00:00 - The social essence of Irish sessions and fitting in
00:27 - The importance of social vibe over technical skill
01:46 - How social and musical dynamics intertwine
03:46 - The role of caring and authenticity in sessions
05:13 - Building connections through social interaction
06:26 - Vulnerability and learning as an adult musician
07:42 - The impact of travel and access on learning Irish music
09:02 - Brain science and learning Irish music
10:48 - The stages of developing fluency and confidence
12:48 - The significance of rhythm, swing, and phrasing
15:01 - The analogy of storytelling and fluency in music
16:44 - Recognising Irish musical vernacular and accents
17:34 - The importance of organising and sharing musical vocabulary
18:56 - The beauty in imperfection and being yourself in sessions
21:07 - Playing your unique voice, the confidence to being your true self
23:40 - Cultural reflections on Irish versus American musical attitudes
26:10 - Session etiquette and politeness over social dominance
28:56 - How to navigate social cues and musical contributions
33:49 - Making space for different instruments and musical expressions
36:29 - The accessibility of Irish music and the importance of persistence
42:22 - The value of hunger, access, and community in learning
44:32 - The long-term approach to mastering Irish music
49:26 - Embracing mistakes and the non-perfection in performance
54:36 - The cultural lens on competition versus performance
57:23 - The role of festivals, competitions, and social mixing
62:34 - The importance of social interactions and playing together
66:29 - Finding your voice and the social-cultural context of Irish music
70:14 - Building confidence and sharing your music authentically
75:36 - Developing your musical voice through variation and exploration
79:26 - The significance of rhythm, dynamics, and ornamentation
83:08 - Contributing to the session beyond just playing tunes
86:38 - The social glue: belonging and community in Irish music
89:22 - Neuroscience of learning music and neurodiversity
93:43 - The relationship between classical and Irish traditional music
97:04 - Overcoming self-consciousness in hearing your own voice
99:52 - Recognising mistakes and the natural flow of performance
106:54 - The importance of intentionality and matching rhythm
111:58 - Dynamics, phrasing, and micro-dynamics in session playing
120:13 - Defining Irish music: features, patterns, and cultural identity
122:32 - The role of accompaniment and social harmony in sessions
126:51 - Final thoughts on authenticity, community, and musical self-acceptance
Conversational Transcript
*[This is an edited conversational transcript, lightly shaped for readability while keeping the spirit of the original conversation]
What does an Irish music session mean?
Tara:
Hello, Lexie Boatright.
You live in the Baltimore area in Maryland in the States, not Baltimore, Cork, much as we would love to.
You are a harp player, a fiddle player and a concertina player. You also play in a band called The Consequences.
I am going to ask you the same question I ask everyone: what does an Irish music session mean to you?
Lexie:
To me, first and foremost, sessions are inherently social.
There are lots of avenues for playing music and for playing Irish music, but the session is the most important part to me. It is what drew me in, and I think it is what draws a lot of people in.
It is social first.
I love getting together with people all over. My only job is playing Irish traditional music, so I travel around, meet people and make friends.
A good session to me is a session where you are having a good time with people.
I can go a whole night and not play a single tune and still have a great time at a session.
And I can go to a session where the music is really good and people are playing very well, but if the social vibe is not good, then to me it is not a good session.
So the social aspect is primary for me, but it is not separate from the music.
Every session is the people in the session. They are all different because the session is those people in that room, those personalities.
The music can be such a variety, and that is part of the fun: doing something different and hearing something different.
The music and the people build each other up
Tara:
It is not that you cannot have one without the other, but they need each other.
You need the people to have a good time, and then the music can have a good time.
Lexie:
Yes. They build each other up.
If the music is good and the chat is good, then the music gets better. You laugh more. You connect more.
There is something conversational about it. You connect with the music, and if you are comfortable with each other, you are going to connect better with the music.
Any time a session becomes egocentric, like someone trying to prove something or show something, it cuts off that interconnectivity.
Then everyone is having an uncomfortable time, even if they cannot quite figure out why.
At its core, it is caring about the other people you are playing with.
You want to hear what they have to say, and you want to blend with their sound.
Caring about adult learners
Lexie:
I have found, travelling around and meeting people in lots of places, that the people I enjoy most are not always the other teachers or performers.
