Okay, I’ve been pondering this for a bit. Not quite fully getting how you are demarcating this divide in the above quote, I’m sort of getting “those born to the tradition” to mean “keepers of the faith”, but this seems like a mistake on my part. After all, there are plenty among the amateur enthusiasts who are among the “keepers”, and plenty of nonnative players who are demonstrably excellent and are sought out by good native players for collaboration in performance and recording projects. Some are legitimately born to the tradition outside of Ireland, and some have come to be exponents from a starting-point outside of the tradition. I’ll try to work around this, though.
Not to be glib, but I think the common ground is the music itself (and I mean this in the broadest sense, not just the plunking out of notes to get a tune’s bones out). There’s nothing else to start from, as I see it.
From there it remains to be seen how it pans out in the playing to affect the lay of the land, and, too, the fact of personality differences factors in. Some social possibilities just don’t “click” no matter how excellent the abilities and understanding, and common the roots, of all parties concerned. What I’m getting at is that the music being inevitably at some point a social venture (and, so, a comparative one musically and behaviorally and chemistry-wise; after all, that’s what we humans do), that’s where common ground works, or becomes irrelevant.
Just going by the example of some of our local sessions, all I can say is that some born to the tradition have said, unsolicited, that they like them, and others haven’t said much, so it’s hard to say. I haven’t heard anyone slagging on the basis of poor musicianship but in one case, and that was from a known sour-grapes-when-at-his-worst sort. So, it may well be that everyone else is just being polite. But: they keep coming back when they’re around, so what’s the answer, here? I think it’s the music, and the honest efforts of the locals to do their best at keeping the tradition a living, close-to-the-bone thing. Kind of hard not to when so many are able to travel to the source often enough for study’s sake, and that the Irish themselves offer their time up to instruct others. Then, too, one shows up in hopes of meeting up with those one has good rapport with. But the music is the glue.
In a nutshell, IMO any non-common ground lies outside the music itself. I’ll have to think more on this, though.
(Edit) Re: the title of the thread, which to my mind is a somewhat different tack from the opening line quoted above: I suppose it depends on who’s talking. Considering that the Irish Diaspora has arguably fulfilled one of its hoped-for roles of preserving at least some aspect cultural identity, and that the traditional music is now very much alive and well again on its native soil, I suppose our role is now marginal at best. So what. I’m enjoying myself.
