It is not so well known but the fact is that germanic genes cannot survive at an altitude greater than 100 feet above sea level. This is why it is just so easy for anthropologists and the like to demarcate by geography alone what types of people inhabit the different regions of Britain and Ireland.
Its a real snack …
What does “Irish” mean?
My friend teaches pre-school in a certain city in the west of Ireland. She’s teaching a bunch of kids whose parents are African, Russian, Fillipino, etc. Some of 'em were born in Ireland before 2004, so have Irish citizenship. They live in Ireland now. But they don’t live/think/look/act like the other Irish kids do. Are they Irish?
I’m living in that same city. I look very similar to some cousins who are definitely Irish. I’ve got the passport and thus citizenship. I seem Irish to the Irish (at least in comparison to the Poles, Czech’s, Romanians, Latvians, etc). Some cousins introduce me to their friends as having come “home” for a visit. I play the music (but am pretty bad … you might call it having six months experience eight times over!) and love it. But I’m a Kiwi, and don’t think or feel Irish at all.
Go figure!
So what does a Kiwi feel like?
Extinct?
I have been to the Ennis Trad Festival numerous times. I have seen several individuals of obvious oriental descent playing in the sessions. There is also an fiddle player of oriental descent I have seen several times in sessions in Galway. What is “Trad” anyway? I’ve read books on “Trad” music and it seems there are so many influnces in Irish music, how can there be one pure Irish “Trad” style let alone, Irish only “Trad” musicians. Hopefully my message gets across, let’s all just play together and have fun with it.
Now in another idiom, the Scottish pipe band scene, we had to deal with bald racism.
Our pipe band reflected Los Angeles: we had several Philipino, black, and Hispanic members. This band had a very good run and over a couple competition seasons regularly came in 1st. However there was one particular competition where, three years in a row, the band placed very poorly. The difference? The other competitions used North American judges, while this one used Scottish judges.
The third year one of the Scottish judges pulled our band’s leader aside and told him, “You have a very good band there. But if you want to win you’ll have to get rid of all the black faces and all the brown faces.” Our leader was literally speechless.
Later, when recalling this incident, our leader would say, “If I got rid of all the black faces and all the brown faces I wouldn’t have a band!”
Our band got the last laugh by winning 1st at the world’s most prestigious pipe band competition, the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow.
Funny, after winning in Scotland there was no more talk of black faces and brown faces.
I’m full American. My family has been here since at least since the late 1800s. If you look at my ancestry, I’m Irish, Welsh, Scottish, English and there’s definately some of the Viking blood in me. What’s that make me? Well…I’m a damned Yinzer from Pittsburgh…that’s good enough of a definition of self for me to live with.
I play Traditional Music. Most of us old ex-punk rockers from the 70s and 80s seem to have moved in the direction of folk and traditional musics (Tommy Ramone is playing Bluegrass now).
Am I allowed to play what I want? Try to stop me…hehe.
Hi pancelticpiper
Those so called judges were nothing of the sort - they were assholes.
David
I believe this is because it is the direct ancestor to modern popular music.
wait waht? If you mean via american music, that’s not totally true… american music doesn’t come from irish music, tho they’re related. Not sure what you mean tho.
I wonder if I know who that is …
I think this is one of the dirty little secrets of the golden “come all ye” world of ITM abroad, at least in my experience in the US. It’s one thing for an accomplished Irish ex-pat trad musician to draw deserved acknowledgement of their expertise as a result of having had more ready access to the traditions, and having worked hard to reach that level. It’s quite another to wield that expertise as a club and play the Irish race or geography card for self-serving, non-musical reasons, because their esoteric skill happens to be valued by a limited group of aspiring non-pat enthusiasts. The compensatory ego trip; the big fish in a small pond in a very large country.
To be fair, most musical ex-pats and (visiting pats) I’ve met have been fair, honest, encouraging, and understanding of the challenges faced by committed players abroad, regardless of genealogy. But there’s sometimes a kind of cliquishness at the boundary of national pride that may communicate an exclusionary air, intentional or not. I suppose a certain amount of vetting by ordeal occurs in any specialized social group, as in the practice of the arts. But at worst, it becomes the kind of subtle or not so subtle bigotry and parochialism that pancelt described.
Country music’s direct ancestor is Irish and Scottish music.
Rock and Roll was a mix of the blues and country.
Mukade
I learned my music from my parents first, and my mother made sure Iheard a wide variety, but she also made sure I knew that my genes carried some of it too. Just because i wasn’t born where my great and great-greats were, doesn’t mean they didn’t carry any influence in my life. I love the music I love, and I play the music I love. Anyone thinks that’s wrong can better spend their attention on something else. 
