​What the World's Religions
Can Learn from ​Irish Pub Music
​

​"Keep adapting, mix things up, improvise,
make it communal, tell lots of stories.

Keep your sense of humor but don't be afraid to cry.
Embrace the whole of life as best you can.
​
Revere the past but don't get stuck in it."
​

The Story of Irish Music

Music Making is a Process

​“Music making, like any human activity, is a process. When a tradition ceases to evolve it ceases to be a tradition, as it becomes a conscious convention. At that stage, it is ready to be abandoned and to become a museum piece...The reason it has survived is that it has adapted to a new function, in the same way for example that classical music has developed a new function as film music.”

​-- Erick Falc’Her-Poyroux in "Irish Music Redefined, an Outsider’s Viewpoint"

Religion is a Process, Too

​​“Religion​, like any human activity, is a process. When a tradition ceases to evolve it ceases to be a tradition, as it becomes a conscious convention. At that stage, it is ready to be abandoned and to become a museum piece...The reason it has survived is that it has adapted to a new function, in the same way for example that classical music has developed a new function as film music.”

​-- Process Theology on the World's Religions

Have Fun, Make it Communal

Revere the Past but Don't Get Stuck

There is a moment of silence after the set ends, and my applause slices through the hush in the room. For a moment, I feel like the newcomer to classical music who didn’t get the memo not to clap between movements of a concerto. I am sitting shoulder to shoulder with a harpist and a fiddler in a dimly lit pub session circle, but I am an outsider here. In the two fleeting months that have passed since my relocation from Boston to Cork, Ireland, I am finding music everywhere.   Recasting myself from classical violinist to Irish traditional music enthusiast has been exhilarating. My immersion has been rapid and deep by choice, and my occasional social missteps are refreshing reminders that I no longer reside in the Western classical sphere.

-- Anjali Misra in ​New Voices, January 19, 2019

​I haven’t been around to observe hundreds of years of this tradition. If that were a possibility, I certainly wouldn’t mind. Yet even from my relatively limited exposure, it is plain to see that Irish traditional music straddles a unique divide — it is deeply rooted in folk music, with tunes that are tied to regions as much as they are tied to their composers’ communities — but in the contexts in which I experience it, a modern influence is undeniably present as well.

Irish traditional music has persisted because it has changed over time. In a global cultural landscape that is regularly inundated with new material, the last few decades of evolution suggest that this music will be around for quite a while longer — though likely changing a little more along the way.

-- Anjali Misra in ​New Voices, January 19, 2019

A Very Short Theology

​Open and Relational (process) theologies propose that the Great Becoming of the universe is in process, adapting to new situations by feeling the feelings of all living beings and availing the world of fresh possibilities relative to each new situation.   The world's religions are among the means by which humans make contact with the Great Becoming.  They, too, are in process.  Their calling is to claim the adventure, not pretending that all fhe truth relevant to life is found in the inherited scriptures or customs.  Religions find their vitality when they revere the past without getting stuck in it.   Irish Pub Music provides a model.