‘In Ireland a funeral seems like a wedding. In Italy a wedding seems like a funeral’
The lifeblood of traditional and folk music lies in the ties that bind singers and musicians to one another, the often invisible threads allowing melodies and lyrics to flow from one generation to the next. The most creative recognise the inheritance while still making the music their own. At its best it’s a gloriously porous world, alive to external influences that can breathe fresh life and ideas into the tradition. Where would we be if Andy Irvine hadn’t travelled the Balkans in the 1960s, returning with the most intricate rhythms from Bulgaria? And what of the riches of the so-called Child ballads, which the Harvard professor Francis James Child gathered in England and Scotland in the second half of the 19th century, and which wended their way into the repertoires of Elizabeth Cronin, Mary McPartlan and Planxty? Countless Irish musicians have collaborated fruitfully with an enigmatic Italian musician of Argentinian…