But we have our own language, the Irish, and we have the power to sing sweet music.

Augusta Gregory

I believe we each have ways we communicate beyond words. Cooking for and with others. Listening to others. Creating for and with others. Building for and with others. Spending time with others. Each language is learned and developed and shared over time.

On a late August afternoon in Dublin, Ireland, at the Brazen Head Public House — established 1198 — I experience my first traditional (“trad”) Irish music session. Trad Irish music is a language beyond words. It is part laughter, part tears, part wind, part water, and part secret. It is local and global and universal. It is ethereal and historical and romantic.

We walked in to the crowded pub in the middle of the set. Once the people around us realized we were not going to talk over the music, we were welcomed. We got the last seat at the bar and settled in with a pint of Guinness. We heard musicians playing flute, fiddle, tin whistle, uilleann pipe, accordion, concertina, bodhrán, guitar, mandolin, and more. We heard love ballads, battle hymns, and story songs. The session ended with everyone in the bar, arm-in-arm, singing the Monkees’ Day Dream Believer. (Even Day Dream Believer felt Irish being sung by that band, using those instruments, in that space.)

The Irish have their own language. They sing their own sweet music. We heard it coast to coast. We heard it in cities and towns. There was a sense everyone new the words in every space. Everyone knew the woods but everyone invited us in and wrapped us in syllables and friendship, emotion and melody, like we had been friends more than a lifetime. That is the power of trad Irish music.