Is Irish music getting watered down by thinking of Irish music as a universal language?
It’s the basis of what I do. I think a lot of it is kind of individual But I made a conscious decision about that though, at an early age in music, at about thirteen or fourteen. I grew up in it, and of course I had access to all kinds of different styles. But I decided to play the music of the locality, because I had maybe selfish reasons at the time: “Oh, here’s a unique style of music, here’s a whole new way of doing it” – not a new way, but here’s something that would be unique. So I did it in a very calculated manner in the beginning. In later years I was grateful for it, that I had, for whatever reason or other, gotten into listening to the music of the old concertina players, whistle players, fiddle players, around the locality Because it’s nice to pay homage to them, and it’s nice to acknowledge their part in it, but very often the real richness of what they’re doing is overlooked. It’s all very well to say Junior Crehan is the last of the maybe real old West Clare fiddlers, an
