia had a writing system and more advanced societies with links to the Mediterranean and Egypt. Thus arose the Celtiberian culture in Central Spain, while in South Portugal and South Spain (even in parts of Western Andalusia and Extremadura Celtic groups arrived since around 600 BC) larger groups had to be absorbed by the Celts, or rather: the other way around, though Celtic languages kept being spoken.
Genetically and culturally, as the culture became more Mediterranean/Semitic, later Roman and Moorish, in South Spain and Portugal. Few Celtic cultural remnants remained in Southern Spain, safe certain customs and place names, while in more isolated, less-dominated areas, like NW Spain (Galicia and Asturias) and bordering N Portugal, these Celtic influences on traditional culture seemed stronger, and still living on. In rural architecture, as already mentioned music and dance, festivities, other customs and beliefs, albeit influenced by Roman and later Central Spanish and international culture. It gave regions like Galicia and Asturias their own characteristics within Spain.
BAGPIPE REGION
As in Africa you have a specific, restricted “Djembe region”, where that type of drum is traditionally played, mostly Mande-speaking, Sahel areas from Senegal to Northern Ghana, in Europe (and Spain) you also have a Gaita (Spanish for “bagpipe”) region, limited mostly to the Northwest of Spain, and bordering areas. The non-Celtic speaking Basques know a type of “bagpipe” too, as does more Iberian Aragón, but Galicia and Asturias (and parts of Northern León and Castile) are most known for and specialized in it. Bagpipe (Gaita) use is Spain thus mostly connected to regions with Celtic pasts.
Other “stereotypical” Spanish instruments, like the Spanish guitar (Andalusian in origin), and the castanets (percussive, wooden clappers) are more associated with Central and Southern Spain, with the Castanets – probably originally from Egypt - dating back to the Phoenicians or before. Tambourines (and later with national unification also Castanets) tend to have spread more peninsula-wide from early on. Bagpipes/gaitas remained regional.
LINGUISTICS
Linguistically, Celtic languages disappeared in Spain and Portugal, safe loanwords. The what they call substrate influence (shaping new languages from older spoken ones) of Celtic tongues are found in the developing Galician languages (later developing southward into Portuguese), and Asturian dialects/languages, but less in Castilian Spanish, which had more Basque as substrate influence. The early Kingdom of Castile bordered Basque areas, soon outweighing Celtic connections.
Substrate influence of Celtic languages have also been confirmed through studies in some other Romance dialects, such as in Lombardy, Piemonte, or Emilia (NW Italy) – known even as Gallo-Romance languages -, Central France, but also in specific German accents/dialects in SW Germany (Schwaben), the Alsace, and Switzerland, and types of English in NW England and Scotland.
Languages/dialects in Northern Italy like the Lombard and Piedmonte languages have, like French, the “u” sound as in English picTURE, or French Bien SUR, or close to this as in English FUR or French LEUR. Formal Spanish or Italian don’t have those sounds: only the open latin vowels, but French and Gallo-Italian dialects like Lombard do: it must be due to stronger Celtic substrates there. Neither does Galician or Asturian, but they have similarities with Gallo-Italian dialects/languages, that Spanish lacks: vowel extension or change, for instance, and the common, “slissing” “sy” sound.
I find interesting that certain phonetic or grammatical “pan-Celtic” characteristics somehow recur between French, Lombardian, Schwabisch Deutsch, and , say, Scottish English. More “long-voweled”, “meandering” or semi-mumbling “sing-songy” is sometimes said, while the “nasal” element in French, or (hinted at) in e.g. Irish or Galician/Portuguese probably are also Celtic in origin.
Formal Italian developed in Tuscany, so was probably Etruscan (non-Indo-European/Anatolian)- influenced, while Latin of Rome developed from local, more Mediterranean Italic groups in Central Italy. Evidence showed that Celtic groups actually reached parts of Italy South of even Rome, but as a less influential minority, not unlike Southern Spain.
REGIONAL
One can conclude that the Celtic influences in Italy and Spain remained regional – rather than national -, reflecting in local folk culture primarily. DNA studies give an indication, but no guarantee. Celts absorbed local (Neolithic) groups to differing degrees and mixed somewhat more than e.g. Germanic/Teutonic peoples, and DNA-wise, the Basques differ only in some details from surrounding peoples (linguistically much more), Celts or otherwise, while the genetic difference between SW Spain (where Celtic-speaking people lived) and Eastern Spain (where Iberians lived) is remarkably small, shaped throughout history, with admixture of Germanic peoples, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors (Arabs, Berbers), Jews, and internal migration. Genetically, it is as usual all very mixed, with some regional accents. That accent is there in Galicia and Asturias, but even there Moorish DNA entered (via later migrations, is assumed) and after the Romans, in the 5th c AD, also Germanic DNA by Suevi and Goths in Galicia (part of so-called “Barbaric” Nordic hordes invading the fallen Roman Empire).
That “Germanic” DNA, that exists as distinguishable, according to scientists, is less common in Spain than elsewhere in Europe, even lower than in Italy (less than 4%, is estimated). The genetic maps earlier in this post showed that. Some parts of Galicia (Suevi), Northern Portugal, and Catalonia (Franks, Goths) have relatively higher Germanic DNA percentages, and even – according to strange studies – more “blond” hair and blue eyes. This percentage never surpasses about 8 % though, while the Celtic DNA (though harder to distinguish as said) attributed much more to Spaniards (around 30%, they think), representing thus a connection to France and other parts of Europe, though not an overwhelming one.
