For the past ten years or so, the band Flogging Molly has been disseminating their fusion of traditional Irish music and punk rock, music that can give even the driest of individuals the urge to hoist a Guinness and sing along at the top of their lungs. They are continuing older Irish musical traditions in a setting familiar to our modern ear, which is used to louder and edgier music. Traditional Irish band Turn the Corner proved that this music in its traditional form is just as alive and exciting as its electrified descendant.

Turn the Corner consists of six players who use a slew of different instruments, some more familiar than others. Caroline Kilbane (flute, tin whistle) and Michael Kilbane (uilleann pipes, button accordion, tin whistle) have been playing together since 1981 for bands in Ireland, England and the Netherlands before coming to Cleveland in 1993 where the group is now based.

After taking the stage, Michael released the drone of his uilleann pipes and soon the band was off with a set of extraordinarily quick jigs and reels.

The uilleann pipes look something like a small bassoon with a bellows on one end. A member of the bagpipe family, the player supplies air by pumping a bellows underneath the right arm and squeezing a bladder with the left and fingering with both hands.

The music had an air that was unrelenting but gentle on the ear. By combining many instruments in different groups, the group achieved a very wide range of tonal colors, and the cleanliness with which as many as four of them executed unison melodies was a testament to their great skill.

Among the highlights of the evening were the several songs performed by guitarist and mandolin player Michael Brennan. His haunting and lilting voice recounted tales of soldiers, ladies and travelers.

The last and perhaps best one, entitled “Fiddler’s Green,” told of a place in Greenland where the spirits of old fiddlers go when they die. This idyllic place boasts free beer, pretty girls and rum trees all in a peaceful landscape.

Michael Kilbane at times offered insight into the music with his unique sense of humor. He explained that the slip jig, a dance in 9/8 meter, which is rare for folk music, originated when a three-legged alien landed in Ireland and demanded music. An industrious fiddler, not wishing to embarrass the alien by playing music in a duple meter, then invented the slip jig. Before intermission he also warned that those who did not stay for the second half would be relentlessly spammed.

Throughout the evening, Kevin Burke provided a pulse for these dances on the bodhran. The bodhran is a drum about a foot in diameter, played by using both ends of a small stick. Burke produced a variety of sounds with the drum reminiscent of the Indian tabla.

The sweet flutes of Caroline and Kathie Stewart provided harmony and color to the textures while the fiddle of Patrick Kilbane spun off the melodies of the dances at unbelievable speeds. Stewart, in addition to playing Irish music, is primarily known as a historical flutist and is a founding member of Cleveland’s Baroque Ensemble, Apollo’s Fire.

The evening of lively and lilting music brought an uncommon experience to those who were there. This performance certainly took me back to a distant, lost ancestral home in Ireland, and judging by the audience’s response, I was not alone. Perhaps it would be fitting to bring more folk music of European traditions like this to Oberlin in order to further enhance the scintillating palate of ethnic music offered at the institution. The more cultures we thoroughly represent, the more familiar we become with our world and ourselves.