Since the age of four, when my mother first played the irrepressible song “Off to Dublin in the Green” by an obscure group called The Abbey Tavern Singers, I’ve been hooked on traditional Irish folk music.
Sure, I grew up to love the likes of U2, Van Morrison and Sinead O’Connor, but it’s the Celtic carnival – full of tin whistles, banjos, fiddles, accordions, mandolins, Uilleann pipes and bodhran drums – that really gets my shamrocks shaking, especially when played in its natural environment, the traditional Irish public house (i.e. pub).
That unlikely 1966 hit (it reached No. 2 in Canada) opened the door for me to an album’s worth of lively songs, but it was the hilarious “The Orange and the Green” – Oh it is the biggest mix-up that you had ever seen, my father he was orange and me mother she was green – that coloured my fledgling musical tastes and set me on a life-long path to find and follow Irish “trad” through legendary performers like The Dubliners and The Chieftains, as well as upstarts like The Pogues and Canadian-Celtic bands Spirit of the West, Great Big Sea (and even the transplanted Irish Rovers, who had their CBC TV show for seven years in the ‘70s).
Imagine my delight then when a visit to Dublin a few years ago coincided with the annual TradFest music festival, which allowed me to not only see the sites of the Irish capital, but frame the experience with an exquisite soundtrack of haunting ballads, spirited jigs and reels, and even the odd old rebel song – which has the unique capacity to make one want to dance, laugh, and recoil at the horror of the historic British-Irish conflict all at the same time.
And to sip frothy Guinness and smooth Irish whisky while doing so, of course.
Having launched in 2006, Tradfest has evolved into Ireland’s largest festival of traditional music, with performance venues as varied and venerable as City Hall and the knave of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, befitting a style of music that can be ethereal and heart-rending, as well as raucous or simply toe-tapping.
That a cultural festival like TradFest – “trad” being Irish slang for traditional – is thriving in 2024 (it was recently held in January and will return Jan. 22-26, 2025) and attracting thousands of locals and visitors alike is a testament to the explosion of traditional Irish culture in recent years.
Indeed, I had attempted a similar musical pilgrimage to the Emerald Isle in the mid-1980s with a considerably different and disappointing outcome, having found authentic Celtic music hard to find.
But today music is omnipresent in Ireland, and in Dublin (as elsewhere) dozens of pubs declare their musical intentions: “Music Tonight!” in windows and on placards.
Similarly, with an army of street musicians throughout the city, especially on the Grafton Street pedestrian thoroughfare, music never seems out of earshot.
Dutch journalist Harry de Jong, who has been covering the Irish music since the 1960s, when a first wave of Irish folk music artists appeared to “conquer the world” and inspire artists like Bob Dylan, told me during my visit that the current traditional music scene in Ireland really began to take root again about a 15 years ago. “People, tourists, used to come here and have no idea what was going on musically,” he said.
Like many others I met, Geraldine Byrne, who belongs to the fourth generation of her family that operated the Charles Byrne music shop on Lower Stephen Street (until its sad closing during the pandemic in 2021), attributed Ireland’s overall cultural renaissance, including a revival of the Gaelic language and artisanal food, to the steadily growing confidence of its people as they continue to emerge from a long history marked by British dominance.
Similarly, the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom of the mid ‘90s to mid ‘2000s was also pivotal to the music and overall cultural scene, but not for the reasons one might expect. When boom went bust and the recession arrived in 2008, people were left to “invest in themselves,” including a return to familiar Irish family-oriented musical heritage, Byrne explained, adding, “People played music again, they went to people’s houses for music.” And until the pandemic, her shop was flooded with youth coming in to buy their first traditional instruments.
“You wait and see,” she declared, “in 10 years there are going to be some incredible [Irish] bands.”
For my part, I was simply grateful to be able to tune into a host of incredible performers in the present at the TradFest I attended, ranging from the angelic Donegal balladry of sisters Maighread and Triona Dhomhnaill, to legendary singer-songwriters Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny, and the aptly named Blazing Fiddles.
Pubs
But for all the festival’s staged beauty, I still longed for the heartbeat of my passion: a traditional music pub. But which of the city’s 750 or so pubs to choose? An easily made friend in one establishment was adamant: The Stag’s Head was the place to be for “the best music in town.”
Happily, his advice was no blarney: The pub was hot and noisy and crammed downstairs – exactly as desired (and required) – with a four-piece band knocking out song after song that everyone seemed to know. Patrons danced and swayed, and intimate friends were made through proximity and drink. And the banjo player impulsively jumped up to take a whirl with a pretty “Galway Girl” – because, I ask you friend, what’s a man to do, when her hair is black and her eyes are blue?
Eventually, reluctantly, I left, certain the experience would stay with me for a long while (it did!). The singer caught my eye as I went, and I returned the gaze, inspired to offer a smile and a hearty thumbs-up: to him, the band, the music, and to Dublin.
Where to listen: While there’s no shortage of pubs and music bars in Dublin, don’t miss downstairs at The Stag’s Head, 1 Dame Ct. Some other notables include The Brazen Head, 20 Lower Bridge St, Usher’s Quay; O’Donaghues, 15 Merrion Row; The Cobblestone, Smithfields; and Mary’s Bar & Hardware, 8 Wicklow St. But sometimes making your own discovery is the sweetest tune of all.