Irish Traditional Music and the Magic of the Session
6 min read
Walk into the right pub on the right night anywhere in Ireland and you’ll find a handful of musicians gathered around a table, instruments out, playing tune after tune with no sheet music in sight. This is the session - the beating heart of Irish traditional music, and one of the great living folk traditions of Europe. Here’s how to understand and enjoy it.
The instruments
Irish trad has a distinctive palette. The fiddle (a violin by another name) and the tin whistle are the most common and accessible. The wooden flute adds a breathy warmth. The uilleann pipes - Ireland’s own bellows-blown bagpipes, far sweeter than the Scottish kind - are the most complex and prized. Rhythm comes from the bodhrán, a handheld goatskin drum played with a small wooden beater, and melody is filled out by button accordions, concertinas and the four-string tenor banjo. There’s rarely a conductor and never a singer over the tunes - the music does the talking.
Jigs, reels and the rest
The tunes themselves come in types defined by their rhythm. Reels are fast and in common time; jigs have a rolling 6/8 lilt; hornpipes are slower and more deliberate; slip jigs, polkas and slides round out the family. Musicians string several tunes of the same type together into a “set”, switching seamlessly from one to the next on a nod. Most of the thousands of tunes in circulation are generations old and have names - “The Sally Gardens”, “The Kesh Jig”, “Drowsy Maggie” - though plenty of players know the tune long before they know what it’s called.
How a session works
A session is informal and unpaid - musicians come for the love of it. Someone starts a tune, others join if they know it, and it ebbs and flows by unspoken etiquette. The music is learned by ear, not from notation, passed from player to player exactly as it has been for centuries. If you’re a visitor, you’re very welcome to sit close and listen, but mind the etiquette: keep chat low while they play, don’t talk over a song if someone sings, and ask before joining in with an instrument.
Where to find it
Counties Clare, Galway, Kerry, Donegal and Sligo are particularly rich in trad, but you’ll find sessions the length of the country. The organisation Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann has promoted the music since 1951, and the annual Fleadh Cheoil is its great festival - a town overtaken for a week by music on every corner. Catch even one good session and you’ll understand why people travel across the world for it.
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