Electric folk is the name given to the form of folk rock pioneered in England from the late 1960s, and most significant in the 1970s, which then was taken up and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man, to produce Celtic rock and its derivatives. It has also been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain and gave rise to the genre of folk punk. By the 1980s the genre was in steep decline in popularity, but has survived and revived in significance, partly merging with the rock music and folk music cultures from which it originated. Although in Britain the term folk rock is often used synonymously with electric folk, commentators have returned to this term as a means of distinguishing this as a clear and distinct category within the wider folk rock genre.