Mmm, I disagree. I’m not sure exactly of Rock’s pedigree, but i know that coutnry music has its roots in American folk music, which comes from a lot of sources, but not very much from Irish music- Scottish yes, English yes, and the three are certainly related, but there’s not much of a direct Irish influence as far as I know. Either way, yes, Irish music and popualr music are very very related, and very very similar, so the point is there, I’m jsut splitting hairs 
Boy I’ve experienced that, as an American playing Irish music. Many Irish have the attitude that if you’re not Irish-born you shouldn’t attempt to play their music. Non-Irish players have to be very, very good to overcome this prejudice. I must admit that, in a sense, they are correct, in that most non-Irish people who attempt to play Irish music don’t ever attain a true native sound.
A friend who is a professional jazz musician, who happens to be white, encounters this all the time from black jazz players. He has to prove himself over and over, but no matter how good he is, he’s just a white guy trying to play black music.
I feel this same strange sense of entitlement about Appalachian music. When I encounter somebody who doesn’t have the accent playing “my” music, they had better be darn good.
Source?
Anyway, brief history of the unification of Scotland:
Yeah, I’ll give a to that too.
“Scot” meant “Irish” - Like Duns Scotus could be translated as “John the Irish”.
Many Irish have the attitude that if you’re not Irish-born you shouldn’t attempt to play their music. Non-Irish players have to be very, very good to overcome this prejudice.
As long as we’re flinging generalizations around, I’d say more Irish-American people have that attitude. I’ve never gotten any guff from actual Irish people about being an American who plays Irish music. But no matter how good you are, just try to get booked at Irish or “Celtic” festivals in the US if your band is all Americans of no particularly Irish ethnicity.
I’ll go even further and say that it’s related to another dirty-little-not-so-secret-anymore now that there are poorer countries than Ireland in the EU, and applies far more broadly than just to music.
Irish society in general is really struggling with accepting people from other cultures: “they” were fine when “they” lived “over there”, but having “them” living in the same street is a whole different ballgame. Local authorities here run explicitly-named anti-racism campaigns, but to my eye (coming from a country that was just as bad 20 years ago) there is a long, long way to go.
(Yes, I’m choosing my words very carefully here, not wanting to “give out” at anyone in particular, just to name the trends I’m seeing.)
In terms of ex-pat communities in general, often true that XXX people in Somewhere-Overseas are more XXX-ish than the ones at home: this makes sense because the ex-pats are trying to preserve their identity, while the current residents are able to develop and interact with the changing world far more freely.
I once knew a lady who grew up in a little hick suburb of Houston, but discovered her “irish roots” (meaning some great grandpappy somewhere had some smidge of irish blood) into her 50’s.
She took on every irish stereotype you could think of, from the love of Guinness to the hatred of the English. I used to say she was “more Irish than any Irish person I knew”
Being an American Mongrel, with Anglo/Euro/Native American “roots,” I love and play Mongrel Music. Irish sounds are a particular love, and they truly inform my own music. Couldn’t care less about being accepted by a “true Irishman.” (Or a “true” Frenchman, or Englishman, or Native American, etc ad nauseum. I incorporate you all. That’s all. Enjoy!)
Playing music IS a great joy, in this life. Herd politics are B.S.
Well said, A. That’s exactly the way I feel. I love Irish and Scottish music, and I have Irish and Scottish “roots” (great story, Wanderer–did that lady like Green Beer, too?), but I live in Wyoming. I’m not trying to recreate a musical culture that just doesn’t exist here. And I’m not too worried about being accepted by musicians from Ireland or Scotland, though I would surely have a lot to learn from someone like that.
Maybe that’s where the much-maligned term “Celtic music” comes in handy. It seems like most of us aren’t trying to be Irish, or Scottish Highlanders, or whatever. We love the music, and we try to learn it, and it blends in with our lives in the here-and-now.
That’ll be $.02
Over in the Pub, Mutepoint suggested we all have little tags in our signature line so people know where we stand on the issues of the day. Maybe we should have the same thing with our music.
Tom
[admirer of trad playing/players] [not much of a purist trad-wise, myself] [whistle, bodhran, guitar, and euphonium player] [Celtic/classical/bluegrass/jazz mongrel] [admirer of Mack Hoover and Tony Dixon] [living in a 100% session-free zone] [aspiring to be a great musician, but not there yet]