Irish traditional music

Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music and similar names) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State, Irish

Women#

In Irish traditional music, women were historically underrepresented in public performances as instrumentalists. Fiddler Julia Clifford stated that women instrumentalists were rarely seen performing publicly between the establishment of the Irish Free State during 1922 and the late 20th century. She also recalled being the only regular female musician performing in London pub sessions during the 1950s and early 1960s. Some performers, including Clifford, performed in competitions discreetly in order to pursue musical activity. This limited visibility has been linked to the political and social structures in Ireland. In 1932, the Marriage Bar was established requiring women to leave their civil service jobs upon marriage, while the 1937 Irish Constitution emphasized women’s role to stay at home with their family. Cultural standards, influenced in part by the veneration of the Virgin Mary in the early 20th century Irish society, reinforced expectations that women prioritize domestic responsibilities over public artistic careers. Scholars such as Slomanski described women who continued playing music during this period as “tradition bearers”. Despite these challenges, a number of women were active in the tradition before the 1950s, including Elizabeth Crotty, Aggie Whyte, Eleanor Kane Neary, Sarah Makem and Julia Clifford. Patterns of emigration also formed women’s participation. Between the period of 1926 to 1936, more women than men left Ireland, contributing to the spread of Irish Traditional Music abroad. An estimated number of 46,000 women left Ireland while only 30,000 men left. Clifford later received recognition as a leading figure in the Sliabh Luachra music tradition. Her collaboration with Denis Murphy resulted in the 1969 album The Star above the Garter, which has been described as a significant recording of regional Irish music representing Country Kerry. Tunes associated with the pair, such as “Julia Clifford’s Polka” became a part of the repertoire. Her playing style has also been noted for its ornamentation, including subtle pitch variation sometimes referred to as the “C-Supernatural”. From the late 20th century forward, the visibility of women in Irish traditional music increased. In 1984, musicians including Ursula Kennedy, Mary Clare Breathnach, and Seosaimhín Ní Bheaglaoich organized a concert in Dublin featuring exclusively women performers, emphasizing the gender imbalance in public performance spaces. The success of the event led to the formation of the group Macalla, which released the album Mná na hÉireann in 1984. Between 1985 and 1990, nine bands with women musicians were released. Between 1990 and 2000, the numbers increased to forty-six. In 2024, Macalla reunited for a 40th anniversary concert on International Women’s Day in Dublin. The careers of performers such as Julia Clifford and ensembles such as Macalla illustrate the challenges women in Irish Traditional Music have experienced and their continuous contributions.

LGBTQ+ Community#

In recent years, the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community has increased through efforts. Trad is Amach (also known as Isteach is Amach) formed around 2020, is a collective of traditional Irish musicians, singers, and dancers. The group organizes concerts, sessions, and céilithe to promote Pride events and Irish traditional music festivals. Institutions such as the Irish Traditional Music Archive and events like Tradfest Temple Bar have been stated as important in fostering visibility of the LGBTQ+ community within Irish traditional music.

Composition#

Irish dance music is isometric; is built around patterns of bar-long melodic phrases akin to call and response. A common pattern is A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Partial Resolution, A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Final Resolution, though this is not universal. Mazurkas, for example, tend to feature a C Phrase instead of a repeated A Phrase before the Partial and Final Resolutions. Many tunes have pickup notes which lead in to the beginning of the A or B parts. Mazurkas and hornpipes have a swing feel, while other tunes have straight feels. Tunes are typically binary in form, divided into two (or sometimes more) parts, each with four to eight bars. The parts are referred to as the A-part, B-part, and so on. Each part is played twice, and the entire tune is played three times; AABB, AABB, AABB. Many tunes have similar ending phrases for both A and B parts; it is common for hornpipes to have the second half of each part be identical. Additionally, hornpipes often have three quavers or quarternotes at the end of each part, followed by pickup notes to lead back to the beginning of the A part onto the B part. Many airs have an AABA form. While airs are usually played singly, dance tunes are usually played in medleys of 2-4 tunes called sets. While shorter tunes are perhaps more common nowadays, lengthy tunes are still sometimes played in jam circles in modern times.

Modes#

Irish music generally is modal, using Ionian, Aeolian, Dorian, and Mixolydian modes, as well as hexatonic and pentatonic versions of those scales. Some tunes do feature accidentals.