You meet interesting people who, in adulthood, have decided to take up playing.
They might not be the best players, but they are doing it for a reason.
Learning is vulnerable.
Kids are used to not knowing how to do things, so it can be less scary for them. But for adults, it is very vulnerable to learn.
You have to care about the other people as people and understand that they are competent at whatever they do in their own lives.
I am not being dropped into somebody else’s job and trying to keep up.
So it is important to care and try to get to know everybody.
Tara:
People taking up music later in life could be doctors, solicitors, CEOs, anything.
They bring so much to it, but if we do not engage with them, we will never know that.
Lexie:
I have a student who is a neurologist and is learning concertina.
It is so interesting to hear him talk about the experience his brain is having.
I am really into how brains learn for teaching, and the concertina is such a weird brain instrument.
Fluency and the concertina brain
Tara:
I am an adult learner concertina player myself.
Lexie:
It is so good for your brain.
I have had students say, “I will never get dementia if I keep playing this.”
It keeps your brain young.
It is fascinating to think about executive functioning, active thinking and fluency.
One student said the concertina takes an unreal amount of executive functioning to play.
I laughed because that was the first time anyone had implied that I have even average executive functioning skills.
So we went on this journey together to figure out why I do not feel like I am using executive functioning when I play.
I think the answer is fluency.
Trying to play without fluency is really hard.
Tara:
There are different stages.
At first, you can be incompetent and unaware. That can be a happy place because you do not know what you do not know.
Then you become aware of your incompetence, and that is when a lot of people stop because they think, “I am really bad.”
Then you push through with five minutes every day, and you become competent but aware.
Eventually you become competent and unconscious. You are not thinking about it. You are in the flow.
Lexie:
I describe it to students like speaking fluently.
When you are talking, you know how to spell the words, but you are not thinking about spelling every word. You are thinking about the concept you are trying to share.
That is the fluency we want to attain on an instrument.
I am annoying with my students about scales, arpeggios and music theory. But on concertina, you need to know what note you are on.
It matters when you start playing octaves or chords.
Fluency is key to having fun in the session.
But it does not make us inherently better.
There is a bit of privilege in it because we get to relax. I think a lot about how hard people are working to be there and play their few tunes.
Learning Irish music like learning to speak
Lexie:
I think about learning Irish music like learning to speak.
I have kids, and I watched them learn to talk.
At first, they are just making sounds. Then they communicate simply with one or two words.
With American beginners, it can be hard to explain that there is no one right way to play a tune.
There are many ways, but that does not mean you can make up anything. There are still rules.
Now I tell my students to imagine the tune is like telling a story.
It would be very hard to tell the same story to different friends using exactly the same words in exactly the same order.
If you are fluent in the language, you just tell the story.
A child may not speak perfectly, but they can still communicate.
Our music can be like that too.
You are allowed fluency as you gain fluency in the vernacular of the music.
Why “play whatever pops into your head” does not always work
Lexie:
It can be frustrating learning Irish music from Irish people because they might say, “Just play whatever pops into your head.”
That works with Irish students because they are used to hearing the music. What pops into their head is usually within an Irish traditional music vernacular.
But for many of my students, most of the music they have heard their whole lives is not Irish traditional music.
So when they fill in the blanks, they fill it with things that do not sound Irish.
It is not bad. It is just not Irish.
The first time you learn a tune, play the notes I give you. Those are the notes you have.
But the next time we work on it, I might play different notes. It is not because I lied to you the first time. There is no way I can remember exactly what we did.
It is more information about the tune.
The next teacher, the next recording, the next player gives you more information. You are building the vocabulary.
Chinese whispers and the tune changing
Tara:
It reminds me of Chinese whispers, or telephone. One person whispers something to the next person, and by the time it comes back, it has changed.
Irish music is like that. We are never playing exactly the same thing.
We are, but we are not.
Lexie:
I love that.
There is something comforting about settling into your own voice and saying, “This is how I hear the tune in my mind, so this is how I play it.”
My adult students are often worried about playing fast enough or with enough ornamentation.
I tell them it is because they were not teenagers being told they were playing too fast with too much ornamentation.
They ask, “What would you do? How would you play this?”
I say, “Do you want to know what I would do, or do you want to know what I think you should do?”
I think they should sound like themselves.
