What we speak of as Irish traditional music (ITM) comprises the body of music, song and dance created in Ireland by Irish people, that has a direct stylistic lineage from the music of the past.
The term "traditional music" is a relatively modern usage, and it is employed to denote a body of music which is distinctive in particular ways. It is not a rigorous term in any sense. It is a label used to denote a musical genre, or group of genres, that has already been identified by other means. The way a musician acquires his or her understanding of what is ITM and what is not is simply by exposure to older musicians who have this sense of discrimination, which they themselves inherited in their day. The sense of the boundaries between ITM and non-ITM is itself part of the inheritance of every traditional musician. There is, of course, blurring around the edges. The boundaries, where there is uncertainty about the status of particular items, is where change and development takes place.
There has been considerable change and development in Irish traditional music during the past century or two. The dominant language of the songs has changed; new instruments have been introduced and assimilated; new material has been created in all disciplines, borrowing from, and thereby incorporating into ITM, ideas from the popular music of the day; types of music once regarded as non-traditional or even non-Irish have been accepted and are now seen as part of ITM, which becomes richer and more complex by their inclusion.
These days the term "traditional" must be used to distinguish the musician's chosen style, but in other times there were not other competing musics. There was thus no need for a distinguishing term, and none was employed. In those parts of Ireland where the tradition has survived in a healthy state the practitioners speak simply of "the music".
In the last century and before, what we now call "traditional" music was the popular music of the majority of the people, and it was referred to as "popular music" by some writers. In the fifties and sixties of this century the term "folk music" was used until the meaning of that term was altered by commercial pressures to mean something quite different. In 1971 Breandán Breathnach published his Folk Music and Dances of Ireland, and helped to found the Folk Music Society of Ireland. It is doubtful, given the transformation in the popular understanding of that term, whether he would have used that name twenty years later. A long-established international academic body, the International Folk Music Council felt obliged in the early 90s to change its name to the International Traditional Music Council, for the same reasons outlined above.
This fundamental act of discrimination is not the perquisite of any individual or group, but is composed of all the individual choices of the entire ITM community, i.e. those who practise the music, its custodians. The operation of the sense of discrimination has several beneficial effects. It creates a recognisable musical space, with its stylistic rules, which is distinctive and distinctively Irish. It creates a framework within which musical excellence can be achieved, in which innovation may be attempted, and in which both can be recognised. Change, as well as consolidation, within ITM has generally been introduced or implemented by the ITM community itself.
A great deal of indignation and anger has been caused in recent years by attempts by non-traditional musicians to usurp the right to effect change in a music which, in a sense, is not theirs to change. Traditional musicians who have cherished and played their music for a lifetime purely for the love of it take considerable exception to commercial or academic interests strip-mining it for their own purposes. The media's general low level of understanding of the music, and fascination with novelty, operates to facilitate and encourage this type of exploitation. Those who are ignorant of the music but trick around with it are lauded as innovators, while those who might have contributed to its healthy development are damned as "purists".
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