Ornamentation#

Singers and instrumentalists often embellish melodies through ornamentation, using grace notes, rolls, cuts, crans, or slides. Cuts are rapid rhythmic articulations of a main note that have three forms. They are known as the single cut, the dividing cut, and the double cut. When two notes of the same pitch are separated by a cut from a lower or high pitch, they are considered cuts. Diving cuts have similar structure to the classical ornament known as mordent in the conventional notation. Cran is an ornament commonly related with the uilleann pipes. It typically surrounds one note, usually a D, from which a rapid series of ornamenting notes branch off, creating a rhythmic effect sometimes referred to as a “gurgling D”. The term “cran” comes from the Irish Gaelic word crann, meaning “tree,” representing the extra notes branching out from the main note. Rolls are sometimes mistaken for the classical ornament known as a turn. In a roll, the main note remains central, while additional notes below and above it works as ornaments. There are two types of rolls, known as the short roll and the long roll, which occur over the same timing to crans. A feature of the roll is a slight crescendo through the ornament, highlighting the principal note. Trebles and triplets are distinct rhythmic ornaments in Irish traditional music. Trebling refers to the playing of three notes of the same pitch within the duration of two quavers. Triplets differ in their rhythmic structure, as the beat is divided into three equal parts. In contrast, trebles often feature uneven timing, with the first two notes typically played more rapidly than the third.

Accompaniment#

While uilleann pipes may use their drones and regulators to provide harmonic backup, and fiddlers often use double stops in their playing, due to the importance placed on the melody in Irish music, harmony is typically kept simple or absent.

Music for singing#

Like all traditional music, Irish folk music has changed slowly. Most folk songs are less than 200 years old. One measure of its age is the language used. Modern Irish songs are written in English and Irish. Most of the oldest songs and tunes are rural in origin and come from the older Irish language tradition. Modern songs and tunes often come from cities and towns, Irish songs went from the Irish language to the English language. In the late 1900s Frank Harte composed more ribald songs for the urban pub scene; the genre moved effortlessly from the countryside to the town.

Sean-nós songs#

Unaccompanied vocals are called sean nós (“in the old style”) and are considered the ultimate expression of traditional singing. This is usually performed solo (very occasionally as a duet). Sean-nós singing is highly ornamented and the voice is placed towards the top of the range. A true sean-nós singer, such as Tom Lenihan, will vary the melody of every verse, but not to the point of interfering with the words, which are considered to have as much importance as the melody. Sean-nós can include non-lexical vocables, called lilting, also referred to by the sounds, such as “diddly die-dely”. Non-sean-nós traditional singing, even when accompaniment is used, uses patterns of ornamentation and melodic freedom derived from sean-nós singing, and, generally, a similar voice placement.

Caoineadh songs#

Caoineadh () is Irish for a lament, a song which is typified by lyrics which stress sorrow and pain. The word is Anglicised as “keening”. Traditionally, the Caoineadh song contained lyrics in which the singer lamented for Ireland after having been forced to emigrate due to political or financial reasons. The song may also lament the death of a family member or the lack of news from loved ones. In Irish music, the Caoineadh tradition was once widespread, but began to decline from the 18th century onwards, becoming almost completely extinct by the middle of the 20th century. Examples of Caoineadh songs include: “Far Away in Australia”, “The Town I Loved So Well”, “Going Back to Donegal” and “Four Green Fields”. Caoineadh singers were originally paid to lament for the departed at funerals, according to National Folklore Collection. The “keener” would recite the kind deeds of the deceased in a sobbing and mournful manner.

Irish traditional music and dance has seen a variety of settings, from house parties, country dances, ceili dances, stage performances and competitions, weddings, saint’s days or other observances. The most common setting for Irish dance music is the seisiún, which very often features no dancing at all.

Repertoire#

Traditional dance music includes reels ( or ), hornpipes ( with swung eighth notes), and jigs (double and single jigs are in time). Jigs come in various other forms for dancing – the slip jig and hop jig are commonly written in time. Later additions to the repertoire include the waltz ( with a heavy accent on the down beat) and, in County Donegal, mazurkas in the same time signature, though with an accent on the 2nd beat. Donegal is also notable for its “highland”, a sort of Irish version of the Scottish strathspey, but with a feel closer to a reel with the occasional scots snap. Polkas are a type of tune mostly found in the Sliabh Luachra area, at the border of Counties Cork and Kerry, in the south of Ireland. Another distinctive Munster rhythm is the Slide in time.

