A Different Music

Our traditional music has proved eminently amenable to annexation into the fuzzy universe of so-called world music. To a large extent "the real thing" has disappeared back into the ghettoes where "purists" pursue their solitary pleasures. While very often the fusions and confusions of world music generate exciting results, nobody should gullibly accept that the resultant levelling constitutes some kind of progressive merging of disparate cultures. The unhealthy illusion that the Irish are somehow conquering the world by subjecting different musical idioms to the "Celtic" treatment masks the reality: traditional music is bein absorbed into a mid-Atlantic mush that ultimately derives its flavour from US-American cultural imperialism. Again the purportedly global reveals its inherent parochialism.

Raymond Deane 
The Irish Times
Tuesday December 28 1999