I thought it was genuinely cool. I thought the Horslips who mutated into a trad rock band were seriously cool as did most of my contemporaries. I’d say at one stage the Horslips were the most popular touring act in Ireland. The Comhaltas crowd hated them because they thought they had sold out.
The other folk acts were cool as well. People my age who were into various types of imported rock would also go out gigging most weekends. The touring bands were mostly Irish folk/trad bands, Planxty, Christy Moore, Wolfe Tones, Bothy Band, Makem and Clancy, The Fureys, Luke Kelly, the Dubliners. and so on. So you’d be fans of trad in parallel with whatever musical tribe you belonged to, mod, rocker, glam, reggae whatever.
Just to add to that. We were all expected to have a song to sing on a night out. At least one. Unless you sang the Boxer or American Pie the song was usually Irish. The song had to have a good chorus for everyone to join in, so I could sing Nancy Spain, Clare to Here, Waltzing Matilda, the Green Fields of France, Fiddlers Green, Spancil Hill and so on.
Youd be into gaa and Irish history so would be a bit of a natural constituency for it too though. My father and uncles were well into it too. It must have been a genuinely exciting post colonial phenomenon. Moving away from the kind of embarrassment I’d imagine was there among young people before and unfortunately after. It seems kind of cool again to sing the likes of grace and Sean south and these songs among the fade and cocaine generation.
Yes true. But I don’t remember a lot of push back against the likes of Christy Moore and Planxty in Hot Press. They mocked the Wolfe Tones alright but not folk music generally, because they’d have nothing to write about and they’d have alienated most of their readers. Christy in particular was huge business in the early 80s headlining festivals and so on.
Moving away from what was considered Irish music before, the Macushla, when Irish eyes are smiling school of Irish music was definitely part of it alright.
I think Irish ‘folk’ differs for the reasons outlined… It’s a different branch of the same tree. They over lap i suppose. But you’d have lot of Irish artists playing cords or songs dating back a couple of hundred years. Before ‘folk’ was a thing… Anyway, even within traditional music you’d have a lot of variety. Would you dismiss Martin Hayes as ear bleeding?
He’s considered one of the best in the world on the fiddle, he’s brilliant, but I don’t want to listen to it, there’s lots of music out there,
You can turn a traditional tune into a folk song, tell a story, then I’ll love it.
I can sing scores of Irish songs, possibly over 100, I love Irish songs, but if the Tulla ceili band rocked up to my kitchen I’d take the dog for a walk
I appreciate folk owes some of its origins to trad, but it’s a much more evolved and accessible form of music. Irish trad is all over the place, it’s like a box of scrabble.
I never considered that there was a huge distinction between folk and trad. Planxty would commence a number with a song (=folk?) and merge it into a jig or a reel (=trad?). Where was the distinction?
The Bothy Band would play this. It’s a traditional folk song
I thought it was all just “Irish” music. There were bits of Irish music I didn’t like, like Sean Nòs which never did it for me and loads that I did like.
There was also the backdrop of the 50th anniversary of the Rising, Mise Eire, the Troubles in the North, the arrival of British television and the sense that protecting things that distinguished us as Irish was important. Oh and the tourists loved it and when you were abroad young wans were amazed that we could all sing and we’d double down and trot out the romantic numbers like Black is the Colour.
I’d agree with all that. It’s all interconnected… im not gone on a lot of the ceili band type stuff myself… The concertina/ accordion stuff isn’t for me personally. But to have lads spitting on traditional music who themselves are all about rap music, and popping a cap in someone, would make you laugh. Blaring Tupac with the windows down thinking they’re with it
My father and his brothers would all be good guitar players, so i rarely sing their sessions as theyd be asking me stupid questions like “What key are you going to sing in” and then try fruitlessly to follow me.
Can’t recall his name just now but it’ll come to me yet. I was always a huge fan of the dulcet tones of Ciaran MacMahúna back in those days.
I’ll report later (hopefully). Good summarisation of the trad/folk scene.
Lets not get carried away. Theres nothing technically difficult about irish music- two or three keys, two octaves and no need to fill a concert hall acoustically. In terms of technique its like comparing a pub pool player to a professional snooker player. Classical, jazz and klezmer all leave in in the hapenny place
