MY act of teenage rebellion was to turn my back on Irish traditional music.

It was my father’s passion. He lived for Irish music and the language. Rejecting what he loved so much was one way of asserting myself. My loss.

The tragedy is that secretly, I liked it.

Pop could not match the thrill of The Chieftains at full pelt; and Carolan’s Concerto, the March of the King of Laois, and Bonaparte’s Retreat are part of the playlist of my youth.

Máiría Cahill: The Fleadh shows how far we’ve come. Feile risks showing we haven’t

Tom Collins: Embrace all the craic of the Fleadh – take it from someone who turned his back on Irish music

My dad taught himself to play the penny whistle, and could beat out a mean rhythm on a bodhrán. He’d made his from a garden sieve and the remnants of a Lambeg drum skin slipped to him by a colleague at work.

Over the course of a summer the drum skin went from beating the Pope to beating out polkas and jigs.

There’s a metaphor there. If only we could emulate the spirit of friendship which informed that gift from an Armagh Protestant to a Limerick Catholic.

My refusal to join in with impromptu seisiúns at home robbed me of a skillset........

© The Irish News