Country & Irish

Country and Irish is Ireland's adaptation of North American country music, in which the song forms, instrumentation and vocal manner of Nashville are joined to Irish melodies, dance rhythms and subject matter. It grew out of the showband era: singers such as *Big Tom* and *Larry Cunningham* applied country arrangements to songs of emigration, home and rural Ireland, and successors from *Daniel O'Donnell* to *Nathan Carter* carried the style to the top of the Irish charts. Accordion and tin whistle sit beside pedal steel and fiddle, and the repertoire mixes American standards with Irish ballads recast as country numbers.