Lexie:
The pep talk I give myself for gigs that feel overwhelming is:
I make the noise that I make.
Whoever hired me to be there knows this is the noise I make, and they have consented to me showing up and making it.
That became my mantra.
I once had to play in a concert where I thought I was expected to play harp, but the O’Carolan tunes I actually knew and loved were on concertina with piano.
So I decided, they hired me knowing what recordings exist of me playing O’Carolan tunes. I hauled the piano on stage and played them on concertina.
Tara:
I love that.
They hired you for the noise that you make.
That is your voice.
Why there is no level where you cannot be rejected
Lexie:
I think students sometimes believe I am just being nice to them when I say these things.
I loved that Martin Hayes talked about being a shy person, because that is more common among performers than people think.
I play a complicated concertina style, and students ask how I learned to do that.
The honest answer is that I learned those crazy things because I was shy and anxious about being welcome in places.
Especially as an American concertina player, I felt I had to prove myself.
But you do not need to do all those things to have a good time in a session.
There is no eureka moment.
There is no level you reach where you stop seeing more levels above you.
If you are chasing a level where you are good enough to never be rejectable, where you know every tune and are never caught out, that never ends.
It just makes you anxious everywhere you go.
Irish politeness and American individuality
Lexie:
For me, it comes down to a cultural lens difference between Irish people and Americans.
In Ireland, people highly value politeness and self-awareness.
In America, we grow up being told to stand out, be a leader, be creative, march to the beat of your own drum.
Those things are valued more highly here.
But some of those values compete with each other.
It is hard to enter a space where the most important thing is a dance between yourself and the session, of being self-aware and polite, when you also have this American value of being unique, being a leader and having something new to say.
I hate to use the word entitlement, but I do notice a difference.
“I bought the instrument. I paid for the classes. I learned my tunes. I am here on vacation. I am entitled.”
But sessions are inherently social.
I do not think anyone is ever fundamentally entitled to joining in, or to someone else joining in with you.
Being invited in does not mean what you think it means
Lexie:
This is the problem I think many beginners who go to Ireland have.
If you show up at a session with a case, the host or local person may invite you in.
In Ireland, because politeness and self-awareness are valued, it would be impolite not to acknowledge you.
They might not know who you are. You could be a great player.
So they invite you in.
Then Americans think, “They invited me in. They said I could play.”
But they did not really invite you into the session.
They invited you to assess whether you belong in that session.
Now the ball is in your court.
You have to listen and ask: do I fit into this?
It is not just a level thing. It is not just whether you play fast enough or have enough tunes.
Do you fit into the social vibe?
Are you going to make them uncomfortable?
If I walk into a session of teenagers playing cool teenage tunes, it is not that I am not good enough to play.
It is that I am going to wreck their vibe.
I am a boring mum.
So I should not crash their session.
If you have politeness and self-awareness as your top values, you will make the right choices.
Play the tunes you know. Do not play the tunes you do not know. Be good craic.
If you only play one tune all night, nobody is counting.
The concertina, America and proving yourself
Tara:
You mentioned feeling that Irish people might assume an American could not play.
Is that what was going through your head?
Lexie:
I do not mean American generally. I mean specifically with concertina.
The concertina did not immigrate to America in the same way as other instruments. When I was growing up, there were not many concertina teachers here who were at the same level as what was happening in Ireland.
There was no YouTube in the same way, no Zoom.
It would have been fair to assume I did not have access to a way to learn.
It is happenstance that I ended up learning the way I did.
I do not begrudge anyone that.
But I would get the question, “What tunes do you know?” Or, “Play us a tune.”
Then if I played a tune, the vibe would change and it would be fine.
Being moved up through the classes
Lexie:
The first time I went for grading at a summer school in Ireland, no one knew me.
They asked me to play a bit of a tune.
I was probably fourteen or fifteen.
They placed me in the little class with the littlest kids learning slowly for the first morning.
I knew it was because the question was: can she only play that one tune, or can she learn another tune?
By mid-morning, the teacher said, “You need to move up.”
Then after a couple more classes, they said, “Just go to the class with the other teenagers.”
That made sense. They were protecting me from being in a class where I could not keep up.
It is easier to move someone up than pull them back down.
