Composed for West Marin Irish Music Players www. irishmusicplayers.blogspot.co

Traditional Irish music is essentially dance music. The Irish, like many peoples, have a long tradition of music and dance. At one time virtually every village, town and urban neighborhood had a community dance at least weekly, where everyone—with the exception of the musicians—could be found on the floor doing jigs and reels; in the eighteenth century waltzes were imported, and later polkas, but jigs and reels (and their variant hornpipes, slip jigs and slides) remained the mainstays. The musicians—fiddlers, pipers, harpists, flutists, and, later, whistle, concertina and guitar players—were held in high regard. They learned to play the same tunes over and over, as well as learning new ones as contact with neighboring counties, and with the rest of Europe, brought changes to the dances and to their repertoire. And as a series of calamities in Ireland—natural disasters as well as political upheaval—scattered her children all over the world, the music and dance went with them, making Irish perhaps the most widespread folk tradition on Earth.

This tradition of playing for dancers developed in parallel to another: the musicians would gather on their own, often but not always at the local pub, for sessions: they would play the same tunes without the dancers, for practice, for learning, and for their own pleasure. Often a musician would wander by from another region of Ireland, and sit in on a session to see how tunes were played locally, and to show the style where he or she came from. These sessions became, for the musicians, an essential part of the music tradition.

About a generation ago the link between the musicians and the dancers was broken; not many people dance the traditional dances anymore. But the session tradition lives on: musicians still gather, often but not always at the local pub, to play the old tunes, and some new ones, for learning, for practice and their own pleasure (as well as that of the audiences fortunate enough to be there). As part of the recent resurgence of interest in all things Irish, and otherwise Celtic, sessions may be found all over the world, in all kinds of locales, any day of the week.