Many people associate Irish music with folk songs played in pubs, poignant lyrics rooted in oral tradition, distinctive instruments like the fiddle, the penny whistle, drums and the uilleann pipes, a type of Irish bagpipe.
For centuries, traditional Irish music was also a clandestine oral history of political rebellion and cultural resistance to British colonial rule and part of the fight for Irish independence.
Starting in the 1960s, Irish bands like The Dubliners and The Chieftains brought traditional music to global audiences.
Since then, the big tent of what the world thinks of as Irish music expanded to include The Pogues, U2, Sinéad O’Connor and Enya, not to mention hip-hop, blues and alt rock.
“There’s a remarkable thing in our young Irish artists at the moment,” Irish Times writer Patrick Freyne said. “There’s a lot of confidence in Irish culture, confidence in the Irish language and also confidence to be outspoken politically that I’m not seeing everywhere else.”
Music recommendations from Patrick Freyne
5 questions with Patrick Freyne
I want to start with one of your favorites, the Dublin band Lankum. You have called Lankum’s lead singer Radie Peat, the voice of the new folk revival in Ireland. What is it that makes her so special?
“Well, the band are kind of fascinating because there is this new wave of folk music. There are very kind of political bands that sing traditional melodies and songs, but with a droning, punky beat behind them. And they’ve kind of become huge in recent times. And she just sounds otherworldly. Her voice is incredible. There’s a lot of great singers in the Irish folk tradition at the moment.”
Some of the new Irish artists are political. There’s one who goes by her initials CMAT. What is her song “Euro Country” about?
“CMAT is an amazing pop singer and songwriter. And that song, which came out last year, touches on the recession Ireland had, like everyone else in the world, in the middle of the 2000s, at the end of the economic boom, and it is thought that that song is one of the reasons that Bertie Ahern, the Irish leader at the time, did not run in the presidential election last year. There’s a remarkable thing in Irish art, young Irish artists. There’s a lot of confidence in Irish culture, confidence in the Irish language.”
Performers are now also singing with their natural Irish accents rather than Americanizing their speech in the way that U2 and Van Morrison used to.
“I think it’s that confidence. Like when I would have been in bands myself in the 90s and it would never have occurred to us to sing in our natural accents. But these bands, I think they grew up in a different country. They kind of came into the world, all these younger people, with the sense of Ireland having its own validity.”
A song my entire family fell in love with a couple of years ago is “The Spark.” It’s sung by a group of multicultural Irish school kids, including refugees from Africa and from the Middle East. Why do you think that song became such a phenomenon?
“Well, it’s a banger. It’s an amazing thing. There’s just something infectious about hearing kids using their real voices. Like, I think in some ways, in other countries and on St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, there’s an old picture of the country in people’s heads. We’re very interconnected kind of country now. And yet there’s still a strong sense of community and there’s still a strong sense of kind of music and culture.”
Fontaines, D.C is probably the biggest Irish rock band performing today. Is this group paving a way for a new generation of artists the same way that U2 did back in the 80s?
“Quite possibly. I think there’s an interesting thing now as well that things get the world is a bit more niche now. Music scenes can exist independently. I think Fontaines D.C., like a lot of these other bands, they’re quite lyrical and poetic, and there’s a kind of storytelling element to what the singer Grian Chatten does, which I think Ireland can add to the world. And in quite a scary global environment at the moment, new ways of looking at things are always important to me.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
____
Lynn Menegon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Michael Scotto and Grace Griffin adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2026 WBUR