Lists of hundreds of songs would need to be assembled to capture the breadth of both Irish traditional music history, and the nation's forays into other genres, but these 32 Irish songs will give you a sense of how the country's bread-and-butter sound has developed in the last 100 years. "Having said that, the core values of traditional music are still found in the style and in the instruments used. "Listening to contemporary Irish music, you feel those barriers between classical and pop, punk and alternative, indie and traditional music, breaking down almost daily," says Moloney. Some of the country's most cutting edge modern music includes innovators in hip-hop like Hare Squead and Denise Chaila, post-punk acts like Girl Band and FONTAINES D.C., and boundary pushing pop acts like Róisín Murphy.
![classic celtic music classic celtic music](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/3c15fb98-93dc-4d75-8b33-ccbf3254822d_1.8786de921f73a8b9f312c8527e150190.jpeg)
The 21st century has been a time of diversification in the world of Irish music, with more women rising to prominence, as well as Black Irish artists and artists with African-Irish ancestry. U2 has been a stadium-packing force since the release of their breakthrough album War, while Sinéad O'Connor scored a massive global hit in the form of 1990's "Nothing Compares 2 U."
![classic celtic music classic celtic music](https://wgbh.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a8600f9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/864x471+0+64/resize/990x540!/quality/70/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwgbh-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F53%2F8b%2F00ade3bc4a93b67bd66326b46094%2Fceltic-exploring-classics-lede.jpg)
Groups such as The Dubliners launched the solo careers of artists like Christy Moore and Ronnie Drew, while also influencing The Pogues, who merged the folk sound into Celtic punk in the '80s and '90s.Īll the while, Irish music was spreading and mixing with other regional sounds in what Moloney calls the "Irish diaspora." As the popular music landscape changed, Irish artists emerged in myriad genres. Acts like The Dubliners shared both wry humor and poignant harmonies in their work, and made nimble, guitar-heavy arrangements that are still played today. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a renaissance of folk artists, who offered both novel interpretations of classic songs and brought this type of Irish music into the mainstream folk scene that was popular worldwide. The more traditional version of Irish singing is called sean-nós, or "old style," which is often done acapella and sung in Gaelic. That’s why a lot of the musicians keep their eyes closed while they’re playing," says Mick Moloney, a musician and Irish musicologist who teaches at NYU. "You go down to the tune, it’s like an interior journey. In Ireland's folk music, instruments such as the tin whistle, uilleann pipes, and banjo, are used to create winsome soundscapes, while singers are tasked with carrying melodies and lyrics that date back centuries. In many ways, the sound of Irish music is as distinct as the country's signature brogue.