Style#

The concept of “style” is of large importance to Irish traditional musicians. At the start of the 19th century, distinct variation in regional styles of performance existed. With the release of American recordings of Irish traditional musicians (e.g. Michael Coleman 1927) and increased communications and travel opportunities, regional styles have become more standardised. Regional playing styles remain nonetheless, as evidenced by the very different playing styles of musicians from Donegal (e.g. Tommy Peoples), Clare (e.g. brothers John & James Kelly) and Sliabh Luachra (e.g. Jacky Daly). Donegal fiddle playing is characterised by fast, energetic bowing, with the bow generating the majority of the ornamentation; Clare fiddle playing is characterised by slower bowing, with the fingering generating most of the ornamentation. While bowed triplets (three individual notes with the bow reversed between each) are more common in Donegal, fingered triplets and fingered rolls (five individual notes fingered with a single bow stroke) are very common in Clare. Stage performers from the 1970s and 1980s (groups such as The Bothy Band, or soloists such as Kevin Burke) have used the repertoire of traditional music to create their own groups of tunes, without regard to the conventional ‘sets’ or the constraint of playing for dancers. Burke’s playing is an example of an individual, unique, distinctive style, a hybrid of his classical training, the traditional Sligo fiddle style and various other influences.

Instruments used in traditional Irish music#

The most common instruments used in Irish traditional dance music, whose history goes back several hundred years, are the fiddle, tin whistle, flute and Uilleann pipes. Instruments such as button accordion and concertina made their appearances in Irish traditional music late in the 19th century. The 4-string tenor banjo, first used by Irish musicians in the US in the 1920s, is now fully accepted. The guitar was used as far back as the 1930s first appearing on some of the recordings of Michael Coleman and his contemporaries. The bouzouki only entered the traditional Irish music world in the late 1960s. The word bodhrán, indicating a drum, is first mentioned in a translated English document in the 17th century. The saxophone featured in recordings from the early 20th century most notably in Paddy Killoran’s Pride of Erin Orchestra. Cèilidh bands of the 1940s often included a drum set and stand-up bass as well as saxophones. Traditional harp-playing died out in the late 18th century, and was revived by the McPeake Family of Belfast, Derek Bell, Mary O’Hara and others in the mid-20th century. Although often encountered, it plays a fringe role in Irish Traditional dance music. The piano is commonly used for accompaniment. In the early 20th century, piano accompaniment was prevalent on the 78 rpm records featuring Michael Coleman, James Morrison, John McKenna, PJ Conlon and many more. On many of these recordings, the piano accompaniment was woeful because the backers were unfamiliar with Irish music. However, Morrison avoided using the studio piano players and hand-picked his own. The vamping style used by these piano backers has largely remained. There has been a few recent innovators such as Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Brian McGrath, Liam Bradley, Josephine Keegan, Ryan Molloy and others.

Fiddle (violin)#

One of the most important instruments in the traditional repertoire, the fiddle (almost always a violin used in a fiddle style) is played differently in widely varying regional styles. It uses the standard GDAE tuning. The best-known regional fiddling traditions are from Counties Donegal, Sligo, Clare as well as Sliabh Luachra. The fiddle has ancient roots in Ireland, although any reference to a fiddle before the 16th century would have been to an instrument distinct from the modern violin, as the modern violin was invented in 16th-century northern Italy. The earliest reference to the fiddle in Ireland was during the 7th century by O’Curry. In 1674, Richard Head wrote in reference to Ireland ‘On Sundays: In every field a fiddle, and the girls footing until they foam up’ suggesting that the modern fiddle was already present in Ireland. Reference to the Irish fiddle can also be found in John Dunton’s Teague Land: or A Merry Ramble to the Wild Irish (1698). He said “on Sundays and Holydays, all the people resorted with the piper and fiddler to the village green”. When Thomas Dineley visited Ireland in 1680 he said in regards to music that people “with piper, harper, or fiddler, revell and dance the night throughout”. There’s a 17th-century reference to children in Cork being taught the Irish fiddle. When the fiddle was being mass-produced in Ireland, as opposed to more local makers, starting in Dublin with the likes of Thomas Perry (luthier), Thomas Molineux (luthier) and John Neal, they heavily based their craft on the English violin makers. Most were imported into Dublin from England. An instrument excavated during the 18th century in Dublin that was dated from the 11th century was made of dogwood with an animal carved on its tip. It was believed to have been the oldest bow in the world even though it is still unclear what instrument the bow belonged to. There may also be a reference to the Irish fiddle in the book of Leinster (ca. 1160). The fiddling tradition of Sligo is perhaps most recognisable to outsiders, due to the popularity of American-based performers like Michael Coleman, James Morrison and Paddy Killoran. These fiddlers did much to popularise Irish music in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. Other Sligo fiddlers included Martin Wynne and Fred Finn. Notable fiddlers from Clare include Mary Custy, Paddy Canny, Patrick Kelly, Peadar O’Loughlin, and Martin Hayes. Donegal has produced James Byrne, John Doherty, and Tommy Peoples. Sliabh Luachra, a small area between Counties Kerry and Cork, is known for Julia Clifford, her brother Denis Murphy, Sean McGuire, Paddy Cronin and Padraig O’Keeffe. Contemporary fiddlers from Sliabh Luachra include Matt Cranitch and Connie O’Connell. Modern performers include Kevin Burke, Máire Breatnach, Matt Cranitch, Paddy Cronin, Frankie Gavin, Paddy Glackin, Cathal Hayden, Martin Hayes, Peter Horan, Sean Keane, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Máiréad Nesbitt, Gerry O’Connor, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Dónal O’Connor and Paul O’Shaughnessy. There have been many notable fiddlers from United States in recent years such as Winifred Horan, Brian Conway, Liz Carroll, and Eileen Ivers.

