Irish music

The first time I got in touch with Irish music was from movie The Lord of Rings. There are several Irish style soundtracks in it when characters approached some mysterious forests or step in a wonderland, which makes me relate Irish music to mystery and archaism since then. When it comes to mystery, it must have something to do with history and tradition. Indeed, Irish music is a branch of Celtic music which has more than a thousand-year history and function as a bond of Irish, Scottish, Cornish and Welsh.

The living Irish music of yesterday was awesome. It was a small band that never has fixed players and playing places while there were seven musicians yesterday, each of them was in charge of different instrument and role during the performance. Usually, the Irish music is accomplished by these typical instruments—flute and whistle, uilleann pipes, accordion, concertina, banjo, guitar, bodhrán, harp and so on. When I first came into the Runcible Spoon, I can hardly tell which part of attendance were musicians which part was not. There was no stage and all the musicians dressed casually, some people sat around them were listening and watching, some were nodding and singing along, making it no distinction or boundary between performers and audience. The only mark to tell the musicians from others was the instruments in their hands and songs in their mouth. Then whole atmosphere was neither as intensive as a personal concert nor as prime or serious as symphony concert. We could chat with them while they took a break after each song. Every one around is relaxed and feels free to enjoy the music

The way they played songs was interesting. One of them started a song and others tried following the rhythm and tune. If they all can play it they will have an ensemble, if some of them can’t play, they just drop it and change another songs. It makes every performer easy to follow and devote into music, as well as audience. They played three or four songs, which all sounded similar, and each song repeated a main and simple tune so that it was effortless to play. It is exactly the purpose of participatory music: no restriction or limitation on the way music performed, on musicians’ perfection of performance and audience’s involvement; participatory encourages full participation and interaction. People joined the music by swaying their body with music, clapping for them.  

Musicians gave us different answers about why played the Irish music there. Some were for free drinks, some were for sparing time, but no matter what there is a common motivation makes them be together, that is their love for Irish music and their needs to feel sense of belonging through the bonds of music.      

When I listen to Irish music, I always feel a sense of sorrow. Actually, Ireland used to be a lean and necessitous land both on natural resource and economics; it also groaned under political restraints. That’s why their music contains a sort of vagrom and blue elements.