The Saturday night ‘session’ is in full swing in the Crown and Shamrock, a small and softly lit Irish pub situated off a secluded country road. Led by a grey-haired uilleann piper (an Irish bag pipe) and a young female fiddle-player, five musicians sit around two of about 10 tables in the pub’s lounge. Joining the pipes and fiddle are a guitarist, a flute player and a bodhrán player (a bodhrán is an Irish drum – pronounced ‘bough-rawn’).

A banjo, a box of fiddle rosin, two pints of stout, and two glasses of orange juice rest on their tables. The jig the musicians are all playing is lively and hypnotic; their sound clear and balanced. Quality music, real ‘trad’, fills the pub with magic.

The players are oblivious to their audience of maybe 40 locals. A few patrons near the musicians are listening intently and they provide the occasional ‘ye-oo’ of encouragement. Most are sitting further away though, talking and laughing. The jig comes to an end and all of a sudden, through murmurs of appreciation, the piper calls “shush” – a man is going to sing séan nos (Gaelic for ‘in the old way’). This means no musical accompaniment.

The Crown and Shamrock crowd respectfully quietens (including the pool-players in an adjoining room, who actually stop their game) and the singer delivers an exquisite, highly ornamented Gaelic lament, the type that takes you back centuries and which makes Irish singing so timeless and profound. When he finishes there are shouts of ‘good man’ and ‘grand job, Jamesy!’ Seconds later a new tune is away and the patrons go back to the craic – Irish for ‘fun’ – they were having before.

Living tradition

This is County Tipperary. But it could be anywhere in Ireland. And it could be many other towns on the planet. The Irish would say sessions are at their best  in Ireland, but the worldwide penetration and popularity of traditional Irish music is such that you can drop in on one from Skibbereen to Southampton to Singapore to Sidney to Sacramento.

“A good trad session can send you home happy, leave you walking on air and keep your mind filled with music for a whole week,” says Crown and Shamrock regular Pat O’Donnell.

“There is nothing like it. The tunes they are playing are handed down from one generation to the next and come from a living tradition of dance music dating back 300 years.”

Three hundred? Who knows? There is great debate about just how far back the origins of traditional Irish music go; some say it’s more than a thousand years. Although absolutely integral now, the session is actually just a fairly recent addition to the long history of Irish music. In times gone by the bards and musicians only played solo. They jealously guarded their tunes in case their rivals stole them and used their melodies to make money – and this goes some way to explaining the dominance of the melody in Irish music.

When you stay in an Irish Bed and Breakfast, don’t be surprised if an unexpected trad session takes place in your B&B. Many bed and breakfast owners enjoy traditional Irish music and play instruments themselves.  Your hosts will know the best local pubs where you can find traditional Irish music sessions most nights.

Temple Bar Tradfest

Fast-forward, let’s say a thousand years, to contemporary Dublin, where the melodies fly off the fiddles at the Temple Bar Trad Fest every January. The first big trad event of the year, this programme of authentic Irish music and culture is mostly free of charge.

Temple Bar is the Irish capital’s cultural quarter; it’s chock-full of arts and entertainment venues set within narrow cobbled streets still preserved in their medieval street pattern. By all accounts the various pubs in the area – worthwhile destinations for craic in themselves – are bouncing with live performances during Trad Fest. Dublin offers a great selection of Bed and Breakfast accommodation with B&B Ireland.

Take in a fleadh

Another way to ‘go traditional’ in Ireland is to head for what’s called a fleadh (pronounced ‘flah’), and the ‘All-Ireland Fleadh’ in particular is one of best places to understand the Irish trad phenomenon.

A fleadh is a festival of traditional Irish culture – music, song and dance – with a competitive edge. There are dozens of them all over the country from April to August, with the national ‘all-Ireland’ event being the largest and most significant. It stages the finals of county and regional musical competitions that have taken place through the year. It’s every traditional musician’s dream to lift an all-Ireland crown on his or her instrument. Many famous names in Irish music ‘graduated’ through the ‘all-Irelands’ including virtuoso fiddle-player Frankie Gavin from super-group De Dannan and Michael Flatley of Riverdance fame, who is also a fantastic flute player.

The energy of the all-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil is unbelievable. As many as 12,000 compete; but 250,000 fromIrelandand from all over the world turn it into the mightiest of sessions. Spontaneous music breaks out everywhere from dawn to dusk and into the wee hours. Every street-corner, spare piece of ground, pub and hotel is taken up with sessions and there´s a customary céad míle fáilte (a hundred thousand welcomes) from the host town for anyone to take part in the music-loving camaraderie.

Summer schools

For anyone who wants to go further and start or continue to learn traditional Irish music, many summer schools take place over the July–August period.

The Willie Clancy Festival in Miltown Malbay, County Clare, is the largest summer school in the country, named after one of Ireland´s foremost pipers.

Up to a thousand students from all over the world attend daily classes taught by experts in Irish music and dance. A full programme of lectures, recitals, dances and exhibitions are open to the public.

But it’s no surprise that devotees of ‘Willie Week’ also gather for the extraordinary quality of the impromptu sessions that run non-stop, day and night on the streets and in the pubs. Traditional music, and arguably all music in Ireland, is part of the menu of people, place and pace the Emerald Isle serves up so well. Visitors love it because it is unique, authentic, genuine. Trad captures the soul of the Irish, and allows them to express identity in a way that seems to touch almost everyone.

A musical instrument – the harp – is Ireland’s national emblem. Now there’s a surprise.