By: Ian Phillips
The serene, painted faces of Irish authors gaze down at me as I sit with Irish traditional singer Niamh Byrne in Galway’s Town Hall Theater to discuss her craft. “It’s the instruments that people use,” she says when I ask about the defining traits of Irish traditional music (also known as trad). “The banjo, the mandolin, guitars…and it’s what people are singing about: the whole storytelling of it. Irish people are such storytellers.”
The upbeat, folksy tunes of trad have come to define Irish music and have spread across the world. American folk styles, such as bluegrass and Appalachian, display especially prominent influences. As a result, Irish trad has emerged as one of the most widespread and resilient forms of folk music. Even so, a tourist walking the streets of Dublin or Galway today hears fewer classic jigs and ballads and more modern American pop hits like “Despacito,” even if the latter are still played on traditional guitars, fiddles, and banjos. Asked about this trend, though, Niamh is not concerned.
“You hear a song and you like it, and you want to sing it in your own style,” she explains. “If you want to sing ‘Shape of You’ and you’re in a jazz metal band, you’re going to sing a jazz metal version of ‘Shape of You.’” Traditional and contemporary songs, she believes, can coexist, and the fact that a song is new does not mean it can’t be traditional. Niamh refers to Thin Lizzy, a Dublin-based hard rock band that was most famous in the 1970s. “They may not be in that traditional Irish banjo style,” Niamh says, “But it’s definitely traditional Irish music.” Despite operating in the relatively recent past and not singing in a style typically associated with trad music, Thin Lizzy produced a number of Irish classics such as “The Boys are Back in Town” and the most famous arrangement of “Whiskey in the Jar,” a traditional Irish ballad.
The line between the traditional and contemporary Irish music is not as clear as one might suspect–and it never has been. Other songs frequently heard in trad pubs and on albums by trad musicians are arrangements like “The Green Fields of France” and “The Parting Glass,” and yet neither was penned by an Irishman. For those concerned that American hits are supplanting Irish trad, it’s important to remember that all cultures are diffusive and malleable. The processes that bring North American hits to Ireland today are the same ones that brought Scottish folk music to Ireland and Irish folk music to the United States. The existence of one musical genre does not preclude the existence of another, and an American song being played in Ireland is not necessarily being played instead of a traditional Irish tune.
“There’s still a big folk scene,” Niamh says. “There’s still a big traditional Irish scene. It’s two separate things, contemporary music and traditional music. Irish people enjoy Irish music. Pubs that advertise Irish music are not just for tourists.” Niamh herself started singing trad at a young age in the small Kilkenny town of Gowran, a rural area with few tourists where trad culture is as vibrant as ever.
The Willie Clancy festival that convenes in Miltown Malbay every year to celebrate Irish music is further proof of trad’s perseverance alongside and apart from American pop hits. The festival puts forward no promotion or advertisement but is widely attended, proving that Irish music is not just a consumerist tool to give tourists the “authentic Irish experience.”
Traditional Irish music continues to thrive and evolve and adapt into new forms. As Niamh said, the subjects of the songs are what best define traditional music. The uncertainty of emigration, resilience to hardship, and resistance to authority all loom large in trad ballads because those are the shared struggles of Irish across the globe. The wars, subjugation, and starvation that Ireland has suffered have defined it and its people. For example, the nation was heavily engaged in World War I as a British colony, so songs about that trauma, such as “The Green Fields of France,” have found their way over land and sea to be adopted into Irish tradition. The fears and sorrows that grew from the sectarian violence that throttled northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998 spawned other works like “The Town I Loved So Well.” Such songs carry with them the profound loss and pain of the era—a national family shattered.
Traditional music is an auditory manifestation of culture and shared experience. It is constructed by Ireland’s complex history and tells the stories of its people. Irish artists may enjoy and appreciate songs from abroad, but as long as Irish culture persists, its traditional music can never be replaced or erased. As Niamh said, “That’s what makes it Irish traditional music, because it’s telling stories about us, about Irish people.”