The Myth of Traditional Music's Popularity
Hammy Hamilton
Flute player Hammy Hamilton counters the view that traditional music is widely popular in Ireland.
The following is based on a paper that was read to the American Conference for Irish Studies in Philadelphia in 1995. My initial concern, at the time that this was written, was that the everyday experience of the traditional music performer was radically different to the impression given via the media about the role and position that traditional music enjoyed in mid-1990s Ireland. At the time, as lecturer in traditional music at the Waterford Regional Technical College (now Waterford I.T.), I had the opportunity to try and show that the performer’s perception was not imaginary. In retrospect, I think the findings of this study were not only true at the time, but that the situation has certainly not improved in the six years under the aegis of the ‘Celtic Tiger’.
The idea that Irish music (for which, read Irish traditional music, traditional music, and folk music, as often interchangeable terms) is perceived as being a popular form is widespread via both the print and electronic media. The development in recent years of music that uses some elements of traditional music in forms that are otherwise basically commercially driven has been no small factor in reinforcing this perception.
I intend, however, to choose another expression of this claimed popularity as one of the bases of this paper. In 1983, the Arts Council published the...