Flute and whistle#

The flute has been an integral part of Irish traditional music since roughly the middle of the 19th century, when art musicians largely abandoned the wooden simple-system flute (having a conical bore, and fewer keys) for the metal Boehm system flutes of present-day classical music. Factory-made whistles started to be manufactured in Manchester in 1840, and the Feadóg Irish tin whistle was the most popular mass-produced model in Ireland. Although the choice of the Albert-system, wooden flute over the metal, was initially driven by the fact that being “outdated” castoffs, the old flutes were available cheaply second-hand. The wooden instrument has a distinct sound and continues to be commonly preferred by traditional musicians to this day. A number of players—Joanie Madden being perhaps the best known—use the Western concert flute, but many others find that the simple system flute best suits traditional fluting. Original flutes from the pre-Boehm era continue in use, but since the 1960s a number of craftspeople have revived the art of wooden flute making. Some flutes are even made of PVC; these are especially popular with new learners and as travelling instruments, being both less expensive than wooden instruments and far more resistant to changes in humidity. The tin whistle or metal whistle, which with its nearly identical fingering might be called a cousin of the simple-system flute, is also popular. It was mass-produced in 19th century Manchester England, as an inexpensive instrument. Clarke whistles almost identical to the first ones made by that company are still available, although the original version, pitched in C, has mostly been replaced for traditional music by whistles pitched in D, the “basic key” of traditional music. The other common design consists of a barrel made of seamless tubing fitted into a plastic or wooden mouthpiece. Skilled craftspeople make fine custom whistles from a range of materials including not only aluminium, brass, and steel tubing but synthetic materials and tropical hardwoods. Despite this, more than a few longtime professionals stick with ordinary factory made whistles. Irish schoolchildren are generally taught the rudiments of playing on the tin whistle, just as school children in many other countries are taught the soprano recorder. At one time the whistle was thought of by many traditional musicians as merely a sort of “beginner’s flute”, but that attitude has disappeared in the face of talented whistlers such as Mary Bergin, whose classic early seventies recording Feadóga Stáin (with bouzouki accompaniment by Alec Finn) is often credited with revolutionising the whistle’s place in the tradition. The low whistle, a derivative of the common tin whistle, is also popular, although some musicians find it less agile for session playing than the flute or the ordinary D whistle. Notable present-day flute-players (sometimes called ‘flautists’ or ‘fluters’) include Matt Molloy, Kevin Crawford, Peter Horan, Michael McGoldrick, Desi Wilkinson, Conal O’Grada, James Carty, Emer Mayock, Joanie Madden, Michael Tubridy and Catherine McEvoy, while whistlers include Paddy Moloney, Carmel Gunning, Paddy Keenan, Seán Ryan, Andrea Corr, Mary Bergin, Packie Byrne and Cormac Breatnach.

