Critical Review - Dorothea Hast and Stanley Scott's "Music in Ireland", Chapter 1: Invitation to a Session

In the first chapter of their book, Hast and Scott recount a trip they, as Americans, made to Ireland in 1997 in which they were invited to a small pub named Gleesons to attend a traditional Irish session. They differentiate sessions from other "contrived" presentations of Irish traditional music, such as festivales, schools, clubs, and competitions, in that with the pub session "the life of the music [is] in a community where the music has been getting along 'on its own,' patronized by local people and performed by local musicians, for generations (1)." They describe Gleesons as "a single, spacious room" with a fireplace and a small area in one corner reserved for the musicians. Junior Crehan, the 89-year-old fiddler and long-time leader of the Sunday night session, begins the session with a jig he wrote himself and has been playing for years. Between sets of jigs and reels, the musicians take breaks to talk and drink, alternating casually between playing and relaxing. The music is loud enough to be heard by all those in attendence at the pub, but not so loud as to prevent conversation because, as pub owner Jimmy Gleeson states: "people want to come in and converse... It's a farming community. So it's very important that you can hold a conversation... If someone is singing, that's the one time, the only thing I want to hear when someone is singing is the big clock ticking. And you know when you can hear the clock ticking that you have silence (4-5)." Hast and Scott write that the music is "neither a performance... nor background music", rather it is part and parcel to the entire Irish pub experience, serving to create a communal space for those who frequent the pub (5). In this spirit, specific tunes and players become part of the unique fabric of a given session, varying from one session to the next (10). Sometimes, "tunes have... been regarded as the personal property of the musicans who played them", though not necessarily those who wrote them. This is due to oral transmission being the "primary" form of continuity with Irish traditional music: those who preserve a tune by repeatedly playing it are in many ways given credit for the tune (12). The session is a place where specific players and community members are highly valued. Overall, the impression Gleesons left on the authors was one that "evoke[d] nostalgia for a simpler, less commercial way of life (15)."

Question: does practicing "tradition" involve adhering to ideas of what is "authentic" or is it more about establishing a local routine unique to a specific community? Or maybe more importantly, how do those who feel they are participating in tradition concern themselves with authenticity?