Not overwhelming (and with a lot of genetic admixtures over time, as elsewhere), and in this sense the DNA more or less correlates with Celtic folk culture in Spain and Italy. Not really a central part of either Italian or Spanish “national culture”, but confined to regional folk culture, to which attest in specific regions e.g. the bagpipe music, specific folk songs and music styles, material culture, like housing and clothing, and folk spiritual ideas (Celts had a magical bond with trees, woodlands, and nature, the oak being a sacred tree, for instance, wood spirit stories, etcetera. And Galicia and Asturias are in a “green”, wooded part of Iberia).
Galician/Asturian, but also Lombard and Piedmonte folk music in Northern Italy preserves some of this, also used as “revival” by modern composers or musical artists and singer/songwriters, such as Angelo Branduardi, who draws on folk traditions, also from Lombardy, and several artists from Galicia and Asturias, even “pop” artists like Asturian-born Victor Manuel, drawing at times on Asturian folk bagpipes or song styles, or revival “fusion” groups in Galicia, like Milladoiro, or more modern local pop/rock (and even hip-hop) groups using Gaitas and folk music. An example is the Galician hip-hop/pop group Os Resentidos.
TRIBUTE
Regional as it remained, this Celtic heritage in NW Spain still received somewhat of a tribute on the famous album by Miles Davis, Sketches Of Spain (1960), on which the Jazz artist/trumpeter explored several Spanish “known” folk genres. Besides a predictable emphasis on Castile and Andalusia on this album, due to the rich and influential legacy of genres like Jota, Fandango, and Flamenco, one song of that album – or rather: instrumental composition -, called The Pan Piper, is based on more marginal and local folk music from around Vigo in Galicia, a style known as Alborada.
The counter-patterns and –melodies to Miles’ trumpet on the track The Pan Piper, show these Celtic musical (meandering/chord-jump) forms, still characteristic in much Galician folk music, and certainly comparable to other Celtic music (e.g. of Ireland, rural Lombardy or France, etc.).
Equally interesting are similarities between two “pop” songs by Italian Angelo Branduardi – his “big hit” Cogli La Prima Mela, and the song Quiero Abrazarte Tanto by Spanish singer Victor Manuel, both drawing loosely, if recognizably, on Celtic traditions from their regions (Lombardy and Asturias, respectively), combined with other influences (folk, rest of Spain/Italy, pop, rock, Latin American, etc.). They are both catchy, lively, and danceable songs, by the way.
At the very least, in parts of Northern Italy and Northern Spain – especially rural parts - a genuine Celtic-influenced folk culture was indeed kept alive, beyond mere “inventions of tradition” for politicized, nationalist/regionalist identity ideologies (such as by Lega Nord or Galician nationalist groups), making it in part a real, non-artificial cultural retention (albeit sometimes modernized/mixed) in these parts.
Some musical artists use this heritage well, giving the world their art, as happened more often, such as with the African retentions to differing degrees in “Black” music from the Americas or modern African pop genres, South Spanish “Flamenco-pop”, or Indian/Bhangra- or Arab-influenced modern pop.
Use what you got and know from your culture to shape your art, seems to be a lesson here.
FAKE?
Finally, I come back to the critical claim – even within Galicia - that Galicia’s supposed cultural “celticity” – with after all unlike Brittany, Ireland, or Wales NO surviving spoken Celtic language – is a mere “myth”. In other words: actually “fake”, as the critique goes. I think that this accusation of “myth” or “fake invention” may sound spectacular and assertive, but is at least exaggerated and simplistic. Simplistic, because people with that critique forget that “cultural formation” – of many peoples in this world - involves mixture and adoption over time, and indeed the Celts from early on – way in European pre-history, showed this flexibility, when interacting both with changing natural environments and other peoples. Over time something like an own “Celtic culture” formed, which stood apart from “ethnic purity”.
That latter romantic, racial “purity” idea was common in parts of Europe in the Early 20th c., and also the German Weimar Republic, mixing with Romanticism as cultural movement. It became less “innocent” when it – according to historians – influenced Nazi and other (e.g. Italian) Fascist ideologues connecting “race” and culture, and this in turn with “superiority”, e.g. power politics.
Though a Germanic DNA seems to exist according to geneticists, it is historically (geographic travelling, conquering patterns) and maybe culturally interesting, but not much more than that. It shows funnily that the English share more DNA (mostly Germanic) with the Germans than many English would wish to have (since Hitler and WW II), haha. Similarly, while Dutch and Flemish people in my experience are more realistic and quite reasonable about their Germanic heritage (less absurd denial), after WW II and the Nazi German invasion of the Low Countries, a “Germanic identity” as a nation is seen as a bit contaminated in the present-day Netherlands, and, in an international world, also too limited.
That Celtic cultures seem to have a stronger folk culture and music than the more meager heritage of Germanic peoples (Irish are known as more musical than English), but parts of Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, do have own (also musical) customs. Perhaps earlier industrialization/modernization of Germanic peoples limited their folk culture, compared to more rural and marginal Ireland, Wales, Galicia, Auvergne, or Italian Alps.
Or – also possible – the earlier mixing, travelling and adopting early on (since 2000 BC) by Celts, when travelling through Central Europe, later to more populated Western and Southern parts, enabled flexibility, in turn inspiring a richer and more varied culture. A matter of human agency in cultural formation and distinction. There is nothing wrong with that. It is in fact the very flexible creativity that tends to give birth to the intriguing variety of folk culture world wide..
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