Ceili Moss

Ceilí Moss is an acoustic folk-rock band founded in Namur in 1996 and led by Laurent Leemans. In their early days, the band stuck to fairly orthodox Celtic music but has continued to evolve towards a pan-European sound, with a particular focus on Northern and Eastern Europe (the Balkans, Klezmer, Flanders, Scandinavia…)

A good summary was provided by this article, which stated: “They aren’t as punk as the Pogues, but they have a bit of that attitude, and it gives them an edge that many folk bands lack”. Other comparisons often made include Ambrozijn, The Waterboys, The Chieftains, Les Ogres de Barback and Jaune Toujours.

Ceilí Moss perform regularly on stages across Belgium, as well as in northern France and the south of the Netherlands. They also have several self-produced CDs to their name.

The band’s name comes from the Gaelic word ‘céilidh’ (pronounced ‘Kylie’), referring to a celebration where people dance to traditional music, and by extension, specifically Irish traditional music composed for dancing, and from ‘Moss’, which is the nickname of Alain Mossiat, owner of the café ‘L’Éblouissant’ in Namur, where the band first cut their teeth on stage.

Translated from French by DeepL