A sea kayak battles the freezing Irish waters as the morning sun rises out of the countryside. On the western horizon is the pinnacle of Skellig Michael-700 feet of vertical rock rising out of exploding seas. Somewhere on the isolated island are sixth-century monastic ruins where the light of civilization was kept burning during the Dark Ages by early Christian Irish monks. Puffins surface a few yards from the boat, as hundreds of gannets wheel overhead on six foot wing spans. The ocean rises violently and tosses paddler and boat as if they were discarded flotsam. This is just one day of Chris Duff's incredible three month journey.

During the past few years, a spring tide of Celtic culture and folklore has washed ashore, with Celtic dance, Celtic history and traditional Celtic music enjoying a renaissance throughout the world. Celtic musicians from Ireland, Scotland, and Canada - like The Chieftains, Enya, Clannad, Altan, Mairead Sullivan, Dougie MacLean, Capercaillie, Alisdair Fraser, Martyn Bennett, Ashley MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster, The Rankins, The Barra MacNeils, Mary Jane Lamond, Leahy, and Loreena McKennitt, among many others - are enjoying an unprecedented surge in popularity. "Celtic Tides is the first book to tell the story of this Celtic invasion through profiles of the traditional music scene in the old world and the new. The book features extensive interviews with the most influential Celtic artists, the first comprehensive discography of Celtic music, a complete guide to international Celtic music festivals, and forty pages of photographs. For fans of contemporary music and popular culture, "Celtic Tides is indispensable.

In cooperation with Corridor Films (Nashville) and Putamayo World Music (New York), Fox Music Books presents a new edition of this bestselling book + documentary + recording package, Celtic Tides. Celtic Tides tells the story of the ongoing world-wide renaissance of traditional Celtic music through extensive and exclusive interviews with the most influential artists. First published 15 years ago and out of print for a decade, Celtic Tides remains in demand. In this new edition, another 10 artists are profiled and the discography and guides to Celtic festivals, historic sites, museums and pubs throughout the Celtic diaspora are updated. Simultaneously, Putamayo World Music will be re-releasing the companion CD Celtic Tides, and Corridor will edit the documentary for a home entertainment DVD and downloadable file at the Fox Music/Quarry Press web site.

A collection of essays on the global circulation of Celtic music and the place of music in the construction of Celtic 'imaginaries', which provides detailed case studies of the global dimensions of Celtic music in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Brittany and the diasporas in Canada, the US and Australia.

Despite its isolation on the western edge of Europe, Ireland occupies vast amounts of space on the music maps of the world. Although deeply rooted in time and place, Irish songs, dances and instrumental traditions have a history of global travel that span the centuries. Whether carried by exiles, or distributed by commercial networks, Irish traditional music is one of the most popular World Music genres, while Clare, on Ireland's Atlantic seaboard, enjoys unrivaled status as a "Home of the Music," a mecca for tourists and aficionados eager to enjoy the authentic sounds of Ireland. For the first time, this remarkable soundscape is explored by an insider-a fourth generation Clare concertina player, uilleann piper and an internationally recognized authority on Irish traditional music. Entrusted with the testimonies, tune lore, and historic field recordings of Clare performers, Gear?id ? hAllmhur?in reveals why this ancient place is a site of musical pilgrimage and how it absorbed the impact of global cultural flows for centuries. These flows brought musical change inwards, while simultaneously facilitating outflows of musical change to the world beyond - in more recent times, through the music of Clare stars like Martin Hayes and the Kilfenora C?il? Band. Placing the testimony of music and music makers at the center of Irish cultural history and working from a palette of disciplines, Flowing Tides explores an Irish soundscape undergoing radical change in the period from the Napoleonic Wars to the Great Famine, from the birth of the nation state to the meteoric rise-and fall-of the Celtic Tiger. It is essential reading for all interested in Irish/Celtic music and culture.

Includes also Minutes of [the] Proceedings, and Report of [the] President and Council for the year (beginning 1965/66 called Annual report).

Exploring Popular World Music is the first introductory level text written to introduce students to popular music styles from around the world. Focusing on styles that all students will know -- from Reggae to Klezmer, from Afro-Pop to Kodo drums--the book offers a comprehensive, listening-oriented introduction to the world's popular musical cultures. Each chapter will focus on a specific music style and its associated geographic locale. The salient musical and cultural features associated with each example are discussed in detail to increase our appreciation of the music. Relevant artists will be highlighted and suggestions for further reading and listening will be offered. By the end of the book, the student should be able to 1) recognize a variety of world music styles, 2) articulate musical and cultural knowledge associated with each style, and 3) identify important artists related to the genre. Supplementing the text will be a web site fcreated by the author) featuring the author's world music map, enabling students to explore pop music cultures as they relate to each other; as well as an iTunes playlist for all the highlighted selections in the book. This book should strongly appeal to Intro to World Music Courses for non-majors who wish to study popular rather than traditional musics of the world, which would encompass a large majority of students enrolled in these courses.

Continued global warming and ocean acidification are predicted with high confidence, while the direction and magnitude of changes of other atmospheric drivers (e.g. precipitation, wind) and nutrient loading are of high uncertainty and regionally dependent. Biogeochemical responses of coastal shelf seas to external drivers are often nonlinear, involving feedback that may amplify or dampen a perturbation imposed on the system. Coupled physical-biogeochemical process-based numerical models have proven useful in elucidating the mechanistic interplay and relative importance of the different factors contributing to ecosystem functioning with increasing realism. This research topic aims to understand and compare marine ecosystem functioning in Chinese and European shelf seas, based on studies that use state-of-the-art modeling and monitoring of coastal ecosystem dynamics. This topic will enable more efficient knowledge share and distribution through a comparative assessment between distinct coastal shelf systems in China and Europe to further our understanding of complicated ecosystem dynamics in response to a changing climate and increasing anthropogenic pressure. It will allow us to better understand the sensitivity of coastal shelf ecosystem functioning to physical and biogeochemical perturbations, the role of shelf seas in global carbon cycling, and the resilience of Chinese and European shelf seas to ongoing and future changes in climate and anthropogenic activities.

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