Access, distance and hunger
Lexie:
In America, it has been difficult for kids to access the music unless they are in exactly the right place.
The country is huge.
Once, Timmy Collins was in New York and left a message saying I should come up for concertina lessons.
It was thirteen hours away.
And I did.
Tara:
In Ireland, everyone is within about seven hours.
We are totally unaware of the size of America.
Lexie:
Yes. When people here say, “Why don’t you just drive to Texas?” I think, do you know how many days that would take?
Kevin Crawford mentioned in another episode that when the music is not easily accessible, you get hungry for it.
That was definitely me.
I felt I would have to work hard to get to it.
Teenage laziness and the magic pill
Tara:
Every musician who reaches a certain standard has had to go through being hungry for it.
I went through a phase as a child of being lazy because my ear was good. I could pick things up quickly.
My mother would drive me the thirty seconds to fiddle class, and I would listen to the tape from the previous week in the car. That was my practice.
Lexie:
Were you between eleven and thirteen?
Tara:
Absolutely.
Lexie:
That is developmentally normal.
I tell parents this time will come.
Children at that age are learning independence, but they do not yet have the skills to manage it.
They do not want to be told to practice, but they also do not yet know how to organise themselves.
When students that age say they want to quit, I ask:
“If I could give you a magic pill that would make you a perfect player, would that be fun?”
If they say yes, then keep going.
If the only thing is that they want to be able to do it, then five minutes a day is enough to keep the door open.
But if they say no, then maybe go find the thing that makes them happy.
I love opening doors for hungry learners.
Adult learners and five minutes a day
Tara:
That is why I like teaching adults. They have made a decision. They are hungry for it.
But they often lack confidence that they can get much further.
I do think five minutes a day can take them further than they realise.
Lexie:
After the age of seven, brains do not learn slower than children’s brains.
The difference is that children tend to have more of a growth mindset. They are used to not being good at things.
Adults are not.
If you are an adult beginner fiddle player in Donegal, going into a session can be scary. You feel like you should know how to do this.
But imagine an eight-year-old starts and plays for one year. They are nine. What does a nine-year-old sound like?
That is all we can expect from ourselves.
Chip away at five minutes a day.
In three years, you will probably know a lot of the tunes in your local session.
There is always someone better
Tara:
You said there is never a level where you are not rejectable.
That is something a lot of people need to hear.
Even when you said it, my shoulders dropped in relief.
There is always someone better.
Lexie:
It does not even have to be about someone being better.
I ask students: do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?
It is more fun to play with people who are better than you.
Think of the joy of being a learner and playing with your idols.
It is not that better players judge players who are not as good.
People who are ego-driven and judgmental will be ego-driven and judgmental.
People who are not, will not.
You cannot make yourself likable and acceptable to everyone.
You have to play the way you play.
Only I can be the best me.
I have been criticised for being too trad and not trad enough, playing too slow and too fast, using too much ornamentation and not enough ornamentation.
One year at the Fleadh, I got a comment saying, “Do not tap your foot. We can hear it.”
The next year I got, “If you are not tapping your foot, nobody else will tap along with you.”
So I have to just be me.
Lexie:
At one festival, there were three concertina players side by side: myself, Mohsen Amini and Mary MacNamara.
We all sounded completely different.
Mary sounds like herself. Mohsen sounds like himself. I sound like myself.
If I am trying to be Mary, who is being me?
You have to play the music you want to play. Otherwise you go your whole life and nobody ever played it, and nobody got to hear it.
Tara:
Danny Meehan once nudged me in a session and said, “Tara, it is time you started to enjoy your own music.”
That hit me because I realised I had been trying to play what I thought others wanted to hear, rather than what I wanted to play.
Lexie:
I had a life-changing comment from Timmy Collins.
In a lesson, I played three tunes.
He said, “You play the first tune like you learned it from me. You play the second tune like Gráinne. You play the third tune like Mícheál. So how do you play?”
Can you play all the tunes like Mícheál? Can you play them all like Gráinne?
Find what is like you in this.
Then Michael Rooney once said to me before the Fleadh, “Play it again, but like you believe you deserve to be here.”
He said, “You are playing like you are apologising.”
That stayed with me.
Showing up and playing what you have worked on does not say anything about anyone else.
You do not need to apologise for existing.
