From Galway With Love: What Irish Pubs Teach Us About the Power of Public Domain Music
There’s something magical happening in the pubs of Galway, Ireland. Walk into nearly any of them, and you’re likely to stumble into a session—a circle of musicians, young and old, playing tunes that have been passed down for generations. These are not just performances; they’re living, breathing traditions. And most of the music? It’s in the public domain.
That means these songs—many of them centuries old—are free for anyone to interpret, perform, and reimagine. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Young artists are infusing these traditional melodies with a modern edge, turning what might seem like “heritage” into something fresh, vibrant, and deeply cool. The entire pub joins in. People sing along. Strangers become a choir.
In the U.S., we have folk traditions too, but we’ve lost some of the communal spaces where music is shared live and unfiltered. In Galway, the pub is more than a watering hole—it’s a music hall, a history class, and a place of true creative connection.
There’s a lesson here for artists and rights holders: music in the public domain isn’t “free” in a dismissive sense—it’s free in a powerful, communal, and deeply creative sense. If you put your own spin on a traditional tune, you can register your version, license it, and share it with the world in new ways. That’s not erasing the past—it’s honoring it.
Let’s take a page from Galway: bring music into public life. Reclaim the public domain. And let tradition evolve—one voice at a time.