This extraordinary encyclopedia covers all aspects of traditional music, song and dance in Ireland. Six-hundred thousand words in fourteen-hundred main topics explore people, tunes, aesthetics, ideology, gender balance, history, organisations and affiliations, linking all dance and recreational music forms to biographies of stylists and figureheads, to regional music associations and practices. Extensive specialist articles give the widest range of one-stop information to date on all aspects of the subjects of dance and song, and on instruments-especially harp, uilleann pipes, fiddle, flute, bodhran, concertina, banjo and accordions.

This immense volume of biography, history, hard facts and opinion is diverse and comprehensive, a knowledge base that has been drawn from the expertises of some two hundred musicians, researchers and teachers in the field.