Irish Music - From Fiddles to Punk

For a small country, Ireland punches above its weight in the music stakes. Beyond Bono and Sinead, Irish music is varied in style and has a lively local scene.

Traditional, or Trad, Irish music has retained a vibrancy rarely found in other traditional forms. Perhaps it's because the songs are intimately associated with pub sessions. Rollicking bands such as the Dubliners and the Fureys have popularised the style, while the Wolfe Tones have taken it even further, being described as 'the rabble end of the rebel song tradition'. Of the contemporary singer-songwriters, Christy Moore is the most prominent playing in a broadly traditional idiom.

A traditional band might feature such instruments as a fiddle, flute, accordion, bodhrán (goat-skin drum) and uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes). For an absorbing week of traditional music, the town of Ennis in County Clare hosts Fleadh Nua, staged during the third week of May. The Temple Bar Trad Music festival is held in Dublin over the last weekend in January. If you have your own instrument, be sure to pack it - sessions are frequently open to all-comers.

The Irish have a knack for producing brilliant rock acts, such as Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy, and Bob Geldof's Boomtown Rats. Of all the Irish acts that followed in U2's wake during the 1980s and early 1990s, a few managed to comfortably avoid being tarred with 'the next U2' burden. London-based Irish rabble-rousers The Pogues played a compelling blend of punk and Irish folk, made all the better by the singular figure of Shane McGowan, whose empathetic and lucid song-writing talent was eventually overshadowed by his chronic alcoholism. Still, McGowan is credited with writing Ireland's favourite song, 'A Fairytale of New York', sung with emotional fervour by everyone around Christmas.

Sinead O'Connor thrived by acting like a U2 antidote - whatever they were into she was not - and by having a damn fine voice. And then there was My Bloody Valentine, the pioneers of late 1980s guitar-distorted shoegazer rock: their 1991 album 'Loveless' is one of the best Irish albums of all time.

Other successful artists of recent years include Future Kings of Spain, Damien Rice and The Frames. Ireland's finest rock acts often take stage at Vicar Street in Dublin and in Northern Ireland, at the Belfast Empire.