Irish self-deprecation and American self-promotion
Tara:
Irish people are bad for apologising for everything.
Lexie:
My way of being with the music is very Irish. I learned how to perceive the music from my Irish teachers.
The cultural lens around performance and competition is very different here.
Some American parents say they do not want their children to compete because they do not want them to show off or act like they are better than anyone else.
I find that baffling because, to me, in a competition, every child gets equal time to play their tunes.
A concert is more like saying, “You only need to hear me.”
But parents here see it the opposite way.
To me, competitions are often just a way to get kids together so they meet each other, make friends and play in sessions.
When I think back to Fleadhs, I do not remember who won what.
I remember who I had sessions with, who I went around town with, and who became my friends.
It broadened my social world.
Busking, Fleadhs and making friends
Tara:
I never grew up through the competition thing in Donegal. By the time I realised there was a competition scene, I was about seventeen or eighteen.
But I still went to Fleadhs and had a great time.
I wonder if Fleadhs have changed now.
Lexie:
I hear they have.
The busking is more of a thing now.
When I was a kid going to Fleadhs, you would not go busking. It was socially a faux pas.
I am not saying busking is wrong, but it should not be at the expense of sessions.
When I went to Fleadhs, I had to figure out how to make friends with the Irish kids and get into sessions.
That was motivating.
If you can figure out socially how to make friends and find the right session, room will be made for you.
If kids go all the way to Ireland just to sit and play together on the street the tunes they already know, what is the point?
Go meet other kids. Play tunes together. Learn tunes from each other.
That is the value.
Being Irish in an American body
Tara:
You mentioned seeing things through an Irish lens. I think that is why Irish people get on with you so well.
You are just like one of us.
Lexie:
I do feel more socially comfortable in Ireland than here.
I think you learn to socialise where you are trying to fit in, and that was where I wanted to fit in as a teenager.
I get told often that I am an Irish girl trapped in an American girl’s body.
Tara:
One of the intricacies we have is boasting. We are not good at boasting.
Lexie:
I have a soapbox about this.
I think there are some things about typical Irish cultural ways of viewing ourselves that are not always emotionally healthy.
I think a lot of Irish musicians could own more comfortably that they are great teachers or great players.
It does not help us to undervalue ourselves.
If you feel rejected by a session, you still need to know that you inherently have value as a person.
If they do not want you there, that is an interpersonal thing. You do not have to make it mean you have no value.
I have a good track record of convincing middle-aged Irishmen to consider therapy.
Tara:
That fear of putting your head above the parapet was one of my worries starting the podcast.
Who gives you the right to talk about this?
Lexie:
You have to own it.
If you are doing it, you are doing it. If people are listening, they are listening.
If people want to come to a concert, they will come. If they do not, they will not.
When you record something, you are not saying, “I have figured it out. This is the answer. Nobody needs another CD.”
You are just saying, “This is what I am doing right now.”
You have to make choices based on what works for you and what makes you happy.
If you make all your choices based on what other people want, you will eventually be stuck between people who want opposite things.
Ornamentation is not the tree
Lexie:
I had a student ask if she should put in more rolls.
I asked, “Enough rolls for what?”
Nobody in a session is thinking, “Oh my God, she has not played a roll.”
There are great concertina players who do not do rolls. They do other things.
You can choose not to do a roll at any moment, so theoretically you could choose not to do any of them.
Tara:
Sometimes that makes you more creative because you have to think about what you put in instead.
If I learn a tune from someone with lots of rolls, I might take those out because that makes me sound like them.
I need to put in something I would think to put in.
Lexie:
Americans often think ornamentation is what makes Irish music Irish because it is the thing that seems unique.
But it is not.
It is the rhythm and phrasing.
It is the micro-volume of every note.
It is the relentless motor of the bounce, and the singability over the top.
Tara:
It is like thinking the Christmas tree is the decorations.
If the tree does not have the branches in the right direction, it does not matter how many baubles you put on it.
Lexie:
Exactly.
The core of the tune is what matters.
The right note at the wrong time is the wrong note.
If you are bogging yourself down trying to put in ornamentation and you cannot play in time, you cannot lock in with anyone.
If you are in a session playing just the notes, with the motor going and locking in, nobody is judging your ornamentation.
But if you are all over the place struggling with ornamentation, now there is a problem.