Uilleann pipes#

Uilleann pipes (pronounced ill-in or ill-yun) are a complex instrument. Tradition holds that seven years learning, seven years practising and seven years playing is required before a piper could be said to have mastered his instrument. The uilleann pipes developed around the beginning of the 18th century, the history of which is depicted in carvings and pictures from contemporary sources in both Britain and Ireland as pastoral and union pipes. Its modern form had arrived by the end of the 18th century, and was played by gentlemen pipers such as the mid-18th century piper Jackson from Limerick and the Tandragee pipemaker William Kennedy, the Anglican clergyman Canon James Goodman (1828–1896) and his friend John Hingston from Skibbereen. These were followed in the 20th century by the likes of Séamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome and Willie Clancy, playing refined and ornate pieces, as well as showy, ornamented forms played by travelling pipers like John Cash and Johnny Doran. The uilleann piping tradition had nearly died before being re-popularized by the likes of Paddy Moloney (of the Chieftains), and the formation of Na Píobairí Uilleann, an organisation open to pipers that included such players as Rowsome and Ennis, as well as researcher and collector Breandán Breathnach. Liam O’Flynn is one of the most popular of modern performers along with Paddy Keenan, Davy Spillane, Jerry O’Sullivan, and Mick O’Brien. Many Pavee (Traveller) families, such as the Fureys and Dorans and Keenans, are famous for the pipers among them. Uilleann pipes are among the most complex forms of bagpipes; they possess a chanter with a double reed and a two-octave range, three single-reed drones, and, in the complete version known as a full set, a trio of (regulators) all with double reeds and keys worked by the piper’s forearm, capable of providing harmonic support for the melody. (Virtually all uilleann pipers begin playing with a half set, lacking the regulators and consisting of only bellows, bag, chanter, and drones. Some choose never to play the full set, and many make little use of the regulators.) The bag is filled with air by a bellows held between the piper’s elbow and side, rather than by the performer’s lungs as in the highland pipes and almost all other forms of bagpipe, aside from the Scottish smallpipes, Pastoral pipes (which also plays with regulators), the Northumbrian pipes of northern England, and the Border pipes found in both parts of the Anglo-Scottish Border country. The uilleann pipes play a prominent part in a form of instrumental music called Fonn Mall, closely related to unaccompanied singing an sean nós (“in the old style”). Willie Clancy, Leo Rowsome, and Garret Barry were among the many pipers famous in their day; Paddy Keenan and Davy Spillane play these traditional airs today, among many others.

Harp#

The harp is among the chief symbols of Ireland. The Celtic harp, seen on Irish coinage and used in Guinness advertising, was played as long ago as the 10th century. In ancient times, the harpers were greatly respected and, along with poets and scribes, assigned a high place amongst the most significant retainers of the old Gaelic order of lords and chieftains. Perhaps the best known representative of this tradition of harping today is Turlough Ó Carolan, a blind 18th century harper who is often considered the unofficial national composer of Ireland. Thomas Connellan, a slightly earlier County Sligo harper, composed such well known airs as “The Dawning of the Day”/“Raglan Road” and “Carolan’s Dream”. The native Irish harping tradition was an aristocratic art music with its own canon and rules for arrangement and compositional structure, only tangentially associated with the folkloric music of the common people which is the ancestor of present-day Irish traditional music. Some of the late exponents of the harping tradition, such as O’Carolan, were influenced by the Italian Baroque art music of such composers as Vivaldi, which could be heard in the theatres and concert halls of Dublin. The harping tradition did not long outlast the native Gaelic aristocracy which supported it. By the early 19th century, the Irish harp and its music were, for all intents and purposes, dead. Tunes from the harping tradition survived only as unharmonised melodies which had been picked up by the folkloric tradition or were preserved as notated in collections such as Edward Bunting’s (he attended the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792) in which the tunes were most often modified to make them fit for the drawing room pianofortes of the Anglicised middle and upper classes. The first generations of 20th century revivalists mostly played the gut-strung (frequently replaced with nylon after the Second World War) neo-Celtic harp with the pads of their fingers rather than the old brass-strung harp plucked with long fingernails. They tended to take the dance tunes and song airs of Irish traditional music, along with such old harp tunes as they could find, and applied to them techniques derived from the orchestral (pedal) harp and an approach to rhythm, arrangement, and tempo that often had more in common with mainstream classical music than with either the old harping tradition or the living tradition of Irish music. A separate Belfast tradition of harp-accompanied folk-singing was preserved by the McPeake Family. In present day, a revival of the early Irish harp has been growing, with replicas of the medieval instruments being played, using strings of brass, silver, and even gold. This revival grew through the work of a number of musicians including Arnold Dolmetsch in 1930s England, Alan Stivell in 1960s Brittany, and Ann Heymann in the US from the 1970s to the present. In 2019, Irish harping was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, recognizing its cultural importance. Notable players of the modern harp include Derek Bell (of the Chieftains), Laoise Kelly (of the Bumblebees), Gráinne Hambly, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, Mary O’Hara, Antoinette McKenna, Áine Minogue, and Patrick Ball. However, the harp continues to occupy a niche in Irish traditional music, mainly for solo instrumental performance, or as the only accompaniment for an individual singer. Its melodic foreground role and background accompaniment role as a plucked or strummed string instrument has been subsumed by guitar, mandolin, and Irish bouzouki, etc., in ensemble performance.

Genre family: Irish folk music