ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out some key and recent historical contexts, and interprets the various interrelationships between traditional, popular and classical styles of Irish music in the light of contemporary musical practices. One of the first popular music phenomena in Ireland was the folk-inspired 'ballad boom' of the 1960s. Ireland would have been particularly receptive to this transatlantic genre, given the country's own tradition of balladry and with the presence of a significant Irish Diaspora in North America where a contemporary folk movement had gathered ground in the 1950s. If general patterns in the popularization of culture aided the resurgence of some traditional music practices, the moment of its 'renaissance' emerged from a more classically orientated conception of indigenous Irish music. The Irish state's first economic boom in the 1960s facilitated a level of exposure to international popular forms that not been previously possible.