That does not mean you cannot struggle in a session. We all make mistakes.
Just do not make it difficult or uncomfortable for other people to play.
What can I give this session?
Tara:
When I go into a session, I ask: what can I give this session?
I also ask: will this fill my cup as well as filling other people’s cups?
Lexie:
Absolutely.
When I travel to something, I ask myself: why am I here?
We are not entitled to each other’s time and space.
What you bring to a session does not have to be musical, though it can be.
Maybe what you contribute is friendliness.
Maybe it is making people feel comfortable.
Maybe it is making space for kids.
Sometimes what you bring is modelling how to sit at the bar, listen and enjoy listening.
There are so many ways to contribute to the social vibe that are not new tunes, the best playing or the loudest playing.
Sometimes you are the anchor.
I love a slow session for that, giving students playing slowly the feeling of, “What if this tune was supposed to be this tempo? What if this was the best way to play this tune?”
That is not about showing off. It is about making them feel the lift.
Belonging in an Irish music session
Tara:
You want them to feel what you feel in a good session.
That is the hook.
Once you get addicted to that feeling, you continue.
Lexie:
That is the drug.
It is the combination of the music and feeling socially seen.
Tara:
Belonging.
Lexie:
Yes.
It is important to find places where you belong.
Sometimes it takes a long time searching.
You go to sessions all around, meet different people and encounter different ways of playing.
Every once in a while, you find a place where you find your people.
It can be the wildest people: some of the best players you have ever heard and some total beginners.
But late in the pub, sharing tunes, stories and learning about each other, it does not matter how well you play.
It matters that you are having a good time and the music is good.
Learning, the brain and executive function
Tara:
You mentioned your student who is a neurologist.
I am fascinated by how we learn music. I believe there are different parts of the brain for learning by notes and by ear.
Lexie:
We have talked about this a lot.
Executive functioning is essentially shifting gears between different modes.
On concertina, there are so many things happening: finger movement, bellows direction, what the notes sound like in your mind, what you are hearing yourself play, and what the note names are.
Humans only have a limited number of slots for working memory.
When I am playing, I am not shifting between all those thoughts actively.
I am thinking about the story I am telling, but I am still aware of the sentences, the words and how to spell them.
It is there, but it is not taking up much cognitive space.
Knowing notes and theory can help you learn tunes more quickly.
But you can learn by ear and play beautiful music without reading. You can also read notes well and not sound musical if you are not listening.
Lexie:
I had a professor in grad school who required us to record everything we played and listen back to it.
If your cello was out and you were playing, you recorded yourself.
I was the only person in the studio actually doing it, but I did it diligently.
It changed everything.
At first, I would think I needed to work on one thing, then I would listen back and realise the problem was something else.
It is humbling and scary at first.
But if every time you play, you record and listen back, you start to anticipate what you are going to hear.
Eventually you become familiar with how you play.
Nothing bad is going to happen in a performance that you have not heard before.
You are going to play the way you play.
Tara:
One person on the questionnaire simply wrote: rhythm.
You mentioned micro-dynamics earlier.
Lexie:
When I say I perceive rhythm as micro-dynamics, I mean that no two consecutive notes should be the same volume.
That is important in how I conceptualise rhythm.
In a session, the rhythm needs to be consistent and steady. It needs to have a motor.
For Americans especially, reels need more swing than we often think.
We may perceive the swing as normal straight notes when listening, but if we actually play straight notes, it does not work.
I told one student to play reels slowly and swing them like a hornpipe. When you speed them up, they straighten out.
They slowed down a recording of me playing a reel fast and realised I was swinging it.
So one piece of advice is: swing your rhythm more than you think.
Do not focus only on the loud notes. Think about the reciprocal quiet notes too.
For me, music breaks down into twos and threes.
In jigs, I bring out the third note of the group, almost like it propels you into the downbeat.
The downbeat is inevitable. We do not need to hammer it.
In reels, I like a strong backbeat.
But from a session perspective, it is good to know your own tendency and be intentional.
Then, when you are in a session, you can meet other people where they are.
It is a conversational give and take.
Lexie:
One important way to lock in with other people’s rhythm, phrasing and notes is to look at them while they are playing.
Look at their feet. Look at their hands. Watch the bow.
I love matching the concertina bellows to the bow as much as I can.
If you are in your own space and not looking, you will have a hard time connecting with someone else’s rhythm.
The more you listen to different players, the more you know what the options are.
Classical players learning Irish rhythm
Tara:
A lot of classical musicians find Irish music later in life and ask, “Why can I not sound Irish?”
I think rhythm is the difference.
They can technically play the instrument better than I can, but they cannot hear what I am doing.
Lexie:
For classical fiddle players, I think it is in the bow, especially the up-bow.
In classical music, we work hard to make everything even.
Irish music needs more lilt.
You have to let weak notes be weaker.
It is not only the length of notes. It is the volume too.
The weak notes can be ghostly whispers, while the anchored notes are stronger.
That rhythm-volume relationship is constant, and the notes are doing all kinds of things on top of it.
Tara:
Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin talked about the emphasis notes, the notes where you would tap your foot.
If you played only those, you would still recognise the tune.
The other notes are passing notes.
Lexie:
I like that.
It is useful to ask: what is the important note?
I had a college assignment where we had to number every note by volume intensity.
No two consecutive notes could be the same volume.
You had to have one loudest note and one quietest note in every phrase.
Then that expanded until it became a whole piece.
It is very good for you to think that way.
Irish music, classical music and power
Lexie:
I have a hot take.
Classical music as a genre does not exist in the way people think, because there are no musical characteristics that all classical music has in common.
It is not always large ensembles. It is not always sheet music. It is not always complex.
What classical music has in common is sociopolitical: it is the music that was patronised and held up by powerful ruling classes and governments through a Western European lens.
That matters because if you are classically trained, you are not studying one genre. You are studying a flexible technique that lets you play lots of different things.
We are allowed to take from that what we want.
We are allowed to have good technique. We are allowed to protect ourselves from injury. We are allowed to have music theory and write music down.
Irish music does not need validation through a classical lens.
Tara:
The mystery question from the previous guest is: is accompaniment a good idea or a bad idea?
Lexie:
I am definitely going to say accompaniment is a great idea.
I do not think I can be a harp player and say accompaniment is a bad idea.
I understand the argument that Irish music was originally melody-based and that accompaniment came later.
But it is a living music.
If we throw out everything that is new, we throw out guitars, banjos, concertinas, and the modern harp as I play it.
A great accompanist can change how you think about a tune in a good way.
My rule for accompaniment is: do not be in the way.
It does not have to be profound or fancy.
Listen to the tune. Change with the tune if you can.
Do not push the session where it does not want to go.
If you are doing accompaniment, be accompaniment.
Listen to the melody player and follow what they are doing.
Tara:
Sometimes you hear a chord and think, “That works.”
And sometimes you hear a chord and think, “No.”
Lexie:
Exactly.
A chord can make you think of the tune in a different way and take you on a new journey.
That is the best.
Lexie Boatright’s episode is one of the clearest conversations on the social side of Irish music sessions.
Her central point is blunt and useful: being welcomed into the room is not the same thing as belonging in the session.
That is not cruelty. It is nuance.
A person may be invited to sit down because Irish politeness requires hospitality. But after that, the responsibility shifts. The newcomer has to listen, notice, assess and ask: do I fit the music, the people and the social vibe of this room?
That is a more useful question than: am I good enough?
Lexie’s perspective is especially valuable because she understands both Irish and American social codes. American musicians may arrive with confidence, individuality and a sense that they have earned their place by paying for lessons, buying the instrument and learning the tunes. Irish sessions often operate through subtler values: politeness, self-awareness, humility, social reading and not making other people uncomfortable.
That gap explains a lot.
It also explains why session etiquette is not simply a musical issue.
You can have the tunes and still not fit the room. You can play only one tune and still be great company. You can contribute by listening, making space, helping a young player, being good craic, or simply not getting in the way.
Lexie also gives adult learners something they badly need to hear: there is no level where you become unrejectable.
That sounds harsh, but it is freeing.
The goal is not to become immune to rejection. The goal is to find your voice, find your people, and become self-aware enough to know where you belong.
At its best, a session gives people the feeling of being socially seen through music.
That is the hook.
That is the drug.
That is why people keep coming back.
*Produced & recorded by Tara Connaghan and guest editor Anita Alvarez Santos
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